you can never really return home, 2025

Elliott Flanagan has been working in Burnley in the north of England, having come back for the first time as an artist to have an exhibition in his hometown. During this time he writes, making sketches and notes reflecting his memories of the place he knew and the version he encounters today. During workshops with a local woman’s group in the Stoops Estate area, they meet regularly at West End Community Centre to talk about their connections to the town and share stories together. These narratives are evoked in ‘You can never really return home.’

Taking as his starting point the 19th century northern culture of broadsides, poetry, verse, prose, songs and ballads, Flanagan brings this up to date with contemporary meditations of his own. ‘”So much about ones home is from growing up,” he writes, “about a childhood and youth we can never return to. My hometown for me is a place of memory and longing.”