ARTISTS TALKING

# 13 [27 November 2008]

Its already November and lots has happened recently but I have been a bit slack writing it up on this blog. I juggle this project with several others that I work on and time management and brain capacity sometimes let me down! I often wonder what people did before they sat in front of computers all day – its not that long ago.

Lots of meetings with the artists as work develops, lots of visits to venues, endless e.mails and wrangling over budgets and so on…

There are video installations, film, sculptural installations, painting, photographic work and a board game to coordinate..

The dates for the exhibition “I don’t know about Community Networks but I know what I like” are now set for January – each artist has their community based venue alloted, publicity is underway, being designed by UHC in Manchester. Then a good friend offered to make the website, for which there was no budget at all!! – so you can view on www.one-and-all.org to find out all the details about the project.
In past projects I’ve had to do everything, including designing leaflets and invitations myself – usually learning the software at the same time. This time I have the luxury of handing it over to someone who knows what they’re doing! Nevertheless there is a lot of work to do writing text, proof reading and gathering information from the 7 different venues. We also worked out a transport route around the venues with the Transport Network of CN4M.
Hopefully travelling around the city to these various places – from converted schools to high profile regeneration projects - gives the viewer a sense of how the regeneration industry works and to the people who use the centres the art work will be interesting and stimulate some sort of debate, and create awareness about the other places taking part.

The first stage of the exhibition will be for 2 weeks in January and then later in April there will be a show including all the work at Castlefield Gallery, which is great because I’ve always seen the work being shown in a gallery situation and the curators there have been really supportive of the concept – showing the work in the community venues is a bit of an experiment – part of the working process of development of the exhibition.

I am keen to create cross-overs between the different realms and challenge the different constituents of those realms.

# 12 [27 June 2008]

The Arndale of Community Work

I completely understood where she was coming from. The job of community work is very practical and everyone is overstretched anyway – why devote energy and time to making this happen if there is no apparent outcome? Why should her centre help us in some research project,  that has no benefit. She understood CN4M very well. She was in favour of CN4M – they have provided funding for her volunteering programme, but didn’t see why users of her centre needed to know that.

I admitted to Janet that actually there was no “outcome” of this, that we weren’t looking to provide a service or offer solutions. I didn’t know if the art work would be enjoyed or ignored. I didn’t know if CN4M had any relevance to local people and I wasn’t setting out to promote CN4M. If awareness of it was created then that would be good – but why? I wasn’t sure.

Talking to Janet struck a lot of chords for me. She could have made an appointment to see me at another time, but she dropped everything to spend half an hour with me. She was evidently very busy and told me a number of times – so I felt bad that she’d dropped everything. I tried to say, I could come back another time, but she insisted. As I’d interrupted anyway, she may as well stop. I saw myself in many situations doing the same, when people appear out of the blue – it’s a not wanting to disapoint  people and also a slightly matryred attitude (guilt tripping creates a sense of power?). She wanted to help but as I say, and she was very earnest in questioning the project – which I found very helpful….

Janet pointed me at the Wythenshawe Forum centre, who would have more space and seemed more recognised as an exhibition space (I used to cycle there as a child to swim) – its now a large indoor precinct run by Wythenshawe Trust. The Forum has a leisure centre/gym, library, theatre, walk-in health clinic, café,  education, and child care centres….all under one roof, and all overseen by a security company. Unlike the outside, this felt new, vibrant and busy – a bit like the Arndale centre of community work…A friendly receptionist phoned Bob, the manager of the centre who very welcomingly offered to host the artwork – this centre seemed inappropriate for Andrew’s game – but ideal for Joes long pasting tables…..

# 11 [27 June 2008]

Tree of Life

At last today I met someone who challenged me about the project. So far everyone has been so positive – like no one has been phased about the fact that artists were doing something without taking into account who the audience might be or whether they are addressing particular issues – or whether they are ready to work with certain groups.
Art in communities is often about people getting stuck in and getting pleasure from making things and spending time together doing it and then a sense of pride when that work, however good or bad, is shown off to friends and family. Our project isn’t going to achieve that end. The art we are involved with is about stepping back and looking at the situation of community work and networks, and commenting upon that. Bringing the work into the environment on which it is focusing, has a tradition in site specific work, art as environment, more than it does community art.
I’ve been expecting hostility, suspicion and frankly “stop wasting our time” since I began, because community development grew up hand in hand with community art. But apart from a few artists, working in the community centres, who at first may be a little territorial about their spaces (and fair enough) almost without exception, community centres and their workers have been really positive and accepted my somewhat vague descriptions of what the project is about.


