electric angel /design for life

iSaint

iSaint came about as a response to a call from designed and made for their items that could be given or lent to people as part of 100% design (aka london design festival) which is happening this week. the idea of the project, called ‘love me live with me’, is that people live with an item for a couple of weeks, then respond with how/if it made an impact on their lives in some way.

iSaint is a secular icon – you write your name on the front and hang or place it by the door to be reminded every time you leave the house of your potential to play a positive role in the world.

you can follow progress of our iSaints (there’s a thousand of them out there somewhere) and look at the other items that are part of the project at www.lovemelivewithme.com

post some art today

advance postcards for coastival 2011. the postcards all feature images by local creatives who will be taking part in the yorkshire coast’s biggest arts festival in february next year including rachel welford (her postcard features the glass panels in our studio/gallery windows), rachel howfield who turned a hotel room into art installation at the last coastival and this haiku by kate evans with photo by mark vesey:

we wanted the cards to be functional so that you could post some art to a friend. there are six to collect but you’ll need to visit several venues around scarborough to find them all…

for the postcard promoting ‘rollercoastival’ – the mini-festival within a festival of creative stuff for kids, we took a photo of a craft activity from last year and superimposed text taken from a ‘rollercoastival radio’ broadcast about ice cream from the first festival. the fonts were chosen based on shop fronts on scarborough’s south shore ice cream parlours and arcades.

the coastival poster/flyer with details of all the headline acts will be launched on tuesday down on the south bay beach.

crescent gardens transformed

photos (by james) of a few of the pieces in last weekend’s art trail in crescent gardens behind the three villas on the crescent. we had 250+ people visit and many more discover the trail by accident. people are asking if we’re going to organise it again – perhaps we will but we’d really like to reinvigorate the discussion about having a permanent sculpture trail or some other long term creative use of the space.

thanks to all the artists who who took part – every piece was wonderful and the feedback we received was great. and special thanks to our work placement students michelle (curating), charlotte (designing the trail guide) and emma (designing the logo, posters and flyers).

‘seeing red’ by tracy himsworth. tracy wrapped tree trunks with red material creating a very striking effect. for the next 12 months tracy will be creating site-specific works across scarborough so keep an eye out for her work on the streets, gardens and alleyways of the town.

‘landmark’ by gaby naptali. gaby’s work built up of thin layers of coloured clay had already become part of the gardens overnight as hordes of woodlice took up residence. being of organic materials, the council’s parks and gardens team gave permission for the work to be left in place, gradually returning to the earth. go take a look – it may still be there. gaby will be exhibiting in our tiny gallery in october.

‘the garden of adonis’ by charlotte middleton. poet edmund spencer’s text form the source material for this work which charlotte hand-cut from board.

‘boy fishing’ by bob tuffin. one of three pieces bob put in the trail – this boy could be seen fishing in the goldfish pond behind scarborough art gallery. bob will be exhibiting in the trees outside our gallery as part of coastival and continuing through 2011.

‘ceyx transformed’ by jack cole. inspired by the roman poet, ovid’s ‘metamorphoses’, the driftwood and tin sculpture was jacks first exhibited piece. the materials looked remarkably harmonious with the stone and water of the old fountain behind.

freestyle

a superb end to our [tiny] poetry series last night with rapper james koppert. james was honest, funny, angry, political, questioning, self-depreciating, heart-breaking. the evening finished with some freestyling in which james took us from a play on words with ‘electric angel’ to a fly on the gallery wall and out to the yorkshire coastline.

john allsopp was in the audience and took some footage – you can watch it here.

it’s been hugely enjoyable to put our gallery to use as a [tiny] performance venue and the enthusiasm of the poets and audience has been fantastic. question is, what shall we put on next…

thanks to wordsmiths felix, mark, john and james and to all who came. good, good evenings.

btw, you can catch john w clarke performing by the grotto as part of the crescent gardens art trail tomorrow. he’ll be reading for about 20 minutes at 10.30 and 12.00.

crescent gardens art trail

so we had this idea… that for one day only we would invite artists to create/exhibit something in the gardens that link yorkshire coast college westwood campus, woodend creative workspace, scarborough art gallery & crescent arts and the rotunda (and almost our studio/gallery too). we suggested the idea to a few people who like to make creative things happen in the town. and it’s happening this saturday between 10am & 4pm.

actually the idea has grown as people got excited about it and with woodend acting as a hub there’ll be an arts market, some live music (organised by create – the people behind the fab ‘art & soul picnic’ a few weeks ago) and an exhibition of historical photos of the gardens from scarborough museums trust. it’s also free entry to the gallery and tours of woodend because it’s heritage open days weekend – we’ll even have a specially written heritage trail of the gardens as part of the CHART Scarborough project. thanks are due to scarborough borough council parks and gardens department who have been enthusiastic about the idea and given permission to use the gardens.

most exciting of all though are the artworks left to be discovered amongst the trees and bushes which include trees wrapped in material, trunks smothered in clay, woods hanging from branches, textile tree frogs, life-size wire people and lots more.

it has also been opportunity for several of our work placement students to get involved and put some valuable experience on their CV’s – the initial curatorial work and organisation was done by arts degree student michelle, the logo and posters designed by emma who is now at 6th form, and the art trail guides is being designed by charlotte who is working with us this week.

tiny poetry : the edger

it’s our final ‘tiny poetry’ night in the gallery this thursday. all have been ‘sell-out’s” so far and hugely enjoyable (tickets are actually free – just call in for one). this thursday it’s an ‘unplugged’ set from rapper james koppert aka the edger. here’s the blurb:

“… a rap artist and a street poet using words and rhythms as a vehicle to express anarchic musings and unstructured passions to challenge the listener to challenge their own thoughts. a recent review described the poet as being “an angry chav crossed with a modern day Shakespeare” who rather than reads his poetry explodes his words directly (sometimes literally) into his audiences faces”

click here to hear james in action: www.myspace.com/theedgerhiphop

8.30pm. drinks on the house.

beverley literature festival 2010

brochure design featuring the children’s as well as ‘grown ups’ festival – the brochure flips over to use two covers according to the desired audience.

it’s a change of style from the previous couple of years which had a very graphic/print look. taking on board feedback from attendees and a more targeted approach to the children’s literature festival we’ve continued the typographic style but a change of format and used a mix of muted locational and lifestyle photography.

IEBE awards 2010

we’ve been shortlisted in the 2010 IEBE business awards. the institute for education business excellence (IEBE) is a professional body, dedicated to promoting the highest possible standards in education business partnership organisations (EBPOs) – we’re delighted that NYBEP chose to nominate us and to have been shortlisted. our nomination was around our engagement with education through hosting work experience placements, with the schools creative and media diploma and through creative coast. we’re hoping we can get down to the design museum in london for the awards ceremony on 1st october.