Rescued inner-city community short-listed for Turner Prize

A rundown inner-city community that refused to die was Tuesday nominated for what has been described as Europe's most prestigious contemporary visual art award, the Turner Prize.

A collective of 18 young designers and architecture students helped breathe new life into a ramshackle area of terraced houses in Toxteth, Liverpool.

The community made world-wide news in 1981 when one of Britain's worst post-war disturbances, the Toxteth Riots, hit the headlines.

Although many of the Victorian and Dickensian streets were bulldozed, a community in the Granby district of Toxteth decided to fight for the renaissance of their closely-knit community.

The entry, called Assemble, is one of four short listed by Tate Modern for the 2015 Turner Prize, established in 1984 to reward a British artist aged under 50.

Assemble was nominated for projects including the ongoing collaboration with local residents and others in the Granby Four Streets area of Liverpool. Granby residents fought plans for demolition by recruiting Assemble to help regenerate the spaces in their area "from the ground up" to make the estate "a place people actually want to live in."

The London-based collective work across the fields of art, design and architecture to create projects in tandem with the communities who use and inhabit them.

"Their architectural spaces and environments promote direct action and embrace a DIY sensibility," said a spokesman for Tate Modern.

The winner will be announced in Glasgow on Dec. 7 when Tate Modern takes its Turner Prize for the first time to the Scottish city.

The winner receives 40,000 U.S. dollars as well as the coveted Turner Prize, regarded as priceless in the world of contemporary art.

The other nominees include London artist Bonnie Camplin and German-born Nicole Wermers, nominated for her piece on "consumer culture", Infrastrucktur, a display of fur coats draped over classic dining chairs.

Janice Kerbel has been nominated for her operatic work DOUG, commissioned by The Common Guild at Mitchell Library, Glasgow.

An exhibition of the shortlisted artists' work runs from October 2015 to January next year at Tramway, Glasgow.