Janet, manager of The Tree of Life Centre wasn’t able to offer me the space I had hoped to simply walk in and secure – a table in the corner of the café. The centre wasn’t really open, but I wandered in, and Janet kindly stopped her fundraising, offered me tea and showed me around the furniture and clothes shop, cafe and activity space(church). She wanted to understand exactly what my project is doing – and what exactly was the point of placing art work in her centre. What would the centre users get out of it? What was the objective of it? Why would anyone be interested, or need to know what CN4M is? What she was saying is that ordinary people access her centre to either have a meal, buy cheap furniture, or take part in a club or group, and then off they go – she knew that actually people wont be interested in the art work, let alone “engage” with it, and they certainly wont understand CN4M or want to. Andrew Wilson is making a board game, which in the playing, describes CN4M’s function. She was asking why people would want to know that anyway? Surely if they needed to find something out, they would ask her, and she would point them on then to the ward coordinator (council worker for that area) not CN4M, who are based in town anyway, miles from her community.
ctd

# 10 [28 May 2008]

network as rhizome 

I’ve started to a attend the reading group at Salford Restoration Office. Artists get together weekly to read philosophy articles and look at work and possibly make work together at some point. Its like a brain gym for me. We were reading Deleuze and Guattari from One Thousand Plateaus. It was really relevant to the thoughts I’d been having about networks that are seen as theoretical defined structures – like CN4M and how networks actually work – like a rhizome ………spilling and spreading and improvising new streams, nodes and amalgamations across the ground, unlike a heirarchical structure of say a tree.

Good when two things come together - the reading feeding the project like that in an unexpected way.

# 9 [28 May 2008]

Centres

As well keeping up to date with artists’ progress, I’ve been getting out and about researching some community centres. It’s an area I am familiar with as I spend a lot of time in a community centre where I’ve been running an open studio for some years.
It was interesting to look at all the different types of location and the variety of buildings, where voluntary and community projects are based. There are a few distinct aesthetics going on, though not I guess deliberate – and as you look at all the associated materials, websites, leaflets and speak to individuals, the ethos or character of each place emerges. So there are the places that are make-do-and-mend and there are those that are lottery backed and corporate feeling.
I’m hoping that each can play a part,  and contribute to the story of the project - so we have a spanking new library, a semi-updated skills training centre, church halls and places on the brink. The journey to and from to see all the work will be part of the experience of the project….
Now I am hoping to coordinate the timing of the show with all the venues.

# 8 [25 April 2008]

Arent Artists Busy 2

I hear that Simon Grennan and Chris Sperrandio have held a meeting with the Geographic workers – who I discover have just a month to work their notice. Sounds as if funding for CN4M, in its current form, is collapsing as new agendas kick in through local Government. As CN4M embark on their re-branding, Simon and Chris set out alone to experience the CN4M geographic hotspots.
Jo Lewington has gained trust at one or two factories. Its surprising that not all manufacturing has gone east. Manchester is still home to a number of textile manufacturers and Jo is exploring these environments in her research into physical repetitive actions and movement and how these echo all our lives’ patterns. So a different approach to the theme of economy than the new Learning Skills and Employment network of CN4M might be taking, but possibly one that will resonate with the workers of the factories and wider, as Jo’s durational work evolves.
William Titley meanwhile has attended umpteen meetings with the Sustainable communities networks. Some of the meetings are poorly attended, and he identifies “heroes” - the volunteers who turn up time after time and are so committed to making it work. I say maybe it’s a kind of dying breed and he sees them as warriors, specially the people who have worked all their lives in community projects. There’s nostalgia there as well from some participants – a wish for things to be as they once were. For more solidarity, more trust, less change – he’s brought these thoughts together in an object – the old fashioned dustbin, with a lid – and he’s focusing on this as a sculptural work. But for now he’s taking part in a mountain marathon and is thinking as he runs………
 

# 7 [25 April 2008]

Aren’t Artists Busy!!

The CN4M project is gathering pace and interest. After Hafsah Naib’s attendence at the Cultural Partnership this week, there is a buzz gathering around the activity. Also the artists are emerging from (for some) their culture shock – in coming to terms with what exactly this is all about – with new observations and strategies as work develops.
After our meeting last night with everyone I am excited about the project - the passion it is inspiring, the complex ideas coming up and the interconnections between and variety of approaches.

