Exciting projects from our members

David Dixon, Bureau of Exchange, 2015

We present a selection of socially engaged projects that our members have shared with us this month


Paul Evans, Anne Thalheim, Francoise Dupre, Myra Ryan, Antoinette Burchill, Brenda Miller, Merlyn Riggs, Laurence Dube-Rushby, 
David Dixon and K M Bosy.

 

A few weeks ago we asked our members to tell us about any exciting socially engaged projects they've been working on or had coming up. The following artists got in touch to share their projects with us.

  • Paul Evans

    Paul Evans, Castlegate Open Community of Artists (COCOA), 2015

    Castlegate Open Community of Artists (COCOA), 2015


    1 April - 1 December 2015

    Castlegate Open Community Of Artists (COCOA) is a temporary collective whose aim is to ‘shine a light’ on the Castlegate Quarter of Sheffield. COCOA has been initiated by the artist Paul Evans as part of his current residency within Exchange Place Studios.
    COCOA will operate a series of creative workshops, lectures and events within Castlegate between April and November 2015, engaging a variety of ‘constituencies’ within the area. Particular concentrations of activity will occur around the Castlegate Festival on 20th/21st June (Studio COCOA) and during Yorkshire Artspace Open Studios in November. Anyone can become a COCOA artist for any period of time from a few minutes making during a drop in workshop to long-term creative engagement throughout the full duration of the seven-month project.
    Over the weekend of 20th/21st June ‘Studio COCOA’ will invite visitors to Castlegate into its open ‘artist’s studio’ based in Castle House, Angel Street, Sheffield. COCOA artists will offer two days of activities, creating work with the public for our large-scale projection onto Exchange Place. Visitors will also be able enter a drawing into the prestigious COCOA ART PRIZE.

    Find out more >

    View Paul Evans's profile
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  • Francoise Dupre

    Francoise Dupre, belles îles flottantes, 2015

    belles îles flottantes, 2015


    6 April 2015 - 30 May 2016

    Led by artist Françoise Dupré in collaboration with artist educator Rebecca Snow, Dora Project is an international, cross-generational archiving, participatory and community project that addresses, through art, the contemporary relevance of the history of World War Two and early rocket engineering.

    Combining ethics in art and science, questioning the role of science in war, Dora Project aims to develop creative strategies for artworks that critically, ethically and affectively mourn victims of genocide and war and engage with the politics of visualisation of memory as practice.

    This will be achieved through the creation of a new artwork, a series of public commemorative events and a school project. Outcomes will be shown at Peckham Platform in an exhibition, with gallery talks, participatory gallery project, symposium and publication (London April 2016).

    Mittelbau-Dora was a Nazi concentration camp in Central Germany (1943-1945) where V2 rockets were assembled in a vast underground factory. More than 20,000 inmates died and around 2500 Londoners were killed by V2s. After WW2, V2 technology was used for the development of space and military space programmes. While many Londoners have heard about the V2, few know about its origin that contaminates space conquest to the concentrationary universe.

    Find out more > 

    View Francoise Dupre's profile
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  • Myra Ryan

    Myra Ryan, Art Vend Wrecsam, 2015

    Art Vend Wrecsam, 2015


    25 March - 
    20 August 2015

    I am one of 50 commissioned artists for the ArtVend project in Wrexham, North Wales. Each artist made 50 works to fit into plastic capsules to be dispensed from vending machines for £1. Placed in strategic locations around the town the first phase has been so successful that a second phase is about to launch.

    Find out more >

    View Myra Ryan's profile
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  • Antoinette Burchill

    Antoinette Burchill, Freckled Mischief presents: The Wizard of Oz, 2015

    Freckled Mischief presents: The Wizard of Oz, 2015

     
    1 January - 1 October 2015

    A contemporary political satire and 3-man walkabout street performance, adapted from L. Frank Baum’s 1900 novel, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. The Tinman, Scarecrow and Lion become politicians searching for brains, heart and courage. As politicians they've lost their way. Bewildered, leaderless and unable to distinguish fantasy from reality they need guidance and instruction. They hope by asking members of the public for direction, they’ll find the yellow brick road leading to Oz.

    This adaptation of The Wizard of Oz uses clowning, and irreverent mischief to question the role of politicians, and of ours as critical and forever curious citizens.

    Originally produced by Freckled Mischief in collaboration with Derby Festé.

    ***
    This is a work-in-progress project. Rehearsals are underway with commissioned performances taking place in July and September 2015. Funding has been secured  from Loughborough University's Enterprise projects Group and HEIF to take performers and documentary crew to London in August 2015 to film a day of guerrilla performances. This will result in an 8-min film of participatory performances in the public realm.

