Cara a Cara || Face to Face

Question … I hear you … What about the artists? Have they started work yet? Well it’s been quite a month. We got past the hurdle of artists agreeing to contribute more than one piece of work, but we were still waiting on new images of the children. I had been receiving some here and there but it was proving a tough challenge to (a) get photos – the children only met at most weekly, (b) get photos that were useable – to quote Philly/Matt:

“it’s hard, because the minute you tell a Bolivian kid to pose for a picture they stand up straight and don’t smile. We’ll try to make them as natural as possible and get those to you as soon as possible”.

… once I finally got enough and matched them up to the table of ‘who painted who’, I sent the images (whilst requesting a few re-takes) out to the artists.

Remembering all the great advice and info received from Terry, I also asked if each artist could attempt to get one piece of work ready by Nov 6^th. This would give us time to collate and look at printing options in time for xmas. I’d really like get some cards/sets of prints done, limited edition possibly, to sell this side of xmas. Raise awareness and funds at the same time. That said I haven’t sourced a printer yet and would really like to find a good and generous/cheap one who could work with us throughout the project.

I think our biggest outlay is going to be in printing…

– Cards and/or small sets of prints as mentioned above

– There’s the idea of making prints of all works and sending a set back to Sucre for a parallel auction to be held

– Potentially displaying a set of edition printed works in other venues to raise awareness and funds

– Potentially a book of all works

So, that’s the progress there.

Meantime I thought I didn’t have enough to do and applied to go on a residency with Matt Roberts Arts (http://www.alasgallery.co.uk/) which has been great and running the last three week’s or so – another blog project perhaps!

During week one I receive confirmation from Julie at the Big Issue that John Bird was going to take on the role of auctioneer – ecstatic!!!!! Baring any Big Issue event colliding with our time frame (an evening during the week beginning 24^th February 2013 – a date for your diary) going into his calendar, which would obviously take priority, he shall be there. If this happens, the organisation will send us a representative!!! How fantastic is that?! Fingers crossed!

The meeting at the Bolivian Embassy went really well; at the last minute I decided to pull together some slides by way of a presentation to talk through (a comfort blanket too). This really helped and Ignacio’s presence was invaluable. They now need to get backing from their Ministry of Culture to support our project and asked us for a copy of the presentation to forward to them – Ignacio very generously offered to translate the English version for us… What we would really like from them is a possible venue to hold the auction. Again, fingers crossed!

After the meeting the Embassy sent me an invitation to an art event the following week and a request to contact all the artists involved in our project in order to extend the invite to them also. Amazing!



There was only one thing for it – Be Firm! So I thought about it, and thought about it, and proposed to Philly (&Matt) that we stick to the original game plan and each artist just paint one child each. I suggested that in addition we could produce a book that all the children’s work could be included in. That way no one would be left out. Like I’d said – I couldn’t ask the other artists involved to do more. Equally I was cringing at the disappointment I was delivering to the children.

So in conjunction with writing this email I also set about writing an email to the artists … after all it was their choice. Before I could send it I receive this back:

“I understand it may be hard for the artists to draw more than one child, but I think we would have to do something to make up for that. The children who drew are awaiting a picture of themselves and I feel it would be letting them down not to get them one. It’s really going to make them proud to see themselves drawn by an artist. But, we can work that out as the project progresses and see how much each artist is willing to do”

Again I was caught on the hop, I hadn’t thought through the expectation of the children seeing themselves painted … I included this in my email, sent it, and waited ….

Philly and Matt sent through the list along with photos of the work the children had done. I had only sent head-n-shoulders pictures through of the artists, and yet we were receiving photos of work with whole bodies in them. Awesome!

I had phoned the artist, who had been painted 6 times, before sending out the group email – to talk her through my dilemma and ask if she would be able to do 3 pieces (a few other artists had been done 3 times). She could choose which three, and we would work on getting the other three children done by other artists in the group. It was a good gauge for me, to know her reaction I was able to consider what might come back from my email.

Well, almost without hesitation the replies came flooding in. The artists were prepared to do more than one painting – I say painting, but the only stipulation we had given ourselves was size. We agreed to make the work A4-A2 in size and no bigger, so it didn’t over-shadow the children’s work. They were working on A3 cartridge paper; which they struggled to source initially – So really medium was up for debate really; it didn’t have to be paint.

I have to say, while I was hoping the answer would be yes, I am also very humbled by everyone’s generosity of time and artwork.

As an aside we would really like to organise, phase II you understand, a residency in Sucre, find funds to send one or two artists over for say 3 months and work directly with the children. Let’s hope we succeed here with phase I, and can also make that happen that would be such a lovely reward for them :-)



Over the next week I chased the Embassy and it paid off. They had as I thought, been busy with the Olympics, but were now able to engage in dialogue. We set up a meeting for the 10^th Sept, how exciting.

I’d originally hoped Laura would be able to attend with me but now I asked a fellow artist on the project – Ignacio – this was the obvious choice really as he is from Argentina and a great asset when going into a meeting with Spanish speaking people. Especially when what Spanish I did learn seems to have deserted me!

