New Ferry Butterfly Park; Empty Shop Project

First day at the empty shop project. It took just one full day to make ‘Runnners Sports’ disappear from the building, quite sad really.

Gerald Curtis settled in well (see www.a-n.co.uk/p/2092711)

Our shop looks amazing, it has so much potential, I can’t wait to see what every artist does with it.

We’ve set aside a ‘visitor centre’ section for people to sit, read,draw etc but primarily the space will be studio.

Had to work in my other job this afternoon and felt a bit deflated leaving Gerald to it on his own but I’ll be there all day tomorrow in the main.

I took Gerald to a Liverpool Biennial artists talk at METAL Liverpool tonight.Very inspiring, I went primarily as I know Jeanne Van Heeswijk, I worked on her 2Up@Down project in its early stages and as am.azing as she is (and I can honsetly say her work is fantastic and was one of the inspirations to me starting this particular project), Fritz Haeg totally blew me away.

Our first day on a project that is all about planting in the community and informing local people how to be self sufficent (whilst attracting butterflies obviously) and here’s this Global artist doing exactly the same but on a much grander, more phonomenal scale.

I spoke to the artist afterwards to tell him about our project and to invite him to visit, he said he’d like to, I sincerely hope he takes us up on it as I just feel a massive connection in our projects regardless that I’m just starting out. I think he would love the Butterfly Park and it’s ethos. he’s back to Liverpool end of May so who knows.

Gerald and I, in our equally enthused state had much to talk about and plan for our first weeks ahead.

Very exciting!

Sorry to have been lax in writing my blog.

Ridiculously busy with 5 part time jobs.

1. Mum to 2 (hardest work)

2. Activity Plan Manager (my paid day job)

3. Lecturer (filling in on some sessions on my old degree course, loving it!)

4. Director at Arena Studios (voluntary but hands on!)

5. Project Manager- Comma Project

not to mention trying to fit my own artwork in there somewhere.

You can see why I’m busy lately!!!!

Anyway – to update, have signed the contract on our shop..yay. That was today, handed over a thousand pound over to the agent today, eek, that was a bit scary and thats just the deposit and a months rent.

Planning permission forms go in tomorrow along with over £300 fees. another eek.

We pick up the keys this Friday, I am beyond excited. The landlords have been amazing so far and have agreed to leave us the fridge, microwave, a desk, some chairs, a stereo and a little sofa along with a load of shelves, it’s a Godsend!

I managed to get a free A3 black + white laser printer off some kindly freecycler and spent £20 on card/leaflet racks on ebay. One of the volunteers sons found 4 display stands in a skip yesterday that will come in useful and will go with the full unopened reams of coloured paper found in a skip a few weeks ago, amazes me what people throw out!

Now have to organise electricty, insurance,taxes, broadband and so on and so forth.

Our first artist Gerald arrives in Wirral 31st and starts in the shop on Monday 2nd. I HOPE we’ll be ready for him but it’ll be a learning curve for us all if not, we’ll muddle on.

One of out artists, my friend Julie has just been featured in Inhabitat, I love that website so much and am thrilled to bits for her and it’s great timing for us, bit of publicity for Julie prior to her residency starting 27th April for a month. http://inhabitat.com/julie-dodd-sculpts-delicate-nature-inspired-artwork-from-layers-of-recycled-paper/

Its all good on New Ferry at the moment, the local regeneration action group have just applied to be part of the new Mary Portas initiative, would be fantastic for the area if they get through. I am crossing everything at the moment.

After me saying I wasn’t going to reveal the artists I am now – the person in question has sent me an email accepting so I thought I would reveal all.

I’ll blog about each proposal over the coming weeks too.

First in w/c 2nd April is Gerald Curtis

www.geraldcurtis.blogspot.com

End of April through May is Julie Dodd

www.juliedodd.co.uk

End of May through June is Andrea Bassil

www.annanilsen.com

and

www.artisstics.co.uk

End of June through July Iain Broadley

http://www.iainbroadley.co.uk/

End of July through August Pamela Sullivan

no website available yet.

End of August through September a collaboration with Sarah-Jane Richards and Anna Ketskemety

http://annaketskemety.com/

and

www.sarahjanerichards.com

So things are finally happening and happening fast!

We have a shop, all agreed anyway, nothing actually signed yet but I have a cheque for admin fees to send off to the agent and then its all go.

The owners of the shop are actually selling and have a buyer for the freehold but it will take a while so they are happy to have us in paying rent for 6 months while all the paperwork etc gets sorted. Its great news but they want us in as soon as possible so I have had to shufty all the dates forward two weeks so panic is now setting in.

We had a committee meeting and I took all the proposals along, very hard to choose just 6 artists from all the applications as there were so many great ideas but we did…finally and all 6 have now been informed.

I won’t give names out yet as I’m still waiting to hear from one person to see if they can make it with the shifting dates.

So now its freecycle and ebay to get furniture for the shop and I need to speak with the landlords to see if they are leaving anything, like the fridge :) It’d be good to have some bits left behind.

Its also all ‘slat wall’ stuff and I’m not sure if thats suitable for all the artists so need to figure out whether I cover some of it temporarily…we’ll see.

However, its big, its clean, its secure and its in the EXACT right location so I couldn’t be happier in that respect.

Very exciting 6 months ahead I think.

Still waiting to hear about shops – this is the bad part of the project …..I’m not good at waiting around :(

I have made an offer on the one next door to the post office but with some stipulations – haven’t heard back yet.

Time wise, I really want to be in the shop by April to give us a full month in the run up to the Butterfly Park annual Open Day in May so I hope things start to move a bit faster soon.

I’ve only had 2 official submissions now but so many have requested the details I think there will be a flurry of them right at the last minute. Cannot wait to go through all of the proposals, the team and I will have tough time deciding who to choose I think as just via emails some of the ideas sound fabulous.

I saw this today http://www.bringbackthebutterflies.org.uk/ it’s a great site about a community in Camden trying to work together to have butterfly attracting plants in the empty spaces, so similar to what I am trying to achieve in New Ferry, really glad I found it and have contacted the guy who is running the project, it would be great to get his slant on things, see how it’s working there and how it could work for us too.