We visited the Société Jersiaise, located at the Jersey Museum, to get information on how to access archive material online and through the archives.

Hautlieu students have been visiting the archives for many years for project material, and the school has a firm relationship with the Société. We were able to view some of the material on the history of Elizabeth Castle, including the original plans to build it.

We also visited Capital House to see an exhibition called No Place Like Home, which was a collection of work from multiple artists from both Jersey and the rest of the world on what they viewed as ‘Home’.

A floating sculpture of the Earth was situated in the Queen’s Valley Reservoir by artist Luke Jerram between 14th and 24th of September and this was a part of the exhibition.

The piece was intended to make the viewer feel the same sense of awe that astronauts feel when they view the Earth from space. A soundscape is played at the same time, drawing us to confront the issue of climate change and its effect on our planet.

One artist’s work, Harriet Mena Hill’s Aylesbury Estate fragments, was rather interesting to me. It was made up of fragments of debris from the Aylesbury Estate in South East London, which is being demolished as part of a renovation program. She wanted to focus on the impact of gentrification on communities, and decided to do this with the act of preservation of rendering scenes of her local architecture onto the fragments of concrete.

I felt that this trip was helpful as it helped me to understand how the archives work and how they can be used to add further depth to my projects. I also felt that the exhibition was rather interesting, and as it focuses on the idea of home and its importance to each individual, I think it is pretty relevant to our module on nostalgia.