Blogging the Blean

A round up of 2010.

Highs:

This year started and finished with two blog milestones. A-N Blogger of the Year for a walk with Cosmo at the start, and recently the Blogger Interview with Andrew Bryant. This online community grows from strength to strength and I so glad I’m involved.

Being awarded a modest amount of money from Canterbury City Council to enable the whole Blean Woodland thing to happen. http://wildartintheblean.blogspot.com/.

Making lots of new working relationships. Even though my earnings were down by about a quarter from last year it has been one of my busier years.

Dover Kent Whitfield Primary School, Ceramic frieze

Benenden C of E Primary School Kent. ‘Discovering Malawi Project’

The St. Georges School Garden.

Completion over several years of the award winning Isle of White Eco Loos: The Greenest Loos in the Nation

St. Helens Hospital Exterior Mosaic Entrance Feature

Briary School Club Building. Exterior make over.

Engaging Landscapes Project, Medway . The Strood Community Trail http://stroodcommunitytrail.blogspot.com/ this project involved working with my friend Jo and Animate http://www.animatecommunityarts.com/

Other smaller projects included:

Design collaboration with Paula Groves on two pieces of large metal sculptures. http://www.sculptedmetal.co.uk/www.sculptedmetal.co.uk/HOME.html

The big draw, at Chatham Dockyard to create a user generated map

‘Home grown Talent’ working with an animation production company for only one day scoping content for a film with secondary school pupils.

Poetry City, pavement drawings delivered as part of the Canterbury Festival

Other highs included my son becoming head boy at his secondary school and my two daughters enjoy school (on the whole). How well our garden is looking. I have really enjoyed riding my bike through the kent countryside with a group of friends. And putting a bird table in the garden and a peanut bird feeder outside our kitchen window as been fab.

Finally: My car is really developing personal characteristics and idiosyncrasies that make it special like an old friend.

Looking Forward to:

The Kent schools Torch Project. A pilot project aimed at supporting a wider kent schools programme celebrating the Olympic values. Working with http://www.workers-of-art.co.uk/

working with the North Kent Community Church and the residents of Springhead in Ebbsfleet to produce artworks.

The creation of the Wildart Sensory Trail in my local Blean Woodland. http://www.kentwildlifetrust.org.uk/ working with the kent wild life trust.

Working with Future Creative again http://www.future-creative.org/default.aspx at St. Georges school to continue landscaping their school grounds.

Being shortlisted for a large ground feature celebrating a market town in central England.

Working with Rosalind Davis at The Core Gallery on an artists talks/resources programme.

A return to doing some painting? Which also means developing work outside of commissioned projects.

Just walking in the woods with Cosmo.

Talk of vistiting Istambul.

The Lows

My lovely wife says there are DIY tasks looming all over the house and garden?

Being too busy all the time for relaxing and just chilling out.

Not learning anything new, nor getting out to see inspiring things and places.

Buying a macbook and being totaly confused and frustrated by it.

Working more and earning less.

• 
• 
• 

Wildart

My project is now called ‘Wildart’ and I felt a little odd as other peoples agendas were streaming in, and my own interests sidelined. I was surprised how despondant I felt, because I knew funding would would change everthing. So what I’ve done is write down the really interesting things this partnership with the Kent Wildlife Trust will offer.

Its not about spending money to make art objects of superior quality, with intellectually driven motives: its about working with other peoples skills and knowledge to create something with what you’ve got access to, at no cost. This is a very different kind of creativity.

I am not allowed to use anything non native. materials like wire, cement, stone from a quarry are not allowed, so you can see how challengeing this will be. I can’t introduce any planting unless it is already growing there.

This is actually a fantastic opportunity to design stuff which requires other peoples expertise and skills etc. Here is an example; I can’t just go and buy a load of 3×2 and 6×1 tanalized timber and make some seating say. No No No…..no ‘but we have got some trees we can cut down’.

uh..kin..el…… that’s an approach which changes perspectives!

Having spent 25 years making stuff with slate from India, mosaic tiles from France, wood from somewhere like Canada, and landscape designers who take a trip to all the way to Holland to place an order for 7 trees of a particular type, to create a specific effect during autumn, in a public park in central England, quite close to the M1.

This then is a little more sustainable that.

Other peoples skills, equipment and resources are seemingly available to me. This includes specialist organisation outside the trust.

This looks like it might actually be really exiting.

• 
• 
• 
• 
•