electric angel /design for life

culture and wellbeing

we’re pleased to announce the launch of a new website: www.cultureandwellbeing.org.uk

this new site, commissioned by the uk’s major arts and health organisations has positioned itself as the definitive uk arts and health website with case studies, resources and a directory of practitioners. which reminds me, we must add ourselves due to work such as the hull and york medical school artwork and our current lifts project with rachel welford in york hospital.

the culture and wellbeing website is a collaboration with ross kendall who built all the functionality. tree reflections courtesy of a sunny day.

pyschogeography, postcards and place

to accompany the production of the CHART Scarborough map and to follow the success of the workshops with local residents which amongst other things, sought to identify the essence of scarborough, a postcard project was launched. this teamed local residents – a mix of teenagers and older adults – with a poet and photographer to talk about and photograph the places that had resonance for them.

photographer tony bartholomew took the final photos used on the postcards and john w clarke shaped the verbal and written material into prose and scratch-poems for the rear of the cards relating to that place. some poignant, some playful, the wordplay also extends to the minutiae of text often seen on postcards such as the publisher – we designed logos for some. each is addressed as if travelling to the place but using ‘mind map’ directions, not a conventional address. we designed each card in a slightly different style based on postcards we randomly found, the ‘postmark’ and ‘stamp’ linking them into a set and to the map.

the cards are scattered around public buildings and cultural venues in Scarborough, there are 12 to collect if you fancy hunting them down. the 12th will give you the CHART Scarborough map references of the places the photos were taken so you can visit for yourself.

.

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.

.

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.

no boundaries

we have some bad habits at electric angel. we often get so wrapped up in a project that it crosses that boundary between business and pleasure. actually, pretty much everything we do involves not knowing where that line is – that’s just what happens when you’re doing something you love for a job. and so a project that begins in the studio will quite often feature in our leisure time too. this seems to gain us respect from creatives in other disciplines and causes accountants to have fits. (but what do accountants know – if they get creative it usually ends up in time at her majesty’s pleasure.)

anyway, such it is with CHART Scarborough. we’re having to dissuade james from spending every spare hour mapping the rest of the town in microscopic detail (wait until someone pays us to do it!) and i’m on some kind of pyschogeographic tip – one of those occurrences where you’ve been doing something for a while and not realised that it had a proper name.

so here’s some links for you that i’ve come across in my internet and real world wanderings:

phantom city
the blurb: ‘phantom city uses personal digital devices to transform the city into a living museum’. my iphone says it needs a holiday in nyc to check this out. ‘other futures’ is the first such tour – allowing you to wander the city looking at buildings that never were. ace.

soundwalk
beautifully done walking tours of nyc, paris, china and elsewhere by locals for the iphone.

stephen walter
the lovely hand-drawn map art of stephen walter – i first saw his stuff on the recent couple of excellent BBC series about maps and map-making which were perfect timing for us working on CHART Scarborough.

history pin
simple idea but it’s the front page images that capture the imagination – wonder if this could be made to work just like those with google street view?

london poetry game
because in london you’re supposedly never more than 10ft from a speaker of a foreign language, ross sutherland has translated each line of a new poem into a different language. the idea being you find someone to translate a line for you. the finish poem will be assembled from every translation phoned in and broadcast at the national theatre this sunday.

coastival365
scarborough photographer tony bartholomew’s ongoing documenting of the town over the course of a year

blipfoto.com/ah2010
and evening news photographer, andrew higgins’ photoblog

the devils plantation
a story as puzzle, navigating ‘glasgow’s secret geometry’.

and here you can download my own pyschogeographic trail of scarborough, although you could use it with any map of any place really. james is currently writing a trail based on almost-disappeared wall painted signs that we’re often spotting around the town.

stacks of work

stacks of the CHART Scarborough maps lining our windowsill in preparation for tomorrow’s launch. we’ll show you the whole thing after the launch (gotta give people some reason to come…*)

also we forgot to give our customary work placement shout out to emma, who right now is working on the visuals for the launch. she’s with us for the next fortnight.

*actually, a unique performance by sjt outreach and some moves from scarborough hip-hop school are pretty good reasons. wine too. and food.

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).

fossil festival

the natural history museum have come to town for scarborough fossil festival which is taking place at venues across the town this weekend. the advance publicity is in the format of a leaflet folding out to form a poster with details of the events on the reverse.

posters and banners at venues promote the event across the town – they seem to be working if the people heading into the rotunda museum as i took this photo are anything to go by.

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.