This is the longest gap in my blog since I started it in April. It’s not that nothing has been happening. Far from it. But the run up to the wedding and then a few glorious days in Venice (with nightmarish journeys, but we’ll gloss over that!) and then 101 other things-that-needed-attending-to got in the way (including that inconvenient thing: paid work!).
Anyway, I’ve been given a window of opportunity to write about Festial while Trevor valiantly tackles a pile of pages from the encyclopaedia of economics that I’m supposed to be proof-reading, so ….
It’s hard to judge the success of the Dragon Hall installation, although I think it was probably the best I could make it, given the resources at my disposal. Ideally I’d have projected the DVD, but in practice I would probably have needed a white surface or screen, as I don’t think it would have been visible enough on the rough brick walls of the Undercroft. So, the television monitor was a reasonable compromise. Two small prints on plinths stood in another alcove, and elsewhere was a lectern with the A4 comb-bound book containing all five issues (so far) of Kalender, and a whole heap of copies of the current Kalender, of which I reckon at least 90 have been taken away by visitors.
Going back last week to dismantle it all, I’d been looking forward to seeing comments in the book, good or bad, as I had no idea how the installation had been received. It was therefore disappointing to discover that the only ‘real’ comment was that of my lovely friend Hilde, who came up to Norwich for the wedding and had been along to the exhibition during the morning beforehand. It was a really nice comment, but I have to admit a certain possibility of bias!
Observant readers may remember the last entry where I was looking forward to the first performance evening slash ‘sponsor’s party’ at Dragon Hall which, I assumed, would serve as a private view for the four exhibitors at the venue. Well, I was wrong! It was a perfectly pleasant event and I enjoyed the talk by Susie Hanna on her current animation about Sylvia Plath, but the speech by the Fringe Festival organiser made no mention of the art to be seen there at all. As some of the work was quite subtly located and mine was in the Undercroft with no signage exhorting people to go take a look, I’m not at all sure that everyone present was aware that Dragon Hall was more than just an atmospheric venue for the party and performances! It’s true that in quiet moments during the speeches, strange sounds could be heard emanating from the Undercroft (thanks again for the soundtrack, Trevor!) but I’ve certainly learned a few lessons from the experience. Firstly, don’t take anything for granted but actually speak to the speech-maker(s) beforehand and check that the work is going to be promoted. And provide clear signage to lead people to the work: don’t assume they’ll find it by themselves! As this was a Fringe Festival run by volunteers, it was really nobody’s job but my own.
On, then, to Michaelmas in the Festial year. I’ll post a bit more about this festival as I do more work on Kalender – just need to finish that proof-reading first! – but I have had to compromise on the date that I visited the church this time, as Michaelmas using the Julian calendar actually fell while I was away in Venice. So, I went up there on the first possible day afterwards, to find that a few changes had taken place in my absence. The most instantly noticeable of these was that scaffolding has now been erected outside and inside the north side of the church. I did know that quite major work was going to take place during the course of the year to replace the north aisle roof and windows, but it was still quite a shock. There were no builders anywhere to be seen on that occasion (well, they are notorious for starting a job and then trying to keep lots of people happy at once!) but I think that, for this shy and retiring artist, the presence of the builders is likely to be an inhibiting factor while the work goes on. I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it, though.
Then, on Monday, I went to Ely for a meeting with my mentors Katie from BCA and Jo from the Babylon Gallery. It was quite a tough, but stimulating, meeting. Half-way through the project seemed a good time to take stock and maybe tweak things a little if necessary. Most importantly, Jo and Katie gave me advice which will help me find the motivation to push forward on that thing called ‘audience development’ through the barrier of feeling that I’ve received little or no audience feedback during the time the project has been in progress. So, now I have a checklist of ‘things to do’ (as if there weren’t enough already!) and I’m actually really excited about it.
Among these, I’m planning to hold an Open Day in Wood Dalling to talk about the stage that Festial has reached and to show some of the work. Maybe there’ll be some hands-on activities, too – but I’d better not get carried away with all this until I’ve done some thinking about it. My first thought is that, as the church is named for St Andrew, St Andrew’s Day (13 December, Julian calendar style) would be a good choice. Another thing I’ll be doing is contacting some local heritage societies to see if they would be interested in hearing about the project. This all sounds far removed from the bright lights and cool galleries, but I’m starting to understand the need to ‘grow’ an audience from a tiny seed of goodwill. Maybe I’ve been a bit too ambitious, too soon.
