electric angel /design for life

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.

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.

digital scarborough talk

due to vaughn oliver having to pull out of digital scarborough today due to family illness, i’ve been asked if i could fill in. so with a head full of cognitive mapping due to CHART Scarborough, i’ll be delivering a talk on the theory behind the project and our research and progress so far. i’ll also have the very latest version of the map which is still in progress. 4.30pm at westwood school of arts (yorkshire coast college, next to tesco).

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.

sssshhhhhh….

uh oh, looks like there’s about to be some menacing on our blog. dennis is coming to town for scarborough literature festival. we’ll blog our brochure, poster [excerpt above], flyers and bookmark designs next week inbetween laying paving stones.

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

how on earth did scarborough win
the european enterprise award?

if you’ve been asking yourself this, then get yourself down to the international business forum event at the spa today or tomorrow and pick up a copy of this brochure.

another award for scarborough – the international association of public participation project of the year – prompted this new piece of literature. alas we didn’t get to go to san diego for the ceremony, instead we had to turn a brochure around, from concept to delivery in two days. ok, so that was delivery to london and taken from there to san diego, but we think that’s pretty speedy nonetheless. the brochure uses text and a visual timeline to tell the story of scarboroughs’ renaissance over the last 7 years. it’s also pretty candid about the situation that scarborough faced and how the council was basically told to work in partnership or not get any more money.

although you probably won’t hear as much about this award, to my mind it’s probably the most important as it recognises that scarborough’s recent achievements have come through people working together with shared vision.