Working in the public realm can be so exciting as with the bunting forever project when it all goes well and everything comes together and when it’s popular. Equally exciting but terrifying is our project to get the underpass through to the seafront cleaned – we actually managed to get Highways to allow us to close it temporarily for the works – but as it is the primary route through to the seafront under a really busy road, this was quite risky as pedestrians are reluctant to walk all the way to the nearest safe overground crossing, preferring instead to jump over the barriers in the middle of the road. I also found myself having to pacify a couple of people yesterday and as I’ve not had a lot of experience of dealing with complaints that was also scary but in the end it was all friendly and they said that even if they didn’t think it was a priority they could see that there were different opinions about which parts of Dover to clean up. Once they realised it wasn’t “just for the Olympics” and that it wasn’t “the Council” they seemed to feel better.
Phew!
I never ever thought I’d be doing this kind of work when I graduated. It is fantastic what life in the arts can bring. An opportunity to make real changes.
Dropped some work off for the Jerwood Drawing Prize today – a long shot but anyway, it’s worth a try.