    Find out more >

    View Antoinette Burchill's profile
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  • Brenda Miller

    Brenda Miller, Buttonhole project - Participation Stitch,

    Buttonhole project - Participation Stitch,


     June 2015

    My project, Participation Stitch, is to create a contemporary response to the stitching of the buttonholes by mice in the story of The Tailor of Gloucester by Beatrix Potter.
    I  invited people to volunteer to share the skill of hand stitching buttonholes. I am planning to gather twenty-one volunteers to stitch one buttonhole each on 4 June at 44AD, Abbey Street, Bath.

    In the story, mice stitch the mice stitch the one and twenty buttonholes because the tailor was taken ill. I propose to film an event where twenty-one people gather to hand stitch the twenty-one buttonholes as stitched by the mice in Beatrix Potter's story. Through this project my intention is to explore the potential of sharing skills and my aim is to generate social conversations through this activity. My key interest is how skills are used today before they are lost for ever.

    The concept for the stitching event is a development from my films. In these works, two women meet for the first time and during their conversations they talk about connections to the story. The first film is, Thinking Stitch >

    View Brenda Miller's profile
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  • Merlyn Riggs

    Merlyn Riggs, Seeing Red., 2015

    Seeing Red., 2015


    November 2015 - March 2017

    This is a collaborative, cross-sector and multi-disciplinary project, addressing violence against women and girls. The range of this gender-based violence is vast, and occurs in every segment of society, regardless of class, ethnicity, culture, or whether the country is at peace or war. The crime is being female.

    The project draws together a range of expertise and skills, including: artists, academics, charities (Women’s Aid, Drug and Alcohol Abuse), curators, educationalists, universities and survivors

    The intention is to create a series of events, exhibitions, sculptures, readings and participatory performances in Aberdeen over a period of approximately 2 years commencing in November 2015. The ultimate aim is multi-layered and includes: raising awareness in Aberdeen of the range of gender-based violence, gaining the attention of policy makers and educators with the aim of creating policy and implementing creative and effective new training and educational programmes, producing a series of documents, papers and other publications raising the profile of Aberdeen as the 21st century City of Enlightenment, not just in Scotland but the wider world: Aberdeen as the ‘Feminist Capital of Scotland’. Currently its reputation is as the ‘Sex Selling Capital of Scotland’.

     

    View Merlyn Riggs's profile
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  • David Dixon

    David Dixon, Bureau of Exchange, 2015

    Bureau of Exchange, 2015


    27 May - 21 June 2015

    ‘Bureau of Exchange’ is a four-week public art project within an empty shop, on the high street of Andover town centre. Six associate artists from Chapel Arts Studios (CAS) will deliver a programme of workshops, performances and events, designed to engage the public and explore notions of value and exchange. All the art activities and events programmed during May and June are free of charge, and open to the whole community to share and enjoy what’s on offer, The project will culminate in a community procession: the “March for Optimism”

    Using the shop as a site for trading, what happens when money is taken out of the equation? What do the artists have to trade with? And what do the audience have to trade with? One of the key factors is that through creativity, members of the public - regardless of age, background or ability - are given the freedom to determine their own value system for their interactions. The intention is to create spaces for people to imagine new ways of living together and interacting with the world.

    Find out more >

    View David Dixon's profile
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  • K M Bosy

    K M Bosy, Inside here by KMBosy, online artwork. Thank you for participating. This project is now completed., 2022

    Inside here by KMBosy, online artwork. Thank you for participating. This project is now completed., 2022

     
    June 2015

    In this locative, interactive app-form artwork I aim to provide a focus for reflections in the form of feelings, thoughts, thoughts about feelings, epiphanies etc. I want to encourage people to share these reflections via the app to my blog, in order to create an open ended social-networked art piece.

    This artwork juxtaposes poetic symbolism with reality to encourage contemplation, focusing the user on their own feelings and thoughts, which may be influenced by their spatial environment. It requires the user to consider their own reality through the lens of poetic symbolism and in this way acts as a prompt to encourage contemplation and reflection. Since this piece uses altitude as a focusing element, a relevant poetic motif is that descending can release the subconscious whereas the higher we ascend, the further the subconscious recedes and thoughts become clearer.

    The related social-networked artwork will be created by users who choose to participate by sharing to my blog from the app artwork. The anonymous shares made by the users will form the content of the artwork, which will form a comment in itself.

    Find out more >

    View K M Bosy's profile
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