Jane Ponsford, visual arts organiser, St George’s Arts
While Louise’s residency has been the main focus of our attention we have also been looking at our future plans as an arts organisation. Over the last few months we have been researching other organisations that have something in common with our own; whether it is being based in a heritage building / redundant church or perhaps having as we do a programme which is based round a residency. This has lead to all sorts of interesting conversations, some quite bizarre. I’m thinking here of one in particular when I visited Fabrica with the Chair of our ‘Friends’ group to assess, of all things, their kitchen! We have a potentially useful but undeveloped sideline as a venue for events like wedding receptions and I wanted to show her that you don’t need the most up-to-date kitchen to make this sort of thing work. There have also been a series of very useful meetings with Jim Shea from Shea Debnam Associates to help us form a strategy for a sustainable future. Of course this particular year is maybe not the one to have chosen to have ambitious plans so we might take things a little slower than originally envisaged.
