A belated post from our trip to Birmingham in July. CWC is keeping us busy!
CM: Arriving at Birmingham, I changed immediately to a train for Bournville to visit the International Project Space, which was showing Through Symbolic Worlds with Banu Cennetoğlu, Emily Roysdon, Stephen Willats. Countersituation, a weekly single sheet publication by An Endless Supply was also on display, and Collapsing in Parts, Cally Spooner’s eight month project was about to begin. Unfortunately much of the audio-visual work as part of Through Symbolic Worlds was turned off, but I was interested to see the space and read parts of Countersituation before meeting with Robin Kirkham and Harry Blackett of An Endless Supply later in the day. I also had a great interest in visiting Bournville for it’s renowned detail in planning and the consideration it displays for the well-being of the Cadbury’s workforce.
Through Countersituation An Endless Supply publish weekly texts and essays from invited writers. We were particularly interested to see how the single sheet format worked as something we had considered, on a larger scale for COPY. They have also set up a challenging structure in publishing weekly, which demands connection with a large number of writers with time to write at short notice or existing relevant works. Timescale and turnaround is something we considered in detail when planning CWC activity, and arrived at the conclusion of producing COPY only alongside particular, partnerships, themes or projects.
At Eastside Projects I was offered a much welcomed cup of tea and discussed our project with Katy Woods, as well as the wider scene in Birmingham. Eastside Projects was showing Narrative Show, build around a complex narrative structure which creates a rhythm as the exhibition wvolves, understanding the gallery as a ‘flow of spatial, cumulative and experiential narratives’. This is a concept I am really interested in and found very relevant to CWC activity, in thinking about how our ideas around writing within practice may come to take form in an expanded sense; unfortunately my experience of the show was limited to a single (and very short) view.
Robin Kirkham of An Endless Supply showed me the way to their studio where we mat Harry Blackett. We talked about how our projects came about, how they are funded and our plans for taking them forward or changing course. An Endless Supply was started as a publication which strengthened the local art community gin giving local artists exposure and access to each others practice. The publication was entirely self funded after acquiring a Risograph printer. The funding of our CWC has been a key point of discussion for us; we accept as many young practitioners do that we will contribute money and time to the project, yet on order to form a more sustainable model we need initial support from funders and other organisations. We also want to pay our writers, which we feel is the best way to support emerging and established practitioners. However, the standard of contribution to An Endless Supply was very high without funding, which demonstrated the impact of the level of community interest in and endorsement of the publication.
Another issue we face, which we have discussed with various other people, is price; we have almost confirmed that we will charge a small fee to begin with, which may add value and benefit the reception of the publication. AES charge a fee which worked well for them.
Editorial process has also been a key concern of ours; whether to invite guest editors, maintain full editorial control or have an open policy – whether or not we have the necessary experience to ‘judge’ others work. We found through the pilot edition of COPY, that in actual fact we had a clear idea of the quality and style of work we were interested in, so the lack of confidence mainly arises in the communication around acceptance, which we will develop on time.
AES told me about the Happy Hypocrite event they hosted at Eastside Projects which involved short readings from a number of artists and writers. The format sounded challenging yet pushed many people to confront elements of their practice in a new way, Robin and Harry’s perspective on the event as a whole was useful. An Endless Supply were a great motivated and interesting group to meet and we hope to maintain contact with them and invite them into our process in future.
