Back in Glasgow after a long Friday evening train journey, stuck sitting next to some rowdie drunken nurses from Aberdeen. I met John Binnie at the train station, the writer who I have worked with on a couple of projects, but unfortunately couldn’t get a seat with him. Managed to have half a conversation where we discussed our shared interest in working with ‘the community’. We recently worked on a project together for the ‘Aye Write’ festival with recovering alcoholics from AIS, GEAPP, and Milestone in the East of Glasgow, and we both found it very rewarding. The project culminated in performances at the Mitchell library, and at Platform Theatre Space, Easterhouse. John has a knack for getting people to write about things they might not normally talk about, so the works the group produced were gritty, universal and deeply moving.
Yesterday I met up with Liz Rowe, Ellie Harrison and the http://extraspecialpeople.org group from Eastside Projects, Birmingham www.eastsideprojects.org who had been having a whistle-stop two day tour of the Glasgow Artscene. They came to my studio at the Briggait, and there were about 18 of them so they filled the studio! I also talked to them about the Scottish Artists Union www.sau.org.uk, as I am on the executive.
I met them later on in the evening at the Intermedia Gallery opening of Sarah Forrester, and they were all starting to look a bit exhausted… apparently they had walked everywhere, and not used any public transport!
It was good to hook up with Liz Rowe again as I have known her for a few years. We met at the Shining Cliff Residency, in Ambergate, near Nottingham, hosted by My House Projects. We have kept in touch and i showed Liz’s works in both of my Hallelujah exhibitions, (http://smallthingsthatmakeupabigthing.blogspot.com…)
I had some interesting conversations with artists Ruth Claxton, and Nathaniel Pitt an artist who I previously met at the “Winner Takes It All” conference, Liverpool Biennial 08. Inevitably we ended up talking about artists survival strategies and ways of operating, ‘How to survive in this business’ seems to be a recurring topic.
