electric angel /design for life

and then there were four

bob tuffin’s three acrobat sculptures which we’re currently exhibiting outside our studio/gallery have been joined by an interloper. hanging from the fourth arch of the spa footbridge, this chirpy fellow, apparently made from plastic milk containers appeared overnight. we rather like him.

RSVP

we spent today working in the studio with pupils from scalby school as part of scarborough museums trust’s ‘RSVP’ day.

pupils from 4 local schools started the day at scarborough art gallery with a quick introduction to ‘bathers in sunlight’, a painting by zdzislaw ruszkowski. they then split into groups to work with a creative of their choice to produce work in response. rather than get bogged down with computers, we took a hands-on approach and created a design in our gallery windows hand-cut from vinyl. well done to john, adam, michael, nathan, james and luke who had no idea what they’d be doing until they arrived and took in their stride a breakneck journey from fine art via design processes to cutting and applying vinyl all within a tight timescale.

we’re hoping to be having a similarly enjoyable time working st. martin’s school pupils next week, responding to bob tuffin’s wire sculptures that we’re currently exhibiting in the trees outside our studio.

the slow design movement starts here

sometimes it isn’t going to get done next day, at-the-printers-by-lunchtime, just-use-helvetica-and-it-will-look-cool, get-it-out-the-door-and-send-the-invoice.

but it is going to contain a lot of love.

take a slice of scarborough

things may have seemed a little quiet lately from creative coast – the north yorks coast creatives network we help run, but actually we’ve been busy running two projects engaging with the local populace.

one is helping NYBEP with roll out of a primary school enterprise challenge, more of which later. but here’s the first fruits of our main project – ‘we love scarborough because…’ – in which small teams of creatives have been teamed with local residents to transform the windows of empty shops in the town.

here are the results of myself and writer lizi patch working with young people from schools based on the north yorkshire coast who are studying on the schools creative and media diploma.

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as the premises we were transforming were previously a cafe, we took conversations over drinks as a starting point blending in memories of growing up in the area and snippets of overhead conversations. lizi teased these out in a creative session that involved scratch-performance and the discipline of telling a story via text messaging.

we returned the following week with some initial design and illustration ideas based on this imagery into which the young people designed their text, concrete poetry style. what you see on these pics is largely their work, just typeset in a cohesive style.

if you’re in town, you can see the windows on northway, just past the stephen joseph theatre. thanks to all the talented young people (who are credited on the windows) and to course leader spencer williams for a very enjoyable and productive experience. also to colin ellis estate agents and GBR phoenix beard property services for their enthusiasm and permission for the project. 2 more shops to follow by other creatives…

an A-Z of hockney

a-z trail around east park in hull to accompany david hockney’s ‘bigger trees near warter’ currently showing at the ferens gallery. the trail takes you on a journey around the park with creative tasks all relating to the giant hockney painting and comes as part of the ‘hockney backpacks’ containing drawing materials and other good stuff that can be borrowed at the park – an idea conceived by curator lara goodband. there is also an additional mini-trail of banners on trees around the park.