Funding for international travel and exchange

It was good to get the flight booking out of the way – one less worry! But its been hard going looking for a hotel. I mean – looking for a hotel within our price range. Norwegian accommodation is unbelievably expensive. Then I looked again at the web page of the studios we are visiting… it has a kitchen, shower block, an office and a lot of spare room. Hmmmmm… couldn’t we stay there for at least part of our stay? Emailed Jet… yes we can stay there – but ‘It’s a bit basic’. If ‘basic’ means we are saving at least £150 a night – I’m up for it! It’s yet another thing we can push back to the ‘to do eventually’ list now, so that we can concentrate on more pressing things.

A week away from the installation at Metal…….

Flights to Tromso are now booked – yeah!

Took a lot of searching and got an awful lot of advice to find the cheapest… but found something in the end – even though it involves a bit of a trek either side. Tromso though, as someone quite rightly stated, is after all virtually in Greenland! Now to find cheap accommodation. Is that possible in Norway? 

I’m seeing Norwegians everywhere now….had a meeting with Kaya Herstad yesterday to discuss the Threshold festival (an arts and music event at Novas CUC 11 – 13 February )http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/event.php?eid=124976877557141

Looked at the space she has given us and had a chat about Norway. Got some tips off her about the weather etc. and some useful contact names, which I’ll chase up next week.

It’s going to be really hard going – fitting in this festival in between the exhibition at Metal and the trip to Norway. I personally felt though that it would be a good introduction to the ‘new’ group we’ve set up and it will give us a chance to start work on the ‘cultural crossover’ ideas we may take to Norway. As with all of the other plans we have for the future though, this one can now be filed away to look at again in a couple of weeks. Venue has been booked… box ticked.

I had a back up plan for Metal in case the collaboration didn’t work out. ( me of little faith) ..and I’m waiting for the end product of that to come in. I’d asked many other people to take part in the project, so I posted a deadline for Monday to get it boxed off . Thank God for face book – what would we do without it? Even though I’d started the project as part of my own art practise, it now ties in really well with my Metal collaborator and his work. In theory that is – we still need to see what it looks like together!

God I’m tired. I need to do so much work and tie up a pile of loose ends…but I really should spend at least an hour getting the house straight…

Had a meeting at Metal last night to discuss the collaborations. I’m hoping that Jet ( my collaborator) doesn’t change his mind over what we are doing now – though I did get an email last night from him, asking if I would ‘make a post box that was similar to one that would be used in Liverpool’. Three weeks away from the exhibitions, with still tons to do, I don’t really need this.

It’s a strange, disconcerting feeling – working with a long distance collaborator. It makes me feel anxious that I’m not sure what the finished product will look like – something I have never experienced before. I won’t meet him in person for this exhibition, so all correspondence is by email.

The meeting at the gallery went well anyway. After discussing our proposals, we had another walk around the space to mentally plan out where each work could go. We’ll meet up again in two weeks with the actual work and start to space it out.



Funding for international travel and exchange

Funding… now that was a really nice Christmas present !

I saw the email and automatically assumed it was another reject from somewhere …as you do. But no – it had attachments…and an opening sentence of ‘ Congratulations! Your group has been awarded a NAN bursary’!

Text Sue ( Sue Meyerhoff Sharples) to tell her the news and she was just …overjoyed was an understatement.

We’d spent the best part of the last six months talking and planning our International project. The group we are part of – SOUP COLLECTIVE had been offered an exhibition at METAL Liverpool, for February 2011 and after a series of discussions with people from the Gallery, we mutually decided that we would work on collaborations with others to give a different edge to the exhibition.

So the next step was to find collaborators…..

To cut a very long story short (as I know that I will now be making regular updates on the use of the funding – and I don’t want to bore everyone rigid with pages of background info!! ) …. we made contact with artists from Norway, Austria and USA…and collaborations were planned.

The problem was that SOUP COLLECTIVE was made up from artists who had some connection with Tate Liverpool, so bringing in ‘outside’ artists to exhibit with us, didn’t fit the group rationale. We had to set up a ‘sister’ group, which was more open, so that the two groups could work simultaneously. GLOBAL Traders was born.

This gave us a platform to extend our practise internationally ( more info about the group and why we chose the name later, or find it are under info on the facebook page ) There are several projects on the go at the moment, which I will give regular updates on, but the fact that we were awarded the funding, means that we can connect with other International artists in person.

So…….back to the NAN bursary….

My collaborator for METAL also happens to run a studio space in Tromso, Norway. Through correspondence, we thought ‘wouldn’t it be nice if we came over to see how your studio works, meet up with the artists there and exchange some ideas….’

…and that is why we asked – and were awarded (!) the funding. To which we are hugely grateful!