Historic England's High Street Heritage Action Zone project invites communities to re-engage with their high street as a creative space, for example to fill empty shops with exhibitions, research the high street's heritage and imagine contemporary shop signs. It provides funding for high streets in more economically deprived regions of the country to restore high streets that have fallen on hard times, for example a post office in Lowestoft (Suffolk) that is being renovated to house artist studios.
National Saturday Club at Time and Tide Museum choose the Slipper Baths in Great Yarmouth as a site to research, and create a new 3D shop sign for. The Slipper Baths were an art-deco public bath house that was running until the 1970s, and once offered 20-minute baths for locals, a Bryll Cream-vending machine, and the baths were designed in the iconic 'slipper' shape. The building now functions as housing, and the 'Slipper Bath' ghost sign remains in cast iron-lettering along the chimney stack and can be seen on Stonecutter's Way.
The images below document our research, site visits and the creative outcome of the project - 3D shop signs made by Club members and local sculptor Gabbi Minas, imagining what a contemporary shop sign for the Slipper Bath's could look like. These sculptural maquettes went on display in Time and Tide's Red Herring Community Gallery in August 2022, and Gabbi Minas' Slipper Bath sculpture went on display at Primeyarc in 2023. You can read a blog post about the project here.
National Saturday Club at Time and Tide Museum choose the Slipper Baths in Great Yarmouth as a site to research, and create a new 3D shop sign for. The Slipper Baths were an art-deco public bath house that was running until the 1970s, and once offered 20-minute baths for locals, a Bryll Cream-vending machine, and the baths were designed in the iconic 'slipper' shape. The building now functions as housing, and the 'Slipper Bath' ghost sign remains in cast iron-lettering along the chimney stack and can be seen on Stonecutter's Way.
The images below document our research, site visits and the creative outcome of the project - 3D shop signs made by Club members and local sculptor Gabbi Minas, imagining what a contemporary shop sign for the Slipper Bath's could look like. These sculptural maquettes went on display in Time and Tide's Red Herring Community Gallery in August 2022, and Gabbi Minas' Slipper Bath sculpture went on display at Primeyarc in 2023. You can read a blog post about the project here.