if you’re wanting to engage with the theme (this month it’s opportunity to suggest practical ideas on what kind of support for creatives local government and organisations could offer) then there’ll be postcards on tables for you to fill in and pass around. if you just want the networking or a good old chinwag, then that’s cool too. we won’t be having speakers or announcements but feel free to bring along flyers to distribute.

meet in the lower bar of the merchant, eastborough, scarborough from 8pm onwards.

i like pink. so i was delighted when creative north yorkshire asked us to work on their visual identity and to stick with the pink. these cards come in three colourways and are the first fruits of that work.

the launch of the coastival poster/brochure on the south bay beach. there had been notice it would be a swimsuit model for this photo opportunity, and rumours abounded of who might be brave enough to pose as our poster buxom beauty (who has been christened ‘gladys’ by the coastival team). but not many people had counted on a male model… a very game andrew clay, director of woodend creative workspace. pick up a brochure to see his comic counterpart.

above: evening news photographer andrew higgins (see his daily photo journal here) sorting various musicians, artists, dj’s and more.

above: andrew clay in character with coastival director, wendy clews. joining in on the snapping is tony bartholomew who is also photoblogging as coastival365. contact tony if you’d like photos of the launch or just of andrew in a bathing suit. we won’t ask why.

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.

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.

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.

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.

what’s the point of having space if you’re not going to use it? ok, so we only have a tiny little space but let’s use it anyway. so as seen as our current exhibition is all on the walls (literally – see here) we thought it would be fun to use the gallery floorspace for some poetry gigs while it was on. there’s the loose theme of the sea/surf/coast to tie in with the exhibition, but we’ve told the poets ‘do what you want’ and we can’t wait to hear what they do.

for full details download a flyer here.

some photos from last night’s launch event.

it began with a visit from william smith and other notables from scarborough’s cultural heritage…

…and finished with a brilliant performance by scarborough hip-hip school.

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visuals were largely the work of our placement student, emma, created from the map artwork. we used 4 projectors to create a wall of constantly changing images.

our big project of the last six months has been CHART Scarborough – an initiative to encourage residents and visitors to the town to explore the locale in a more inquisitive culturally aware way.

stage 1 is a printed map based around cognitive mapping theory – in short, a map that’s designed to work in harmony with your brain, not demand that you learn map-reading skills. this is launched, along with an off-shoot postcards project and a series of downloadable trails next wednesday. it’ll be interesting to see how it’s received as the project has evolved a long way since the original idea of ‘an arts trail’. we’ve done a fair bit of reading and research on this project including a number of workshops and consultations. you can follow the history on the CHART Scarborough blog: www.chartscarborough.com

this is the invitation to the launch which includes a section of the map and encourages the invitee to follow a trail that spells out C H A R T en route to the venue.
(CHART stands for Culture, Heritage and ART, by the way).