The hunt is on to equip Temporary Art Space with plinths, shelving and other furniture, projectors, TV monitors and DVD players.
We've already managed to go over our zero budget with public liability insurance, website hosting and £10 top up on a new SIM.
With a shortage of skips to raid and with few suitable items from our own homes, Freecycle has become an invaluable resource albeit not entirely cost free as collection incurs petrol costs.
The Freecycle Network, as described on it's homepage http://www.freecycle.org/ is “a grassroots and entirely nonprofit movement of people who are giving (& getting) stuff for free in their own towns. It's all about reuse and keeping good stuff out of landfills. Membership is free.” Members post “Wanted:” or “Offered:” messages and generally it seems to operate on a first come first serve basis.
The Keighley network, although being the furthest away than the other two we've joined; Calderdale and Huddersfield, has connected us to a charity called MPIKA Relief Fund for Zambian orphans http://www.mpika.org/
MPIKA have shops in Bradford and Keighley and founding member June replied to our Freecycle post “Wanted: plinths, scrap wood, domestic furniture” offering us items of furniture that they've had donated but cannot shift.
Taking donated items from a charity? It seems all wrong. But June and her colleagues are grateful for us clearing a substantial proportion of their crammed shopfloor. June tells us; “These items are just too unfashionable and old for people to want them. We've had them for weeks and resorted to putting 'free to a good home' labels on them – without success.” June and her staff even help load the four old but good condition wooden tables into the back of our van. If they're not suitable as they are, we tell June gratefully, they'll be fantastic for reworking into plinths.
The next day June calls us and tells us she's at a library in Leeds which is being moved to a one-stop shop over the road. There's two big cabinets going that she can't fit in her van let alone the charity shops – do we want them?
We're picking them up first thing Monday.
We'll try our luck for projectors via Freecycle but we imagine such items will be easier borrowed than picked up for free. We think we've found a TV and DVD player we can borrow but not all video work is suitable to being screened on a monitor. The problem with borrowing projectors we realise, is the bulb is the expensive part and usage eats away at the bulb life, resulting in a loss to the owner.
We don't want to have to turn down proposals because neither TAS nor the invited artist(s) can provide the necessary equipment.
Nobody said it was going to be easy!
