electric angel /design for life

their eyes light up

a couple of weeks back charlotte and i spent a day at the north keveston centre on the outskirts of lincoln with an open brief to leave temporary text interventions around the theatre, sports centre and school environs as part of an ongoing location-specific art project called ‘something wonderful’.

i’d had an idea about using block paving as a grid for lettershapes a while back and the paved area at the building entrance was the perfect canvas to try this out. this was the first of the days typographic experiments using text written by pupils at the school. we finished the quote just as it started to pour down…

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make like andy – warhol activity sheets

these schools engagement activity sheets for heritage learning in hull offer activities to encourage young people to explore and engage with the andy warhol artists rooms exhibition at the ferens gallery in hull. they’re supplied to schools in pdf format to be printed as needed. a printed brochure lists workshops available to schools and youth groups.

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comics, condoms & catastrophe

just before christmas we were invited by north yorkshire council’s 4youth service to work a small group of teenage boys in whitby. the youth leaders and young people alike were finding coursework based around life issues uninspiring and wondered if we might be able to bring a more creative approach to exploring some potentially difficult topics – in this case, the worries and emotions that might arise with an unplanned teenage pregnancy and where to get help.

i’ve always found comics and graphic novels an interesting way of telling a story, particularly where a narrative might have to start and be resolved within only 8 or 9 frames and decided to use this as a format to explore the theme. i was hoping the group might contain a few comic fans, or at least they’d seen recent superhero movies, but was greeted with blank faces when i asked. undeterred i whipped out a dog-eared copy of ‘batman : the dark knight returns‘ and we began…

we started by looking at example of storytelling in comics, particularly those in newspapers that deal with limited space – both judge dredd (in the daily star) and calvin & hobbes were great examples of condensing a lot of interest into a small number of images. we then each developed a composite character for our own strip taking visual elements from both people we know and those more famous and then giving them a behavioural identity and finally, a name.

some of the potential concerns and issues from the previous week’s coursework were given to the character to base a story around within a defined number of frames using some of the visual and narrative techniques we’d observed in the examples. moving the different stories along one stage at a time, we purposely left the penultimate frame until last to provide the crucial ‘revelation’ moment where the character realises they can get help.

we often find ourselves working in situations where we might be forewarned that ‘they’re a difficult group’ or lack concentration, so i was delighted to be told afterwards by the youth leader that this group’s engagement in the activity and thus the subject was way beyond normal.

limestone journeys

we’ve been clocking up the miles just lately on public art projects. one of these has been with year 6 at whaley thorns primary school on the derbyshire-nottinghamshire border. it’s part of a project called limestone journeys and we’ve been commissioned by junction arts to work with the school to develop a map-artwork that explores the movement and lives of peoples in the area over 15,000 years.

we took the stance that the artwork would be created from that which the young people had discovered for themselves and to this end invited writer-director lizi patch to join me in the school to develop a way of working in which much of the artwork could be created ‘in character’. the final 5 metre long artwork will include postcards written by ice age people, lettering by roman empire migrants and photomontage created from the lives of their grandmas and granddads.

the above photos are (clockwise from top right): photographing a possible drinking place to make an ice age postcard; exploring a cave at creswell crags; hot-seating in character inspired by family heirlooms; a day in the life of an early homosapien.

the artwork will be exhibited next weekend at the festival of the environment at creswell crags visitor centre.

little acrobats

our tiny gallery is currently playing host to these little acrobats, the result of a workshop led at st martins primary school by rebecca and artist rachel welford. they were inspired by the three sculptures by bob tuffin we’re continuing to exhibit in the trees outside our studio. more little acrobat pics over on the gallery website.

the little acrobats will be around for about another week before we prepare for an exhibition as part of the uk pro surf tour which hits scarborough in october. more on that rather special exhibition very soon…

RSVP

we spent today working in the studio with pupils from scalby school as part of scarborough museums trust’s ‘RSVP’ day.

pupils from 4 local schools started the day at scarborough art gallery with a quick introduction to ‘bathers in sunlight’, a painting by zdzislaw ruszkowski. they then split into groups to work with a creative of their choice to produce work in response. rather than get bogged down with computers, we took a hands-on approach and created a design in our gallery windows hand-cut from vinyl. well done to john, adam, michael, nathan, james and luke who had no idea what they’d be doing until they arrived and took in their stride a breakneck journey from fine art via design processes to cutting and applying vinyl all within a tight timescale.

we’re hoping to be having a similarly enjoyable time working st. martin’s school pupils next week, responding to bob tuffin’s wire sculptures that we’re currently exhibiting in the trees outside our studio.

take a slice of scarborough

things may have seemed a little quiet lately from creative coast – the north yorks coast creatives network we help run, but actually we’ve been busy running two projects engaging with the local populace.

one is helping NYBEP with roll out of a primary school enterprise challenge, more of which later. but here’s the first fruits of our main project – ‘we love scarborough because…’ – in which small teams of creatives have been teamed with local residents to transform the windows of empty shops in the town.

here are the results of myself and writer lizi patch working with young people from schools based on the north yorkshire coast who are studying on the schools creative and media diploma.

