Politics – Page 8 – Hannah Nicklin

Announcing! Northern Big Board... So it turns out I haven’t actually blogged about this, yet. I DON’T KNOW WHY. Because it’s properly, properly ace. Also the first bit of work I’ll be doing as a proper freelancer – that’s right, I am now available for all your arts, digital, theatre making, writing and playful/pervasive needs. Hire me! After this has finished. I’m free December-ish.

Anyway. Northern Big Board. Ridiculously excited to be part of this collaboration between Chol Theatre, Slung Low and Emma Adams. All working towards a bit community theatre gala on the 18th of November. Here’s a bit of blurb:

“a celebration of the life of Shipley Swimming Pool and all who swim in her. Inspired by a fear of the big bad diving board that towers 5 metres above the pool, Northern Big Board is a project about taking leaps of hope.

Join us for the Gala performance of a new play written for Shipley Swimming Pool by Emma Adams and directed by Slung Low, art installations by Hannah Nicklin to reveal the hidden life of the building, and spectacular diving and swimming demonstrations.

Northern Big Board hopes to uncover the human stories at the heart of Shipley Swimming Pool and doff a swimming cap to the water-filled palaces in neighbourhoods up and down the country that equip us for life’s adventures and help us to leap off into the world.”

My part in it all is a residency at the pool between now and the 18th of November, I’ll be hanging around 2-3 days each week collecting stories from people who use the pool, people who work there, people who train there, and creating a series of installations, which might be games, sound experiences, video installations, interventions… maybe even an online piece, too. Basically totally reactive to the feel for the pool I get from being there and talking to people. 7 weeks, so a couple talking to people, a couple writing and making, then testing, installing, and launching along with the big gala day where there’ll be a play in the pool and lots of other community-based fun things. There are also ‘Leap Off Fridays’ starting next Friday (12th) 6-7.30 where we’ll invite people to hang out with us, take a leap off the high board, and possibly run writing and storytelling workshops.

Emma and I make a really interesting parallel as creatives on this, she’s writing from the point of view of overcoming her fears of the water, and me, well, I feel more at home in water than I do the air. Everything is thicker… Whole-er. More in control. I’ve been swimming since I was tiny, even swum for my club in Europe when I was a teenager. I left swimming behind when I broke both my arms one summer and never really caught back up in training, but I have a love of the water which has never left me. So, yeah, that’s where I’m writing from.

I shall try and blog things as I go, a little more scrap-booky than usual. And in that spirit, here’s a little snapshot of my notebook after my first visit yesterday. No pictures in the pool allowed, so resorted to sketching skills I’ve not employed since I was 18! Just trying to capture the space for reference when I’m working away from it. More to follow, I hope (not drawings, but blog posts).

And finally, here’s a quote from Emma in the Yorkshire Post about the project that I endorse wholeheartedly:

“For me the piece is absolutely about the story of the emotional connection people have to the place, but actually that’s a bit of a Trojan Horse for me to talk about how important these places are,” says Adams.

“Places like the Shipley Pool are our municipal secular cathedrals were everyone goes and is together as a community, regardless of things like race or age or gender. Like the arts in this country, which I absolutely argue the case should be subsidised, we need to recognise how important these places are. I wanted to write something that would celebrate the stories of the people who have these emotional connections to the place, but I wanted to celebrate the place itself too.”

Playing In Public _ Hide&Seek Weekender 2012 — image off the conference site, click for full event programme

And Lo! She did return, from the dusty folds of academia she did emerge, and it was good.

So I’ve almost finished the PhD. It’s in ‘metaphorical drawer’ stage. Which is like ‘literal drawer’ stage but saves on printing costs, in that it’s ‘in a drawer’ (I don’t look at it) for the next 8 weeks, and then return to it to do things like write an abstract, introduction, conclusion and generally try and patch any theoretical leaks that have appeared now all the parts have been put together. Then submit. Thar she almost blows!

So yes, now I am returned, here follows a series of blog posts about what I’ve been wanting to tell you about but couldn’t because of The Document That Must Not Be Named.

Playing in Public! I don’t have a massive amount to write about this, partly because I was mid-PhD haze when I went along as part of a panel for the Hide & Seek weekender conference event, and partly because I mostly get stuck in when I have something to complain about. It was just good. Like seriously good. An amazing mix of artists, theatre makers, game designers, developers, venue people, and scales from indie games to a Creative Director from the Southbank Centre. No one wasted any time trying to make a case for games as ‘relevant’ or ‘cool’ or ‘are culture now, please’ (except one PR man who had kooky socks and drank BRAND cola suspiciously obviously) and instead just got stuck into proper ideas and thoughts and provocations. And, do you know what? PRETTY MUCH 50/50 MALE/FEMALE SPEAKER SPLIT. Just like that. And I didn’t hear anyone exclaiming about lack of interesting, thoughtful, provocative speakers, or screaming THE WOMEN, THE WOMEN, THERE ARE SO MANY I MIGHT DROWN (of women, that’s a thing). So, well done the Hide & Seek team, I think I love you.

I was speaking on a panel called Regeneration games – how can public play contribute to community life? (They seem to have scoured my flickr feed for a picture there and have an amusing blowy one from my first (well, and only) trip to Paris that makes it look a bit like I hang around boats and have weird angular hair.) Also on the panel were Shan Maclennan of Marine Studios (an ace community regeneration thing in Margate), Kate Kneale of the Southbank Centre, and it was chaired by John Newbigin of Creative England. I wish we’d had more time to chat on this panel, as it began to touch on some really interesting stuff, and I would have loved to have the opportunity to get more into the deep, dirty stuff of what ‘games’ actually means for all of these levels of organisation, and what it can mean for the generation of agency, exploration of systems, and still struggle with in terms of the dangers of coercion. I really, really enjoyed this, though. Turns out 3 years studying a thing means you feel like you know just about enough to have fun explaining your opinions.

In terms of the rest of the event, it was really nice to have the chunkier panel sessions and proper speaker parts broken up with 5 minute segments from indie or up-and-coming designers talking about their work. Continue reading Playing in Public