EVENT  ⁄  ARTS & CULTURE

#Instructions2LiveBy

An interactive Preston Street Union event invites participants to seek out wise words and helpful hints in fact and fiction.

Libraries unlimited 

Preston Street Union is holding an interactive event at Exeter Library on Saturday 28 January. Taking how-to guides and self-help manuals as inspiration, #Instructions2LiveBy will discover wise words and helpful hints in the library collection.

Participants will be guided through the library or can pick up an instruction card and seek out their own way through fact and fiction from cookery to children’s books.

Preston Street Union Instructions To Live By online #InstructionsToLiveBy online

The library event is part of an ongoing project combining random phrases from books and magazines to create new texts which began during the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020.

Derived texts were shared online and in the windows of people’s homes.

Hand-written phrases on riso-printed posters have since been displayed at bill-posting sites around the city and have featured in the Exeter Phoenix Platform series, which offers South West artists opportunities to test ideas and new work and develop their practice.

The project has also been featured on Social ARTery, an artist-led community platform.

Preston Street Union Instructions To Live By bill-posting #InstructionsToLiveBy bill-posting

Preston Street Union is an Exeter-based affiliation of artists who make collaborative work.

Formed in 2015, Preston Street Union contributed to Art Week Exeter (now Art Work Exeter) in 2017 and 2018 and performed Serge/Surge, a Royal Albert Memorial Museum commission, the following year.

Anyone may come and go, the second stage of the trade- and migration-themed commission, took place in February 2020.

#InstructionsToLiveBy is from 10.30am-12.30pm on Saturday 28 January at Exeter Library.

The event is drop-in: booking is not required.

To find out more visit the Preston Street Union website.

 is membership co-ordinator and community & culture editor of Exeter Observer and a director of its publisher Exeter Observer Limited.

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