I was artist in residence for 2 years at this beautiful (unfunded) 5 acre nature reserve. Basing my MA project and Thesis upon my work there.
I fell in love with it and was determined to stay working with them.
So the great news is that the Empty Shop fund grant I applied for way back in the summer has been approved and I now have the official paperwork offering me (on behalf of New Ferry Butterfly Park) the full amount asked for, subject to planning.
I am beyond excited and slightly scared too!!
Now I have to find the right empty shop, there are many in New Ferry but only a few that are actually ‘To let’. I’d like to stay pretty central if possible and the Council have helped me find the owners adress of one completely boarded up shop, so I’ll write next week and go and view the others too I hope.
The funding is for 6 months unless I can fundraise in that time to keep the shop open longer.
Initially I will set up a space within a shop in New Ferry as a temporary visitor centre in which to promote the Butterfly Park and its environmental work and the art trail as well as promoting planting of butterfly attracting plants locally and providing seeds to do this. I’ll also be holding a series of free workshops open to the local community. To use the shop as an exhibition space for a month would gice much needed publicity to the Butterfly Park whilst engaging with local residents and even recruiting potential new volunteers.
The shop space would then subsequently be used as a studio and gallery space to house up to 6 artists who I will either invite or would apply with proposals (relating to nature/the environment) to use the space for short residencies.
Eash artist would hopefully work in the space and run at least one workshop during their time there, for local residents to engage in. The work the artists prodice will then be shown in a short exhibition with an ‘Open Night’ for local residents and businesses etc to view and discuss. I have yet to work out all the details.
During all this time there would remain a presence from the Butterfly park with images and leaflets pertaining to the site and to guide visitors to the park along with further workshops related to the butterfly Park during the course of the tenancy.
We will also invite local Trusts and Action Groups to make use of the indoor space to meet and encourage discourse with the community.
All the artists involved will be encouraged to document and evaluate their involvement through social networking such as blogs, Twitter and Facebook. a really useful way of documenting the project but also hopefully this may enable us to reach the younger members of the communities too.
I’d like the shop to become a base that will encourage local residents to come together and discuss their changing environment and the neighbourhood they live in, maybe become more active and help to creat aspirational spaces that reflect the identity and life of their community. I’d hope that renewed interest may help the town centre resume its role as the centre of a community once more.
I also need to think of a shop title, the butterfly park logo has become a Comma butterfly and I’m playing with that as a title at the moment.
COMMA project
‘Comm’unity+’A’rt Project or Comma Gallery is that too twee? It’s kind of apt but I am not sure yet.
Over the course of the 6 month project we will continue to promote planting butterfly attracting seeds with the idea that united together as a community we could help make New Ferry into a Butterfly Town and eventually into a Town of Biodiversity.
Sounds a rather grand plan for a 6month project I think but we all have to start somewhere!
