hroughout the 1980’s, Yvonne Malik’s front door at 145 Walker Street in Middleton, Greater Manchester was a focal point for the local community, eventually making its way into the Rochdale’s own public art collection as item of historical significance.

Now on display, 30 years after it’s removal from Malik’s home, in an exhibition at Touchstones Rochdale, it tells a story of lost communities, neighbourly spirit and the creative gift. What makes Rochdale’s most famous front door so special?

Having been signed by almost 300 local children, including dedications to pets, over the course of a decade, exhibition organisers are telling the front door’s story as part of the exhibition, What’s Changed? and calling out for signatories to come forward with their memories.

A trained designer – having spent time globally establishing design centres at the request of 20th century leader in British design, Sir Gordon Russell – Mrs Malik, now 84-years old and of Wray, Lancashire, arrived in her modest home in 1980 and almost immediately made her mark. Finding children simply ‘hanging around’ outside her home, she began teaching them the basics of art, turning her front room into a makeshift classroom for lessons completely free-of-charge.

As reported in the Manchester Evening News on Mon 1 August 1988, her ‘grotty’ front door, in lieu of being replaced at cost, was renovated by Mrs Malik in the most unusual of ways. Taking a paint brush to it by herself, her creative spin on simple household renovations caught the neighbourhood’s children’s imaginations. Pretty soon, it became a canvas on which they all wanted to make a mark on themselves.

Speaking to the Middleton Guardian in 1989, she said: “It started quite by accident. While I was painting the door, I heard my neighbour’s young daughter, Ruth Clarke, asking her mother if I was going to paint any cats on it. I didn’t see any reason not to, so I painted three small cats at the bottom.”

In 2021, Mrs Malik recalls her nearest neighbours being ‘shocked’, but soon the children that she welcomed for art lessons were given a part of the door and their names drawn on. What’s more, space was given over to their pets and the names of snails, a pony, stick insects and birds were written in alongside. Up until leaving Walker Street in 1992, new requests were coming to her to add new pet’s names to the door. Mrs Malik took the door with her to her new Lancashire home, before offering it to Rochdale Art Gallery in 1994.

Now, four decades after the first name went onto the door, Touchstones Rochdale are hoping that those who signed the door – and on behalf of their pets – will come forward to claim a name as theirs and offer their memories.

Mark Doyle, Joint Head of Culture at Touchstones Rochdale, says: “That a front door can symbolise the shared history of a community and the lives of almost 300 individuals is remarkable and tells us something of the Middleton and Greater Manchester communities of only a few decades ago. A time of open front doors, of conversation and community spirit that we might think ended a long time before. We’d love to hear from anyone who Mrs Malik taught during the 1980s and especially anyone who knows or thinks their name might be written on the door.!”

Anyone with memories of Mrs Malik’s art lessons and the front door of 145 Walker Street can email touchstones@link4life.org or call 01706 924928.

What’s Changed? is one of three exhibitions opening during May after museums and galleries were given the green light to open after the latest Covid lockdown. What’s Changed? includes people in the Rochdale area’s recollections and responses to the pandemic, using their responses as a provocation to not only reflect on people’s shared experience and ways of coping with repeated lockdowns, but also how recent events and experiences are reflected in Rochdale’s art and social history collections.

All of the Spring 2021 exhibitions at Touchstones Rochdale are as follows:

Harmony, Contrast & Discord – Tue 18 May – Sat 3 July 2021
Covering two galleries, the starting point for Harmony, Contrast and Discord is the fact that there were over 150 art schools in the United Kingdom in the mid-1960s, many of them in industrial towns and cities where arts education provision is now arguably eroded. Artists John Beck and Matthew Cornford have spent almost 10 years photographing the sites of these former art schools as they are today, including the car park in Rochdale that was the site of the, never replaced, Rochdale College of Art. Featuring Beck and Cornford’s photography, artwork and objects from the Borough’s collections, the art and stories of alumni and tutors and a ‘live’ art school, this exhibition explores the value placed on education in the arts, the legacy of the art schools and what relation art should have to broader society now and in the future.

What’s Changed? – Tue 18 May 2021 – Sat 1 Jan 2022
Things changed quickly for everybody as the scale of the Covid-19 crisis became apparent in March 2020. For many it may have forced a re-evaluation, of the things people value the most, the pace at which they live their lives and what they do with their time. Following a call-out for ideas from the Rochdale community, What’s Changed? provides an early snapshot of what, if anything, a global pandemic has altered in people’s attitudes, aspirations and ambitions. Mixing first-hand reflections, artwork, objects and ephemera from across the Borough’s nationally-significant social history collections, the exhibition pursues prescient themes including family and friends, health and wellbeing and nature.

We can do it. War’s Other Voices – Tue 18 May – Sat 18 Sep 2021
In partnership with the IWM, and originally conceived to coincide with the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Britain, important loans from IWM and Manchester Art Gallery as well as works from Rochdale’s own collection, are included in an evocative exhibition focusing on the role of women and art galleries during the Second World War. Artwork by women artists including Elsie Hewland and Eileen Agar allow viewers to contemplate wide-ranging views and experiences from within the conflict, as well as detailing the inequality rife in the art world at the time, with talented women artists making up only a small number of works acquired in a government-led, wartime collecting scheme. Artefacts including a wedding suit in RAF blue and public information posters, record the undeniable impact of the female-led war effort. Rochdale Art Gallery itself played an influential role and, through evidence of popular exhibitions of the day and its adaptation to become an air raid shelter and administration centre, a timely story of how art galleries are able to step up at a time of national crisis is told.

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