digital – Page 7 – Hannah Nicklin

image by me, shared on flickr if you want to use it

So, that State of the Arts thing happened. You probably noticed, once, or twice, a minute. On the 14th. I could reproduce the summary post I wrote on it here, but frankly there are loads more interesting posts both on the individual theme live blogs, and on the main blog itself. Go and browse for yourself, or check out the highlights I’ve picked out below. Otherwise all that bears saying is that I think they’re moving in the right direction, there’s a long way to go, and I’m really proud of the change/effect that Andy, the team of ace livebloggers/correspondants we took, and I were/are able to have.

Highlights:

James Marriot’s text from Future Environment session 1.
Emma Adams’ Arts Vs. Sofa
Rachel Kaye’s Art and Active Hostility
Chris Thorpe’s What Will I Do When They Come to Take My Guns
Rebecca Kill talking to me about higher education cuts and the arts.
Andy Field’s talk from Future Environment session 2
Daniel B Yates on Art and Politics
My re-highlighting of Tom Armitage’s essential thoughts on technology as material

Exciting thing! Andy Field and I are up to stuff again, returning to the Arts Council England’s (ACE) State of the Arts Conference this year, much more integrally than how we were part of last year’s; this time we’ve been able to help shape the way, where, and with whom the conversations happen. Live blog! Artists bursaries! Actual conversations on themes! Some very exciting and challenging live bloggers feeding in and back everything said by everyone! All in all it looks like a massive leap for ACE, in a brilliant and totally important direction. A bit below from mine and Andy’s statement of intent:

“Before, during and after State of the Arts 2012, we will be hosting this online space as an important new facet of the conference.

We want this to be a place for anyone with an interest in the arts to share their thoughts and ideas. A carnival of voices discussing anything and everything about the state of the arts in 2012. In particular we hope that this site might allow people who can’t make it to Manchester for the day of the conference to have a really meaningful impact upon the event.”

Read more on our intent over here, see who all our livebloggers are here, and start submitting your thoughts on the main themes of the conference (along the top of the page) on the submit page.

To get you all started we’d love to start a little ‘art is’ meme – I found a really lovely mine of ‘art is’ images on flickr which I’ve been using to title each opening blog post that’s up there now, and we’d love to know what your answer is to that question is (positive, negative, or indifferent), so, how to join in:

Find an image that for you says something about what art is and why it is important.
It can be a picture, or a picture of an event, or a diagram. It could be something you find on the net (though preferably creative commons), something you take a photograph of, or even something you draw yourself. It doesn’t really matter.
Send it to us as an image post on the submit page
Tell other people to do the same.*

*plagiarising Andy a bit with these instructions. Sorry Andy, it’s late and I’ve been staring at the website way too long.

THAT’S INTERACTION, THAT IS.