What does a tea towel tell us about the future of Barnes?
Story 213: Barnes Primary launches limited-edition merchandise collaboration
Barnes Primary fund-raising has outdone itself. The school has teamed up with Sir Michael Craig-Martin CBE RA, one of Britain’s best-known contemporary artists, to create a range of branded tea towels, tote bags, water bottles and other merchandise.
You can buy the results of this ‘Barnes x MCM’ collaboration at this online store.
Welcome to Barnes2050, a place-based futures project asking: how do we make sure Barnes - the place and its people - is thriving and climate-ready by 2050?
Notes & thoughts
This is not really a story about mugs, tea towels and tote bags.
It is a story about what kind of place Barnes is becoming.
Whatever the nature of Barnes in 2050, if it is climate-ready, it will be the result of creativity, collaboration, civic participation and local identity.
That will take not just imagination but also confidence. Civic confidence.
And that is what I see in this collaboration.
Barnes is exporting culture, not just consuming it
Most school fundraising merchandise is generic. Worthy but not exceptional.
This is different. A local primary school working with a leading British artist talks to Barnes increasingly being a producer of culture, not merely a consumer of it.
That fits a wider Barnes2050 theme: successful places create things, they do not simply inherit them.
Boundary between school and community is dissolving
The flyer repeatedly positions this as something for the wider Barnes community, not merely parents.
Order the goods and you can collect them at the Barnes Fair. The merchandise is presented less as school fundraising and more as a community artefact.
One of the recurring questions for Barnes2050 is whether Barnes remains a collection of institutions or evolves into an even stronger civic ecosystem.
This feels like evidence of the latter.
Barnes continues to trade on place
The striking thing is that the headline brand is not the artist, nor the school.
It is “Barnes × MCM”.
Barnes comes first.
That suggests place itself has become part of the value proposition. Something that excites a place-based futures project.
Barnes2050 believes there is a need and opportunity to imagine the next version of Barnes. That becomes easier when a palce has a rich mix of institutions willing to collaborate with one another, with creative talent as well commerce and political bodies. Easier still when there is a confidence confidence about the value of a place.
That is why Barnes2050 treats local history and identity as assets, because places with memory often make better decisions about change
One final thing.
I am hugely impressed by this collaboration. Ambitious. Confident. Well executed.
But, oddly, I don’t like the design.
I like so much of Craig-Martin’s work. For example this from the Tate Collection.
This version of Barnes?
Not for me.
💡New park on Castlenau - WIP Proposal
A new urban park should run the length of Castlenau, from the Holy Trinity church to the Red Lion pub. A narrow, planted spine down the middle of the A306. This new green ribbon would be called Castlenau Park.