phoned head of Torbay Leisure and Visitor Services to pitch new Smooth Space project. We were asked to submit short overview via email.
we heard today, Smooth Space is invited to a meeting at the Town Hall this thurs to discuss project further…..
Monday meeting with Lucy Drane, Alias advisor and Gallery Co-ordinator / Co-ordinator of Spike Island Associates Programme at Works|Projects / Spike Island.
Sitting in our kitchen drinking Love Tea with Lucy who is unhurried and focused – while we have gone a bit muddled and lacklustre.
It takes a while for us to explain what we have begun to scope out as the next Smooth Space project. We have been talking it round and round together through the summer and have lost clarity. We have 2 distinct strands of activity – an artist’s residency and a series of talks/conversations – but they seem to be pulling in 2 separate directions which means that when we try to plan funding strategies we are not sure how to pitch each part of the activity/where they should fall.
Lucy’s response is clear and straightforward – make the talks/conversations part of the residency project. Start with the host venue and what we want to get out of access/being present there. Then have repeat events throughout the residency that relate to residency activity – 12 talks, happening monthly, engaging a contemporary visual art audience and developing Torbay’s cultural profile on a regional level. Consider how this would help other local practitioners.
We ask a very practical question – if you are planning a peripatetic series of talks, where do you start ie do we approach guest artists/curators first? How do you pitch an idea to an invited speaker when the project is still in very bare bones? How do we go about it?
Again Lucy is brilliantly clear – start by mapping out a list of venues. The programme of venues will shape the talks themselves – we should be ambitious and make a coherence between venue, location and invited artist/curator according to work/interests
The talks could also be a way for us to expand our network – as we could invite organisations from outside Torbay that we might want to connect with. Lucy talks about us trying to build and support an artist’s network in Torbay with further activities during the residency. She mentions the Manchester Salon http://www.manchestersalon.org.uk/ which has initiated a place for critical debate. And peer review – which Smooth Space has written into our vision statement – as ctirical feedback on work is a good thing to put into a funding bid.
Lucy is also keen to help us broaden our network – she asks us to think about who are our regional markers and to make sure we contact/connect with them. She tells us a list of people/organisations that are working in a similar way plus small activities we can get off the ground to get us started.
And we should put in markers and a time plan to keep ourselves on track and make sure we achieve steps towards writing our next funding bid. Plus, break down our costs into very small amounts – pots of money that will achieve a single part of our whole proposed activity. That way we can work out what we need to ask from funders and how a small amount will achieve a tangible goal.
Lucy also advises us to contact Visual Arts South West for funding advice and to mention kickstarters….
It has been a long and helpful session – our planning has shifted into focus and we feel like we can finally see what we are doing and hearing echoes of Paula Orrell’s advice to us to ‘be the conduit for enabling more stuff to happen in Torbay’
following Lucy’s visit – we make a phone call to ACE G4A who tell us there are no relationship managers any more – only national portfolio organisations, in effect, now have direct contact with ACE???
Trying to set up an Alias advisory session with Paula Orrell since July – couple of suggested dates we were unable to do and then Paula became so busy that she let us know that she wouldn’t be available until October at the earliest. She suggested that we let Alias know and that we ask if another advisor would be able to meet us sooner.
Alias replied very quickly and put us in touch with Lucy Drane who has arranged to come to us for a half day diagnostic session on Monday.
Day after Dorchester and Bridport meeting Julie Penfold from b-side.
We have a letter from the Elmgrant Trust granting our small funding request – our second successful grant application!
Plus, Alias responded with a very encouraging reply to our application for development support for Smooth Space and will pass our request to Paula Orrell for our initial meeting.
Bull Hotel, Bridport, meeting with Julie Penfold, curator, b-side.
Really hot day, and a glorious journey through Devon to Dorset all along the A35. Country market towns and intense industrial agriculture with not a whiff of diversity, nor major or even minor conurbation in sight.
It is lovely to meet Julie – am very interested in soundworks/sound interventions and have followed PVA and PVA MediaLab (very exciting projects) since moving to the South West – Julie is co-founder in 1996 of artist group PVA and currently project director and coordinator of PVA MediaLab and Director of LabCulture Ltd.
(The Bull Hotel is gorgeous – a grand market town hotel with gilding and panelling and squishy carpets and a full-on ballroom next to the ladies. We sit outside in the lovely shady garden)
Julie says a couple of positive things about past work – real morale boost – and focuses in on the 2 strands of activity Smooth Space is developing. Her advice and information are invaluable – sharing examples of projects she has directed; issues with funding; examples of open studio events.
Julie emphasises we should make sure we get good documentation and evaluate as we go – sound recording, filming etc – and says this will help to instantly build up our initiative’s track record.
We talk a lot about funding and writing funding bids – and, inevitably, about ACE: what the current priorities are; how we should feel more positive after reading the interview with Peter Heslip on a-n. Julie advises contacting the Arts Council and trying to get a meeting – (this advice was also given by Carol Carey, Claire Doherty and Paula Orrell). Julie says that our relationship manager will have useful information about what other projects are being developed in the region and this will give us an idea of how successful our funding application will be.
we have been trying to make contact with our ACE relationship manager for more than 8 months. She gave us a huge amount of support when we were developing ‘over the horizon’ and came to Berry Head to talk to us and see project outcomes and offered us a meeting to discuss future development for Smooth Space – but since last autumn has not been able to answer messages/return calls
One message from Julie is still resonating – keep putting in funding applications: don’t wait for an answer, just keep putting them in….The reality of keeping any arts initiative afloat
It is tempting to question ability/quality after such a long hard effort with so many knocks, but this meeting with Julie really helps me to get back on track/keep my focus/steel my resolve! We aren’t crap, so keep on trying.
