electric angel /design for life

back to bradford

i’ll be back in bradford this evening with andrew clay of woodend, at bmedia‘s third thursday event. it’s a bit of prodigal son moment for us both having grown up in the area and now returning to tell heady tales of the high life in north yorkshire, or more accurately of the creative sector on the coast and scarborough’s national and european enterprise award wins (andrew and i both presented to the judges). i’ll be wearing my creative coast cap and we hope that this event, a reciprocal visit after steve ding visited us from bmedia before christmas, might enable us to build some strong links between creatives on the coast and in west yorkshire.

mentioning bradford also gives me opportunity to post a pic of a community artwork project electric angel did several years back now – we recently obtained some better quality photos of the resulting metal gates in the east bowling community in bradford but hadn’t had chance to show them.

schools creative & media diploma

last night was the first public exhibition of work by the students on the schools creative and media higher diploma in the north yorks coast area and mighty impressive it was too. we’ve been in touch with the diploma since a creative coast event in 2008 which introduced the idea to the local creative sector. i’ve since been invited to be an ‘business champion’ which involves offering a working world perspective to the diploma and helping connect local creatives with the course so students meet practitioners and get a glimpse of what a career in the creative industries might be like. rachel and i spent an hour with them at the start of the year showing them our work on the railway art project.

the diploma was described in a nutshell on the exhibition guide as…

“…designed to teach young people how to work creatively; they work in groups and alone on a series of activities that will give them a good overview of the different things you can do in the creative industries. the diploma is not one subject; the students combine work in six of the following disciplines across the two years: photography, interactive media, film, television, music, drama, graphic design, 2D art, 2D art, animation, creative writing, radio and audio…”

i wish we’d had this opportunity when i was at school. last nights work was response to a brief to record the ‘distinctive atmosphere of scarborough sea front’. these students are year 10 (14-15 year olds) and the quality of work was excellent. here are some that particularly caught my eye.

the image at the top is of megan jepson’s ‘scarborough/castle’ in which photos of the seafront are pasted on a foamboard model of scarborough castle. megan did a work work placement with us a few weeks ago so we had an idea of what her piece would be although i’m told the final construction happened rather close to the exhibition opening – we’ve all been there. it really exceeded my expectations – the scale (which doesn’t really come across on my photo) and use of colour were spot on.

the use of text in this oil painting by shannon barker reminded me of ‘we two boys together clinging’ by david hockney. creatively integrating text with drawings and paintings was a theme in several pieces.

and i was really taken with scott asquith’s ‘rolling’ in which a ball rolled and bounced the length of the sea front. it was inventive, nicely edited and great fun. a brilliant piece of work.

it’s a little unfair to single just a few out as all the students deserve to be proud of their work. congratulations too to spencer, their tutor. the only blight of the evening was that we didn’t get a better turn-out from local creatives who had been invited to come take a look and offer support to the coast’s next generation of creatives. obviously i’ve got my work cut out in this role.

what is a creative?

synchronicity – you gotta love it. whilst on a short break in liverpool this last week rebecca and i visited the tate to see the seagram murals but also took a look at this is sculpture as seen it was on having no idea what would be exhibited.

you never leave work behind, even on holiday and i’ve had wayne hemmingway‘s philosophy on designers being thinkers, not just do-ers in my head since he spoke at the opening of woodend. i imagine it’s his off-the-shelf speech but it struck a chord because electric angel is becoming more multidisciplinary with each passing year and a tightly defined perception of what a designer does or what medium he/she works in is increasingly irrelevant. you’re known by what you do, not by how you describe yourself. if you can think creatively about a problem, it doesn’t really matter if the end result is to be drawn, printed or built – you can learn a new practical skill or even better, utilise another’s expertise to help realise an idea, but the ability to design is nurtured over time and through experience.

wayne had curated one of the rooms in the sculpture exhibition (hence the synchronicity), complete with disco-funk soundtrack and colour-changing dance floor. has anyone told him he’s a designer and should stick to boots? not for years. he’d done a good job at the tate and brought his trademark man-of-the-people approach to the sometimes stuffy and clichéd world of art galleries.

so wayne’s philosophy was in my head as i wandered round and had a quick boogie, not least as i knew i’d be returning to a studio where the job list includes designing maps, concrete paving and school uniforms.

and posters and leaflets of course.

