Interactive Workshop: Nothing remained unchanged but the clouds
Wednesday 19th November 2025 at 4pm. Free. Booking required.
University of Leeds Campus, Parkinson B.11
In 2020, during lockdown, photographic artist Alan Ward bought 7 German negatives from the First World War. After some internet sleuthing, he identified them as from the French town of Grandpré, Ardennes. He discovered that the occupying forces produced hundreds of different postcards of Grandpré, and he was struck by how they were perhaps the most complete visual document of the place, far more comprehensive and informative than even Google Streetview today, and so he began collecting these postcards. Together with researcher Corinne Painter, Alan began an ongoing, multilingual dialogue around ‘a sense of place’ with Grandpré inhabitants today and he created new artworks.
This workshop will present some of Alan’s work and the responses of the inhabitants of Grandpré, on topics such as rural life, local opportunities, depopulation, high streets, climate change, and tourism. We invite you to navigate these topics through the fragmented narratives of the postcards and consider our pasts, presents, and imagined futures. We will look at some of the postcards, discuss the role of postcards in our own lives, and experiment with some creative writing.
Project Partner: Alan Ward
For more information about this project, please see the following links:
https://hosting.northumbria.ac.uk/warephemera/what-happens-when-first-world-war-postcards-and-art-come-together-by-alan-ward/
https://www.alanjward.co.uk/projects/la-vojo-returne/
https://www.alanjward.co.uk/news/
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