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as the premises we were transforming were previously a cafe, we took conversations over drinks as a starting point blending in memories of growing up in the area and snippets of overhead conversations. lizi teased these out in a creative session that involved scratch-performance and the discipline of telling a story via text messaging.

we returned the following week with some initial design and illustration ideas based on this imagery into which the young people designed their text, concrete poetry style. what you see on these pics is largely their work, just typeset in a cohesive style.

if you’re in town, you can see the windows on northway, just past the stephen joseph theatre. thanks to all the talented young people (who are credited on the windows) and to course leader spencer williams for a very enjoyable and productive experience. also to colin ellis estate agents and GBR phoenix beard property services for their enthusiasm and permission for the project. 2 more shops to follow by other creatives…

process and performance: interactive theatre

this weekend found us out of our comfort zone and enjoying ourselves immensely working with students and staff at prior pursglove college, guisborough to deliver an interactive performance as part of their 450th celebrations.

the performance and preceding workshops were a creative partnerships project to develop an innovative approach to a public performance where the audience could play a role in shaping the action. our proposed idea (below) was the use of mobile phone technology whereby text messages could ‘activate’ the characters with audience members steering the eventual outcome depending on who they chose to activate and which tasks they selected.

with the students we looked at how we might bring to life historical characters from across 450 years of the college and engage their fellow students in the process. discussions around communication technology and protocol led to each student setting up a facebook profile for their chosen character, these were then used for interactions in character ultimately developing potential dramatic dialogues from these online conversations.

above: a timeline and initial character profiles exploring potential links between characters and social-historical events to weave into conversations.
below: queen elizabeth I on facebook

meanwhile having looked at examples of performance art and interaction – particularly fluxus and yoko ono, and some cross-referencing of classic pop videos that tell a historical story in the space of a few minutes, a performance was shaped bringing together facebook, text messaging and more traditional elements of street theatre. we invited darrell hooper who worked with us on the CHART Scarborough mobile phone treasure hunt to help develop the technology – the end result being android tablets as the audience interface and mobile phones for delivery to the performers. the audience are invited to click on a character’s image which then prompts that character to do one of a series of actions.

there’s a game element to this as some events have to happen in sequence to allow other actions to happen. for example, the prior who sought a royal charter for the establishment of a grammar school (later the college) can be instructed to converse with the pregnant wife of a schoolmaster from the WWII era, but she must have introduced herself to the audience via a diary entry first or his greeting will be refused. fun actions were also included such as being able to make prince george (on a visit to the school to plant a commemorative tree) sneeze repeatedly or have the C19th nurse hand out cough candy.

there are multiple unknowns with a project like this, not least the idiosyncrasies of mobile phone networks (almost every character was on a different network – initially by chance but then something we stuck with just in case one network’s coverage was interrupted) and the chance that the audience wouldn’t want to interact – we did consider a disclaimer assuring people that they wouldn’t be pulled into the performance… but the end result was glitch-free and the audience members responded with delight at being able to ‘control’ a character and fascination as to how it all worked.

if you go down in the woods today…

…you’ll discover artworks created by pupils of graham-raincliffe schools federation.

rachel and i have been delivering a creative partnerships enquiry project with the schools, responding to a desire to engage year 7 pupils in creative thinking and project-based learning. the 11 week project is based around the process of responding to, designing and delivering public art commissions that rachel and i have collaborated on such as the scarborough-whitby railway line artwork and our current series of panels for lifts in york hospital.

the focus has been on the nearby raincliffe woods with the intention that the skills required to arrive at a full proposal for an artwork cross over much of the school curriculum demonstrating how subjects don’t exist in isolation to each other. for us as artists/designers that involves generating ideas within a defined timescale and to practical restrictions, understanding materials, budgeting and time management skills and being able to explain your ideas visually, verbally and in writing to other people. and so writing, drawing, team-working, research, negotiation, decision-making, building and blogging have all featured with the young people – exactly how rachel and i work together.

following a visit to yorkshire sculpture park, to the woods themselves with a countryside officer and workshops in the schools, the first building session in the woods took place this monday with a quarter of the cohort. these are photographs of a few of the prototypes of artworks that will be the subject of full proposals.