You Are the Journey

‘You Are the Journey’ began as a collaborative project with the artist R.A.Webb that proposed the use of the Hythe Ferry ten-journey ticket as a medium for interactive public art. The project was supported by the Art Plus awards scheme for art in public places set up jointly by Arts Council England, South East and the South East England Development Agency (SEEDA). ‘You Are the Journey’ generated a stream of commuters’ texts that helped suggest a series of contemporary social portraits of their community. After we posed questions on the front of the Hythe ferry tickets, commuters responded with hand-written comments on the front of their ticket. On subsequent batches of tickets, the commuters’ responses were then positioned in the spaces where the punched holes are made. Removal of a small part of the ticket each journey gave the written phrases an element of temporality. Once the ten journeys had been undertaken a new ticket was purchased. This cycle was an on-going process, combining print and writing onto the surface of the transport ticket: a social engagement that literally interacted on the ticket’s front. Since You Are the Journey’s completion the directors of the ferry company have continued to use our template on the fronts of the tickets, reflecting the impact of art in public places as an influential activity. A text-based outcome called ‘Weaving technologies in the construction of a ferry ticket’ contributed to the fourth edition of Radar (Review of Art, Design and Architecture Research) published by University of Huddersfield Press (2014, pp.36-37).