Inner city community rises after riots wins Britain's Turner Prize

A community transformed after one of Britain's worse ever riots Monday scooped Europe's most prestigious contemporary visual art award.

The Turner Prize was won by a project called Assemble which saw architects and artists working alongside residents of Granby Four Streets, an inner city community in Liverpool.

Families living in Granby, an area still scarred by the 1981 Toxteth Riots, fought plans to see their homes bulldozed.

Instead the Assemble team transformed their once-doomed homes, breathing new life and energy into the area.

The winner was announced at a ceremony at the Tramway Center in Glasgow, with the Turner jury awarding the prize to Assemble. The citation praised the work of Assemble who worked in tandem with the Granby community to realise a ground up approach to regeneration, city planning and development in opposition to corporate gentrification.

"They draw on long traditions of artistic and collective initiatives that experiment in art, design and architecture. In doing so they offer alternative models to how societies can work. The long term collaboration between Granby Four Streets and Assemble shows the importance of artistic practice being able to drive and shape urgent issues in the post-industrial era," added the citation.

Families have already moved into homes regenerated as part of the project. Although Assemble was the bookmakers' favourite to win, it had critics among some sections of the art community saying the project did not represent contemporary art in the tradition of the Turner Prize.

Granby resident Hazel Tilley disagreed with the critics.

"After the riots this area was ghettoised, but this scheme has injected enthusiasm into our area. Assemble brought artists into everybody's lives. Art should not just be for posh houses but accessible to everybody. You can see the pride this has instilled in the people of our community. It is a story of humanity, and if art isn't about humanity I don't know what is."

The Assemble entry, one of four finalists to be shortlisted for the Turner, was the first project of its kind to make the final list for the prize.

The Turner Prize, organised by the famous Tate Britain, is awarded to a British artist under 50 for an outstanding exhibition or other presentation of their work.

The prize is named in honor of one of Britain's greatest painters, J.M.W.Turner (1775-1851) partly because he had wanted to establish a prize for young artists. The prize was founded by a group of art patrons in 1982 to help buy new art for Tate Britain. The winner received a prize of 25,000 pounds (about 37,660 U.S. dollars). Endit