Cheese Dreams Project

I started my residency at Bootham School, York in September. As well as getting the children to help with my Cheese Dreams Project, I have been running life drawing classes (which has gotten easier now, and more enjoyable…this was something I was scared about doing, as I don’t understand the ‘technical’ drawing terms… I just enjoy drawing) as well as other activities like ‘Arts Birthday Club’-where we look at the work of Robert Filliou (Fluxus)

Cheese Dreams Activity has been a complete hit, and it has changed the direction of the project. I have been getting my group (mainly yr 8 pupils have taken a liking to this activity) to interpret the dream diary from my original project… the dream diary we are working from is James, who runs a DIY tape label in Sheffield called ‘Tye Dye Tapes’

AFTER the first showing of cheese dreams, I started thinking of more ways to generate work from the dream diaries… I started thinking about creating larger graphs, sculptures from the dreams which featured common objects or themes.

IT WAS HARD… SO I WENT ON HOLIDAY FOR A MONTH.

After I returned from holiday, I worked a lot (August) in the cheese shop, the deli and print workshops… which meant that cheese dreams kind of went on hold, but I managed to get over to Leeds 3 times to work on the project, each time I either got distracted by the sunshine, friends or just couldn’t find a way to move the project on…

I started attending a monthly cheese club in Leeds though, called ‘homage2fromage’ which is really good fun, they have a different theme every month and you get to try loads of cheeses… being a cheese expert and all, this club seemed like a good place to think and discuss the cheese dreams project, and how to further it.

In hindsight, all of the ‘procrastination’ was just time spent thinking about the next step, HOARD HQ itself was a space to observe what material I already had, to test out ways of display and having it all a train and bus journey away was a separate head space… which meant I really had to think about what materials to put in my bag and what I need to do next.

THEN SOMETHING BAD HAPPENED

I lost 3 dream diaries and the exhibition so far in the post. I moved house and started my new job at Bootham School, which naturally caused address chaos…

This project has snowballed… in a good way.

I received all but one of the diaries back in the post, ready to make work from them…

I discovered so much about the volunteers via their dreams, yet the cheeses didn’t necessarily produce similar dreams. I made some graphs and documentation based on the dream diaries BUT the diaries themselves seem to be the most interesting artefact.

In May I received a double whammy of good news which have effected my project:

1. I submitted my project to HOARD which is a year long project based in Leeds, which houses the work of artists who use hoarding to create their work. My project is essentially ‘dream hoarding’ so Cheese Dreams HQ is based here…what is so lovely about HOARD is the idea that the public are welcome to look around and see our work in progress every month or so.

2. I got a year long residency (September start) at Bootham School in York, which enables me to develop my project with a small team of students in Year 8 (which is pretty much the funnest thing EVER)

Paralel to this news Cheese Dreams made its debut at Melanie Alexandrou’s Pop Up in Macclesfield (part of their annual Barnaby Arts Festival) which was fantastic.

I displayed the diaries as part of the exhibition, and they proved to be the most interesting to viewers. The tangibility of the diaries is really inviting, and being able to compare the dreams as a viewer is really involving and creates a lovely social ‘hub’ of people discussing and comparing the dreams.

The evidence and documentation is being developed at Bootham School… which is super fantastic…

Logistics and assumptions. I started my ‘cheese dreams’ project and the time has gone rather fast, i set aside a couple of months to find 5 volunteers around the UK… i wanted to have a good ‘diverse’ group of people, and preferebly people that i didnt know involved. I was also keen to advertise for them outside of the ‘art opps’… I kind of wanted people to think of the imediate gratification of having free cheese for a month, rather then making their dream diaries look good because they will be exhibited. I advertised for volunteers on the cheese shop (love cheese, york) website and twitter, and I got a huge response from females based in york…so next time (?!) I will have to focus specifically on Yorkshire based women! I ended up though, with 3 male volunteers and 2 female volunteers. Currently I have kept a good dialogue with 4 of my volunteers but have received no communication since the initial agreement to take part from 1! Part of me thinks I should have trusted my gut (or taken the sluggish exchanges via email) and not chosen this particular person, BUT I am again, assuming! And still have my final cheese package to send on Friday! In the first package my volunteers got a diary, a contract and their first week of cheeses (all English) the second packahe contained all French cheeses, and the third contained spanish and italian! The last one is going to include processed cheeses like dairylea, cheese strings etc, which I do feel slightly bad about, as its not exactly ending on a high note is it! Logistically challenged? Nope! Despite packaging 35 little cheese samples (and labelling of course) taking a really silly amount of time, getting in the way of everyone at my work and baffling my local post office ( I am notorious there anyway as I’m always on their photocopier making zines, posters and sending ‘interesting’ envelopes so ‘stinking of cheese’ is just another to add to the list) it’s actually gone rather smoothly! Postage & Packaging wise a. The packages get there the next day b. The packages arrive in a fine condition and still chilled C. It’s not as expensive as I thought it would be So, there we go! Things aren’t as hard as I thought they would be thanks to people being supportive and genuinly showing an interest in the peoject! My work place and my chilled out volunteers have been great so far!

Some kind of strange introduction part one. Origins of a project. Two weeks ago I embarked upon my ‘cheese dreams’ project. This project has been floating around for around two years but it has now taken form. The project involves me sending cheese to 5 volunteers around the UK for a month (one cheese per night) and I ask them to record in a diary, their dreams. I will then take all of the diaries and produce data, analysis and an exhibition/event from the findings. The first exhibition will be at ‘Magpie Thunder Bureau pop up’ as part of Barnaby Festival in June this year! So, you can obviously (?!) guess, I am an artist who works in a cheese shop! yES I am one of THOSE many people that works to support their practice, and hasn’t received any kind of funding :( Being a product of my time though, I am very good at being resourceful and really do believe that we should use our surroundings (however far away they are to where you want to be) as inspiration to create interesting things/projects. The project first started when another deli i worked in a couple of years ago, shut down. I went into the empty deli when all the furniture was being ripped out and managed to nick the giant chalkboard with all the cheeses we sold written on, and an apron too. I don’t know why I took them, I just thought I might use them or maybe I just felt sad seeing the objects left behind, which is silly I know. I took the objects to my studio (I was doing a ‘graduate intern scheme’ and I got use of a studio for a year) and kept going back to them over again but not being able to come up with any thing. I started thinking about ‘roles’ and ‘exchange’ a lot at this point… I wanted to somehow play with the role of worker turned confidant as what I missed about work was certain people, I began to miss the customers that were what some people might call ‘a bit mental’ but they used to make my day, they would talk to me and confide in me alsorts of things about their life. They thought I was a pleasant girl, turstworthy and some of the older customers would tell me about how they used to take great pride in their skill or trade and how it’s all changed now… The customers stories created a lot of my art work at the time, but they’ll never know that. http://www.cheesedreamsproject.tumblr.com