Myself and Sally Lemsford braved the snow and ice to drive down to Colchester for OpenAIR: Effecting Change last weekend. We unfortunately had slightly misjudged travel times from AA and arrived an hour late, missing some of the keynote speeches, however, we both took part in workshops and networking, and it was exciting and inspiring to see some projects that are going on and to be involved – we both agreed that we need to know about what’s going on so that we can participate and support them, and that there should be wider events taking place in a variety of locations across the UK at the same time in order to raise the profile for what we’re working towards.
We met some interesting people, and when I dropped by Mum’s on the way home, I came across an article in the local newspaper that seemed to highlight the very issues that we face. The article is about some Network Rail workmen that were criticised for building a snowman instead of “working”. Of course, we all know those workmen are most likely artists themselves, and that the kind of nimby attitudes of non-artists out in rural Lincolnshire inhibits the ability for artists to create, or. more importantly for artists to be considered as “working” and not “doing something for fun that everyone else expects to be given on a plate” so as such, inhibiting ordinary people trying to get to work by building snowmen at roadworks is a dynamic action as protest.
