It’s the start of day 3 of my residency at Metal Southend. Day 1 was a travel day that ended with ice cream and fish and chips by the sea, so Day 2 was the first proper day. I spent it getting orientated to the area with a walk west from Chalkwell Hall to Leigh on Sea, then a short train ride to the centre of Southend where I spent some time in the library. I looked over some of the maps of the area to get a feel for how populations have moved here. I love reading maps, especially looking for traces of changes. So seeing how the railway stopped at Southend, then other lines carried on through later, how development was focused mainly around the ‘industry’ of the time. Leigh grew around the fishing village, Southend around the tourist industry of the pier and railway.
My aim in being here is to look at how population movement is visible in the housing of a place and to be in a different place to the northern post-industrial towns that are normally on my doorstep. So to see how populations congregate around different ‘industries’ will be interesting.
I’m feeling a bit lost with this piece of work at the moment, so the plan is that being here for an intense period of time will free me from those insecure shackles and just make me go and ‘do’ stuff.
So, a plan:
– photograph details from houses around the area. Bricks, textures, fencing, patterns, architectural details. Play around with these as a collage by the end of this week. (I’m a bit concerned about photographing bits of people’s houses, feels a bit intrusive, hopefully everyone is nice about it)
– sit in the park/beach and read some of the books that I’ve been hoarding.
– visit some of the places that I read about in the local development plan to see if they developed as planned.
A fortnight in Southend
I’ve been awarded a Time and Space residency at METAL in Southend and I go next Monday. This means that I get a fortnight of (unpaid) research time away from home, but it does mean that all of the things that need doing here (the paid things), need to be done by the end of this week. So I don’t think I’ll make much headway into my own work this week, but the luxury of two weeks to wander, think, read, meet people and experiment is like a light at the end of the tunnel.
I should add that I asked for the residency to be so soon, so as to fit in a slack/non-teaching bit of my calendar and with the development period of my work for the solo show.
Regular reports from ‘down South’ will follow next week…
Pressing send for the second time…
Last night I submitted my second stab at a Grants for the Arts application for this project. I’d submitted one at the beginning of February, but unfortunately got the ‘other applications preferred’ response.
So I’ve reviewed it, worked out what bits of my plan have firmed up, how I can better articulate my ideas for the work that I’m planning to produce and because I’ve done more work and research in that intervening period, it feels like a better application. I’ve got a few more partners on board so hopefully that all makes it stronger.
Cross everything until the 17th May!
New project, new blog!
For the past three months I’ve been researching and developing ideas for new work in a solo exhibition that takes place in June. There’s 12 weeks until the show opens so it seems a fine time to start writing this.
I had hoped that I’d start this blog with a fat envelope from Arts Council in my hand, but they turned down my GFTA application, so I’m working on a shoestring with the partners I have in place for now. Although I’m working on rejigging the application and resubmitting it before the end of the week.
The shoestring approach includes taking the opportunities that I find, so the beginning of this week has found me bunking in on a business trip with my husband in South Wales. I spent a bit of time in Cardiff library looking at old maps, an explore of St Fagan’s open air museum of Welsh life to see their buildings that have been translocated from across Wales and a morning in Merthyr Tidfil drawing how houses occupy the valleys.
This is all towards a new piece of work which will look at how housing acts as evidence of population movement within the UK. There’s another two pieces of work that will form part of the show which I can talk about later.
Anyway, off to work on GFTA application take 2!
Let the countdown begin!
