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.

tiny poetry

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.

more CHART

a couple more pics of the CHART Scarborough map (that’s Culture, Heritage and ART Scarborough) to show the size. it folds down to normal DL leaflet/envelope size but with the photographic side we hoped to create something that was interesting/attractive enough to be a poster too. which way up you display it is up to you – it’s designed so there is no top, bottom, left or right (although personally i’d snip off the cover before framing).

CHART Scarborough map

here’s the job that’s been consuming much of our thought and time over the last 6 months. it’s been a big project, not just in terms of time but also the thinking and research that has gone into its production.

it’s a free map intended to encourage visitors and residents explore the town from a cultural perspective. for this to work, we researched cognitive mapping theory – the idea that you can draw maps that aid people to build better mental pictures of places and thus navigate them in a more intelligent way. this works if your map can show in an instantly recognisable way, the key places and spaces that the brain uses to remember and form journeys.

as well as using workshops with residents to identify how people currently move around the town, we’ve deliberately ‘loaded’ our map with cultural landmarks to try and encourage use of those places as an aid to navigation, thus subtly changing patterns of movement in the town by those who use the map. that’s the idea anyhow – as far as we know this hasn’t been tried before. we’ve also added a few theories of our own, particularly about the use of colour in communicating sense of place.

the reverse side further encourages exploration by using a ‘map’ of photographic images (all taken in-house) that we hope will prompt exploration of a town that often suffers from predictable patterns of movement. poems by two local poets – john w clarke and kate evans – add some context and entice further.

this is stage one of the project. stage two will be an intreractive online version. for now, accompanying trails can be downloaded from the website – www.chartscarborough.com – and more are being added every week. if you would like to know more about the theory, workshops and interventions as part of this project you can also read the project’s blog there. the map itself can be picked up at venues across scarborough (or just get in touch if you’d like us to post you one).

chart scarborough launch

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.

an invitation to wander

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).

openings and open studios

this morning we’re sending out invitations to the opening of kathryn welford’s exhibition ‘view from the back: journal of a surf trip’. they feature one of kathryn’s watercolours on the front which are a fascinating mix of traditional style and documentary subject matter – i suspect several of these invites will end up framed and on people’s walls. anyway, if you’d like to join us for a drink and to meet kathryn on the 25th june, please do come along. likewise, drop us an email to be added to our mailing list for exhibition openings and other creative stuff.

we’re also sending them out in time for people to call in and watch kathryn work as part of north yorkshire open studios which begins this weekend when she’ll be painting on the gallery walls. there are lots of opportunities to visit local artists as part of open studios. we’d like to give a shout out to our regular collaborator and first ever exhibitor in our tiny gallery, rachel. we’ll be paying her a visit because despite working together regularly i’ve never been to her studio!

a shout also to local photographer graham who exhibited with us last year and now has his own tiny gallery down at the harbour, to andrew also down in the bait sheds for whom we designed exhibition panels when he was exhibiting at scarborough art gallery (and does beautiful work), and to gaby who exhibited some wonderful new ceramic work in the east coast open.

postcard from a surf trip

it’s always nice to receive a postcard, but this one has a specific purpose – it’s part of the lead up to the exhibition ‘view from the back – journal of a surf trip’ by kathryn welford. this will be the first exhibition when our tiny gallery re-opens for north yorkshire open studios on june 11/12/13 and 19/20. kathryn will be using our studio walls as an installation to support paintings in the gallery and you can come see the work in progress as part of the open studios. we’ll have a little opening ‘do’ and return to our daily working-week gallery opening when the exhibition is complete.

but back to the postcard – kathryn is asking people to respond to photographs taken on a 6 month trip across spain, portugal, france and morocco with stories, poems or just a simple phrase or single word. these will be included in the exhibition. she’s scattering postcards to encourage this (designed by us) and this is the first that’s been returned. you can also respond via the exhibition’s blog: http://www.viewfromtheback.info

so get writing and then call in for open studios to see your text being used.

we have intervened

the intention of CHART Scarborough interventions was to both raise awareness of the project and to get some input from the wider community. this was done by two competitions: one prompted by signs placed on prominent buildings around the town [that's a window in the art gallery above and stephen joseph theatre below - we also did woodend creative workspace, customer 1st/town hall, renaissance office and the library] and via the local newspaper, the scarborough evening news, who ran a week-long competition and intend to print a version of the map in the newspaper when it’s complete.

we also stencilled messages in the town centre which we hope will prompt a few people to think about place in a new way – part of CHART Scarborough’s intention to encourage locals as well as visitors to navigate around the town to a different set of criteria. we’ve got some [albeit simple] philosophy on how a map can change perception of place and thus the person courtesy of walter benjamin, guy debord et al. we’ll treat you to that little nugget another day…

how did you get here?

chalk stencil in Scarborough town centre. more on the the CHART Scarborough interventions soon.