‘A Taste of Happiness’: Sensory Memory and Community Ice Cream E’cone’omics

The Taste of Happiness illuminated ice cream cart was exhibited at Show Town and the Grundy Art Gallery for Blackpools Lightpool festival. Its manifestation symbolized both what make residents of Grange Park individually happy and through a co-design process, it represents the possibility of a collective ‘Right to Happiness’ that they want to share.

Samantha began her 2 year residency by asking ‘What Makes you Happy?’, the happiness, that is an enduring state of mind consisting not only of feelings of joy, contentment but also a sense that one is meaningful and valued. Through her residency Samantha creatively questioned their ‘Right to Happiness with grange Park residents, testing out the idea of how a simple thing like the making and tasting of ice cream can be a catalyst to explore memory, identity, place and what happiness is to them and their community.

Ecaterina was invited to collaborate with residents and Samantha, to look at how the @thegrange’s ice cream cart could become an emblem of the group’s creative ideas. Playfully use neon light they co-created something iconic that represented them as individuals and Grange Park Estate during the Light Pool Festival 2024. Together the group created three-dimensional neon symbols of what makes them happy and positioned them on a beautifully functional ice-cream cart.

Tate of Happiness was commissioned by Left Coast through a collaboration with Groundworks and @The Grange.

Photographs by Left Coast, the grange resident team, Samantha Jones and photographer Richard…