electric angel /design for life

live, last night, sold out!

thursday evening, as a dreary, misting of dank weather engulfs the town, a small gathering of surfers, designers, poets and artists got together for the second of our ‘tiny poetry’ gigs at the electric angel gallery – tonight was the turn of landscape poet mark dickinson.

mark’s work is intrinsically linked with his surroundings, his time spent in the natural environment, be it fishing or surfing. he says more important to his poetry than these activities is walking. his great knowledge of natural environments, geology, history and words create orchestral poems that build and ebb and flow as if a part of the landscape themselves. mark read from a decades worth of work ending with the epic trods which follow.

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our next poet, john clarke, attended (who you can see next thursday, 26th august), along with local filmmaker ollie banks, who works with mark on many surfing related projects, and james koppert, another of our poets who’ll be performing on thursday 9th september.

two weeks in to our tiny poetry gigs and they seem to be going down very well indeed.

culture and wellbeing

we’re pleased to announce the launch of a new website: www.cultureandwellbeing.org.uk

this new site, commissioned by the uk’s major arts and health organisations has positioned itself as the definitive uk arts and health website with case studies, resources and a directory of practitioners. which reminds me, we must add ourselves due to work such as the hull and york medical school artwork and our current lifts project with rachel welford in york hospital.

the culture and wellbeing website is a collaboration with ross kendall who built all the functionality. tree reflections courtesy of a sunny day.

catch up

if you don’t follow us on twitter [links to the right of this article] there could be some news you’ve missed out on. so here’s a quick round up before we get back to showing you what we’ve been working on…

it’s our first ‘tiny poetry‘ night this evening. one ticket left at the time of writing.

adrian has been accepted on the ‘leadership unleashed‘ cultural leadership programme and can be spotted in london, manchester, leeds and elsewhere over the next six months being all dynamic, like. or skulking in corner depending on quality of rail travel and quantity of fizzy drinks consumed.

he’s also psyching up for a sideline doing more public speaking.

james has a new surfboard and is very pleased with it. less so with the lack of waves right now.

and he’s been doing a lot more photography.

creative coast received funding to deliver a civic pride public art scheme teaming local residents with poets, designers and artists to transform empty shops in the town (more on that one soon).

CHART Scarborough maps are out and about the place and getting some great feedback. you can pick them up from the library, art gallery, ymca theatre, woodend creative workspace and from the sjt as soon as we’ve assembled another stand, plus from all the independent galleries.

we finished designing those school uniforms we tweeted about – will blog that soon.

we had this idea for an art trail in crescent gardens, floated it around, people liked it, and it’s happening! more on that soon too. if you’re a local artist and haven’t heard about it – get in touch NOW! deadline is tomorrow.

we’re currently working with scarborough museums trust, the ferens gallery in hull, beverley literature festival, scarborough borough council, coastival and york nhs.

oh, and there’s other stuff such as…
james and jenny are getting married in november.
adrian and rebecca are expecting a baby in november.
gonna be a busy month, that one.

[photo by james - from the CHART Scarborough project]

york press business awards

we’re delighted to have been selected as finalists in the york press business awards 2010 in the ‘best employer and education link’ category.

the other two finalists are harrogate & district nhs foundation trust and firmenich uk ltd of thirsk. we’re in fairly hefty company alongside a business with 53 employees and an organisation with 2300, but if nothing else i hope our nomination shows that small businesses can engage with education too and that it’s essential for the creative industries (where just about everyone is a small business) that they do.

you can read the york press article on us here. the award ceremony when the winner will be announced is on november 18th at york racecourse.