A skype call to Bolivia also proved useful and a friend of Philly (Matt) was now going to keep things going while she was on vacation. They had received the photos of the artists and some children had already started painting sessions. Matt was in charge of the library organisation Biblioworks that I mentioned earlier, and between them they had managed to get 31 children painting! Utterly Amazing! They were now in the process of collating all the names, ages and who they had painted, so we could pass this onto the artists.

But this presented with it a new dilemma… can you guess what it is yet?

In their enthusiasm to encourage participation, and with lots of shiny new materials, they had allowed the children to choose who they painted/drew. This resulted in a much larger number than required taking part and some painting the same artist. In fact one artist had been painted 6 times!!!

What now? We only planned to paint one child each. Each artist had offered to get involved and donate one painting to auction to raise money for the street children and magazine. How could we now choose only 14 from the 31? Which 14? What about the others? Surely I couldn’t ask let alone expect any artist to contribute more than one piece? How do I get around this? …



It was now the beginning of August and the Olympics were in full swing, but it wasn’t all doom and gloom; I made a breakthrough with the Embassy and managed to get an outline of our project in front of the Consulate for consideration and was waiting to hear from them. I got put through to John Bird’s PA (Julie) and she said he was really interested in our project, although he currently was on holiday and we should talk again in a couple of weeks. December, Julie said (I’d originally put this forward in my email) might be tricky as xmas was a really busy and important time for the Big Issue and the homeless. How naive I was, not taking this into account in the original plan – of course the end of the year would make sense to us, with people spending money, wanting to give to charity etc. but a crucial time for them, should we want John on board. Thankfully I was immediately able to explain that we were now possibly looking at a later date.

Things were happening so fast, I still had to run the delay by the artists to make sure this would work for them. Thankfully they were actually quiet relieved I think, and fully supportive.

A new challenge arose though – now we needed new photos of the children to work with, Philly was struggling to get enough children on board. It was bad news in that without children the project was a non-starter, but good news in that if we could now get a fresh group of children together then we would be more likely to make the reciprocity nature of the project work. The artists all got images to me by the agreed date and I send them on to Bolivia, together with some funds for art materials. Meanwhile Philly tried to work out how to engage enough children on the project. Many of them knew nothing about life outside Sucre, never mind wanting to involve themselves with a project that was so far away. To give you some idea, we are talking about 7-12 year olds; this would be tricky with most children never mind amongst these children who have so little. There was hope though, another organisation in the town that runs libraries for the communities, encouraging them to read and write, was keen to help out … so maybe it wasn’t a disaster after all.

Around this time I also met with Terry, from venue we were looking at the possibility of using. Again the initial contact email I sent had suggested pre-xmas, but as we now talked and explored the option of post-xmas and how much needed and could be done, it became major-league apparent that the delay was the best decision so far. Terry was amazing. He gave me loads of tips; he’d even done some new research into areas we could look at links with and people/organisations we could approach that might be keen to get on board. I came away with my head buzzing but fully energised. Lots to chew on and lots of leads to follow up, now instead of looking for one venue for one event, I was considering a number of events in the run up to a big finale… like I haven’t got enough to get done already, oh well “in for a penny, in for a pound”.

Initially when the project was first coming together a marketing friend (Laura) had offered to help with the admin minefield, this was an amazing offer and I knew it would help immensely. But it has proved a busy time for her at work so she hasn’t managed to input that much so far, what with work sending her overseas a fair bit… I’ll just have to look at that big list Terry and I drew up of things to look into and source and see how many of the artists have time to contribute that little bit extra … when I get a minute to look at it myself!



Having the commitment of fellow artists and the enthusiasm they have shown, has really excited me about what can be achieved with this project.

Initially I tried to pull a meeting together so we could all discuss what and how it would all work. But this proved quite difficult and although we did have a meeting it was moved quite a few times before a date could get at least half the group together.

This scared me a little as I thought that we really needed to get together to make things happen, agree agendas, timeframes, etc. I soon realised that if it was to succeed I would have to relax about this as everyone – including myself was really busy. I’d have to just take the lead and hope they followed, thankfully everyone has been really supportive and encouraging so far and progress has been to everyone’s liking.

After gathering a team of artists I contacted Philly to ensure she was up for our proposal and gave her an idea of rough timescales. I initially thought we could have it done by xmas. She was really keen on the idea of not just raising money but getting the children involved which was great.

Putting my thinking cap on I also thought if there was synergy with the BIG Issue model, maybe we could get John Bird on board – be our auctioneer for instance. You don’t ask you don’t get, so I started contact with the Big Issue, see if I could make this happen. I also contacted the Bolivian Embassy here in London; see if they would be interested in associating themselves with our project.

We were now in the run up to the Olympics and everyone was either involved in this or on holiday escaping it! Initial investigations into possible venues were proving tricky in the lead up to xmas too, then we heard Philly had had a nasty bike accident, badly injuring her shoulder. She also wasn’t sure the reciprocal nature of the project would work as a lot of the children I had originally met had now moved on, meaning the photos I already had were no use. Philly also had holiday planned in September.

It was all pointing the same way – we had to slow the project down. Plan the auction for the New Year. Maybe then getting the right people and venues in place would be easier.