Joe Richardson has been delving into “the diagram” that tries to define networks - and tracing a route through the structure by using me as a starting point and then following up contacts that I recommended and then following contacts that they recommended and so on, to try to understand whether CN4M can really achieve its aims. Can CN4M’s structure communicate with the loose groupings of small organisations and really have much impact on the great twisting organism that is the local decision making process within local Government, as they also try to keep up with shifting policies, central directives and funding priorities. What other models for this are there in other NRF targeted cities – and I wonder what part does local democracy play?
Jil Moore, meanwhile gets on a bus, with Bill the Transport Pool coordinator on “one of the most problematic school run routes” and finds that on that day the “youth” are actually very considerate and polite (if lively) and it’s the bus driver who is creating danger by trying to race through before any children embark. She hears about some small but significant victories that Bill has helped bring about on bus routes.
Andrew has ditched his notion of hi tech “social capital mapping” – discovering that the “personal networks” between organisations are just that and not so easy to reveal. So he’s returned to something much more clunky, a board game, and instead of soical theories has begun to interact with a disability arts project and basic materials to point at the need for something like CN4M when the connections run dry.
Hafsah Naib attended the Cultural Partnership – the meeting that brings together the big players in Culture in Manchester - and hears that they want to “understand the visual arts market” They understand what Dance is and Theatre but how can they get to grips with the Visual Arts? At our own recent meeting, Hafsah was wrestling with the internal and the external in the experience of culture and the symbiotic nature of the exchange. She takes the symbol of the large oval table around which everyone sits, with its doughnut-like hole in the middle – a void – the space inside, and begins to work this into her plans.
to be ctd

# 6 [21 March 2008]

At the risk of sending everyone to sleep with the details of the project I thought I would just add - aren't artists busy these days? I like the project about CN4M cos its trying to allow artists time and space to think and experiment, and yet its set in arena(CN4M) that is all about dull but neccassary meetings and unwieldy structures.
But aren't artists busy? Time flies by and we are all juggling projects, budgets and making work - then promoting it, writing blogs, evaluating, teaching, feeding back......and then there's a living to earn..

# 5 [21 March 2008]

The first meeting was good. All but one artist could make it. Everyone outlined their initial ideas, their interaction so far with CN4M and how ideas were developing. The artists ranged in their approach from the very precise to the relatively loose. Almost everyone was tentative at the time of the meeting, but it felt like a healthy place to be in the process. With no cast iron deadlines, there is time for ideas to gestate and for experiment and play to take place. Focusing and then re-focusing. Apart from anything else its been a time of testing some of the initial proposals – and rethinking in some cases.
By the end of the meeting, the feedback was very positive. Hearing each other had been inspirational, supportive and re-motivated everyone.

For the benefit of the reader, here I re-cap on CN4M, and the purpose of the project: there is a lot of this redefining and reassessing going on. CN4M was set up in as a mechanism by which  community, voluntary organisations and individuals could contribute to decision making in the city. It is organised into thematic pools, which shadow the Manchester Partnership (council and statutory agencies) and geographic areas and communities of interest – see www.cn4m.net for more information.

Each of the artists has opted to work with one or more of the themes / areas of CN4M and in some cases across all of them. It’s an artist research project, instigated by me, through the Culture Pool. My idea was that artists were more likely to engage with CN4M through art, than through meetings and long beauraucratic processes, and that their findings might be useful or interesting to CN4M itself and its members.

# 4 [21 March 2008]

I met all the artists individually, during December and January. I've also been researching to determine ultimate exhibition venues.
The initial idea I had was to exhibit the work at community based venues: community centres, libraries etc, where grass roots community organisations might see the work, and then to culminate in a central Manchester exhibition space, where interested parties in CN4M and the art audience would come together.
 
I sent out a request to all the geographic pool co-ordinators of CN4M to get back to me with suggestions. This hasn't worked. I had a response from only one and he's going to take me on a tour of North Manchester next week.

In the meantime I've been thinking about showing the work in different sites - but not all together. This was reinforced by Kwong Lee, curator at Castlefield Gallery, who agreed to host the first meeting of all the artists, at the beginning of March. The logistics of showing all the artists, together, in up to 6 venues, might over-show the work - by the time we arrive in the final venue, the audience might be exhausted. And so would I!!