Mon dieu! I need to get into a better pattern with blogging on A-N, can’t believe it’s been over 23 days since my last post. There are sufficient excuses for this slacking though. The primary reason was my heavy involvement in delivering the Bluecoat’s annual literature festival, which finished last Sunday.
My third (and probable last festival) can be judged a success for its size with lots of positives to be drawn after a difficult funding related time. However the future direction of the organisations literature programme should form a critical element of the forthcoming evaluation and should not be skirted around.
Balancing this full time, short term contract with University work has been demanding and has left me playing catch up this week. I’ve left my studio at the Royal Standard (keys handed back, mess removed) and transferred fragments of sculptural work back to my Dad’s. To say he is bemused could be appropriate; I’m not sure he can picture how separate entities of ducting and painted wooden planks constitute ‘art’.
The course itself has refreshingly challenged my bias towards visual art. Strong elements of theatre and performance occur regularly in reading and writing and I very much welcome this. A field trip to the Contact Theatre in Manchester to evaluate the spatial concerns of the building was an example of the hands on approach of the course. Anyone who is familiar with the castle like features of the building will be interested to know that the building design is for specific ventilation purposes and saves the building £40k a year on air conditioning costs. Cost efficient factors such as this will surely be a pre requisite of new builds/renovations. A delegation from The Everyman in Liverpool recently visited the Contact for the very same reason as they prepare to rebuild the theatre.
I attended a NESTA (National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts) event a couple of weeks ago during the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester. Examining cultural value in a digital context, the panel including Peter Tullin, Charles Hunter and Ed Vaizey (Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries) touched on artistically orientated and commercial approaches to content generation. I’ve written a full write up on my website but one interesting point was raised during the Q&A about the stalled 2003 Legal Deposit Libraries Act. The act, that covers the crucial element of archiving regulations for the preservation of websites that exist today, is currently stalled. Vaizey, whose grating body language and lapses of arrogance wasn’t one of the more enjoyable aspects of the discussion, replied that he is hopeful of the act being pushed through soon.
This was a thought provoking moment. The chances are that every artist who writes a blog on A-N has a web presence be it a blog, personal website or creative account like Blipfoto for example. How will this array of content be preserved and continued or made accessible for the next generation? Will our own websites be gone forever when the hosting isn’t renewed? How can artists create an online legacy and ensure that our work archives are protected and not destroyed after we have gone? I will be keeping a close eye on how this act develops.
Here is the link for anyone who is interested
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/28/conten…