[image: sketches for possible uniform styles at graham & raincliffe schools]

updates-a-go-go

yep, it’s update night at the first creative coast of 2010 with news and opportunities from the north yorkshire creative network and on local projects. essential if you want to know what’s going on and how you might get developed or commissioned (courtesy of a new scheme offered by the north yorks network). rick of chrysalis arts and wendy of create will be spilling the beans. it’ll be nice to be back at the merchant too. 5.30pm. link to creative coast facebook group.

digital scarborough 2010

cc returns

we needed to quickly knock up some flyers for creative coast which kicks off again next week after a bit of a break and couldn’t resist this pun.

ironically all the effort into enterprising britain [2009 brochure here featuring scarborough] combined with a very busy 6 months for us and create meant that some of the things that won us the award have slipped – hence the almost absence of creative coast this year. but despite being quiet we have been busy behind the scenes making links and securing a little funding that will enable us to hook up with networks across yorkshire, sharing good practice and looking for opportunities.

the first of these is an evening with steve ding of bmedi@ in november, we’ll be sending a posse over to bradford in 2010 and hopefully get some kind of networking event sorted too. we have hook-ups with creative, IT & digital york for 2010 in the planning stages as well as having our sights on leeds and hull too. looks busy – we’re definitely spurred on by the two enterprise awards and looking forward to sharing our story. our ‘roadshow’ approach is also something of a pilot scheme that might be rolled out to other sectors with creative coast training organisations and businesses in scarborough how to get out there and share their story.

we’re also continuing what we hope are useful training/taster events, the first being ‘twitter night’ next thursday plus we’ll be bringing the creative sector on board with the CHART Scarborough project via a fun mobile phone treasure hunt in the dark. if you haven’t got hold of a flyer you can click on the second image above to view it large enough to read the text. looking forward to seeing folks on thursday.

from number one to number ten

it’s been one of those weird weeks with a mix of good news and high pressure in equal measures. so when rebecca took a phonecall mid-meeting and announced there was someone on the other end asking if i was planning on meeting gordon brown and peter mandelson for drinks on monday evening, i assumed it was a wind-up.

but it wasn’t. and so myself and steve bromham of scarborough IT-consultancy save9 will be turning up at no.10 downing street this monday. apparently the evening is to congratulate businesses succeeding despite the recession although our invitation is, of course, due to scarborough’s renaissance partnership winning the grand jury prize for britain in the european enterprise awards.

the situation became even more bizarre when i received another phone call late today saying that there were a few people the prime minister would like to talk and be photographed with specifically and could i email over a quick biography and photo so they’d be able to pick me out when i arrived. i am seriously wondering if they’ve got the right person…

still, it’s an honour nonetheless, not least to represent scarborough, the town that has been so good to me. i shall be encouraging the PM and secretary for business, innovation and skills to pay us a visit sometime. i’m thinking that surely it’s good for a government during a recession to be visiting the most enterprising place in europe… a coastal town in the uk? the invitation to downing street is also a good excuse for me and the family to make a short break of it and ‘do the sights’. sorry, no sense of urban cool here – we want to see soldiers in shiny helmets strutting about on horses in front of the queen’s house thank you.

hastily-written media release: media-release-ea-and-save9-at-no-10-v19-06-09

how to get your foot in the door

i left art college bang in the middle of a recession so i sympathise with those designers looking for their first job right now. my best advice in lieu of a job is to get as much experience as you can whilst design studios could probably use an extra [free] hand to see them through a rough patch. make a good impression and you’ll be well placed for when things brighten up – plus there could well be some freelance work that follows on from an initial couple of weeks you give for free.

so here’s how to stand out from the crowd and get those coveted placements:

Continue reading…

who would work in an office like this?

we would. we do. our studio-cum-gallery has been featured in the latest update of the culture vulture e-magazine/blog in their ‘who would work in an office like this?‘ section including an short interview about the gallery and scarborough.

i’ve also been invited to be a blogger on their site supplying tasty cultural nuggets from the east coast so if you follow me on twitter you’ll be seeing a lot more mention of that. in the meantime we recommend you pay the culture vulture a visit, sign up for their e-newsletter and keep an eye out for some cool competitions and freebies.

[photo by david chalmers. showing light box and window pieces by rachel welford]

open for business …and art

a freak blizzard brought scarborough to a halt for our gallery opening, but lots of friends still braved the snow to look at rachel’s work and glass or two of much-needed schnapps. we had a nice gentle stream of visitors on friday – the first day of coastival – as the snow rapidly vanished and rachel and i were interviewed on bbc radio york.

the exhibition runs to 15 may and is open whenever we’re in. do pop in if you’re passing.

rachel has created two glass & mirror window panels as part of her exhibition which are specific to the location. they’re based on the view from inside the gallery and reflections in the windows from outside and can be viewed from both inside and outside the gallery. our gallery overlooks scarborough’s south bay and spa footbridge and they’re the images you can see in the design.

also in the exhibition are two lightboxes and two wall pieces.

we wondered if this was the very definition of postmodernism – me taking a photograph of rachel taking a photograph of a piece of work made from photographs that rachel had taken including a reflection of rachel taking a photograph of the reflection.