Update – Page 6 – Hannah Nicklin

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.

So just over the 3 week point in the Umbrella Project (it’s 5 weeks long) and things are just about starting to get to the point where I’ve enough time to blog. Biggest realisation from this experiment was how more than slightly ridiculous collecting the material for, transcribing, editing, recording, collaborating on, testing, mixing and releasing 3 soundwalks actually is. Including running events and trying to run a bit of digital awareness raising, too. Phew. Think a concerted amount of the ‘you can download and do these things’ work is going to have to happen afterwards. We’ve another day out with our big inflatable dome thingy on the 12^th (the last day) so I think that’ll be a good point to do that.

So yes, all the story collecting trips are done, although you can still leave your stories of journeys via the number on the umbrellas up until the end of this week (when writing happens).

The first soundwalk – Evening – is done and available for download (designed to be done after dark outside the bigger of the two Betty’s Tea Rooms) the download link and full instructions (do grab those too) can be found over here.

The second soundwalk – Daytime – will be released on Tuesday (designed to be done sitting down somewhere in the pedestrian bit of Parliament Street, at a busy time of day, lunchtime, or a Saturday). That will be up on the same download page.

And the final soundwalk ‘Commute’ will be released on the 10^th, with event days for Daytime on the 5^th, and Commute on the 11^th. Join us on those days if you’d like to get the chance to talk to me or Tom (artistic producer on the project) about it.

Also, worth me putting down in pixels, how absolutely positively brilliant everyone at Pilot have and are being on this, to take the risk on what is still being termed an experiment (learning an awful lot creatively as well as logistically, which would make a re-mount/developed version quite drastically different, I think) in the first place, as well the incredible support in kind, and actual bodies-on-the-ground support etc. Would probably be curled up in a ball weeping if it wasn’t for them. So THANKS, PILOT.

And here’s some pictures (facebook link) of story collection days to amuse you, and a trailer for the first soundwalk (making the second trailer tomorrow).

*collapses*

Oh, and if you don’t know what any of this is going on about, head over to this video, or the site.

Tag: Update

Umbrella Project – beginning of week 4