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.
