Tuesday 8 April 2014

Big hART at ICAF Rotterdam 2014



The ICAF conference for me was very inspiring and I attended some really thought-provoking and stimulating workshops – it is therefore hard to choose my favourite. However a workshop on the last day by Big hART stood out for me particularly.
Big hART is a participatory arts organisation in Australia that is dedicated to the arts and social change. They are particularly interesting in their approach to the work in that they are committed to experimentation and innovation. They are a small but progressive organisation, always looking for a new challenge and a new cause.


They bring marginalised issues into the public domain, but most importantly seek to influence change at a political/social policy level as one of their key aims and outcomes of the work. They devise projects that are all about the art, the community and policy.
Big hART is made up of community builders, field workers, researchers, artists, arts workers, and producers.
During their workshop Big hART spoke about a new project Blue Angel, stories of the sea and our slaves of convenience...

The workshop setting was at the Maritime Hotel which was built on an historic Seamen's House (Zeemanshuis) which is an official monument today. In the past seamen visited the house to relax and to stay overnight - to this day, ‘seafarers’ still frequent the bar.

Creative Producer Cecily Hardy introduced the project and we were also joined by a crew of real-life ‘old salt’ seafarers. They spoke about their lives at sea, taught us to tie ropes, sang songs they had written at sea and recited poems. Before this workshop and maybe because I have always lived in land locked places, I have never really given much thought about their lives and the gigantic role that they play internationally, delivering our consumer goods along a liquid highway to our doors” (Big hART) . Without them we wouldn’t have all of day to day luxuries and food that we eat. Their lives are global, rich, multi-faceted and demanding.

Thoughts about their lives included:

isolation, ill- health, camaraderie, issues for female staff, industrialisation, multi-skilled, disparity of pay scales globally, exploitation, different rules for different countries, immigration - global paranoia, complex histories, stories told, missing family members, experiencing the madness of humankind

This ambitious body of work seeks to work with 3 different global port cities and establish a network with shipping organisations and devise a series of festivals.

The seafarers' rich tales of adventure, solidarity, struggle, loneliness, love, sex, and laughter, act as a prism to expose the dire situation today for one million seafarers internationally; some of the most exploited workers on the planet. Blue Angel is a multi-layered project in development, which includes the creation of a performance work woven from actual stories from the ships that will be shaped into forming site specific shows due to set sail in 2015.
...Thoughts urge my heart, that I should myself experience the high seas and the tossing of the salt sea-waves again.
www.bighart.org

Kate, City Arts

Sunday 30 March 2014

Sin Palabras workshop with Marco Ferreira


The workshop room was almost in darkness and Marco Ferreira from Portugal welcomed us in silently.  Pens and paper on the floor showed us where we should settle in a circle and Marco set about explaining the first activity – in silence, but not ‘sin palabras’, without words – he had a handy notebook hanging from his neck to write key words and explain the aim.  We were to write (with words) our dreams for the future on sheets of A4 and then he led us with movement to peg these thoughts on to ‘washing lines’ in the room.  Next we wrote our names on paper and he explained how to speak our names using our body, and as we each got up to do this there was an interesting dynamic of self selecting the order, with no intervention from Marco.  Very Confident Man next to me went first, then Drama Girl across the way quickly followed.  I decided it best to get it done early, so got in next, then different lengths of pauses developed as people weighed up their options.  There were those who were thoroughly in tune with the methods, and everyone else seemed to think “in for a penny, in for a pound” (“In for a cent, in for euro”?) and pushed embarrassment to the side.

Just as well, as the following activities involved a range of interpretative movement, hugging and non-verbal communication which (In for a penny in for a pound) I found energising and refreshing.  Having been on tour for five days at that point, I was just at the point of feeling pretty ‘talked out’, and there was plenty to take from Marco’s work.  He performed his own piece for us in the middle, which showed how unspoken work can be mesmerising, beautiful and communicate a thousand words.

In choosing the workshop I wanted to reflect on how I work with ‘non-verbal’ participants, particularly those with learning difficulties, but also the shy characters who can easily be side-lined in a noisy group.  The programme had explained that Marco feels “that during artistic processes those with the loudest mouths tend to dominate” and when he works silently there is space for all to contribute.  I worried that the notebook puts pressure on the literacy of the group, but at the same time I could see the some instruction is necessary to get things started.  In spoken sessions the dominant individuals can sometimes take their opportunity to ‘say their piece’, as if broadcasting their views, without having to engage with or even acknowledge the reflections of others.  I can see that working in silence pushes everyone to take notice of every non-verbal cue.  It heightens the senses and instantly turns individuals into the cooperative team, as we are reliant on feedback and interaction to communicate, as if it were a puzzle to be solved.

As the session progressed I found myself reflecting on the ‘noise addiction’ suffered by most of the young groups I work with.  How lovely it would be to reduce the cacophony to total silence, to demonstrate what you miss when you must fill every second with sound.  I know some young people who would find this terrifying – and I might just try it!

Sophie, High Peak Community Arts

Friday 28 March 2014

Legend of the True Cross workshop with Peter Schumann


There was a certain degree of luck of finding myself in the Zuidplein Theatre Auditorium ready in time to start a workshop with Peter Schumann of Bread and Puppet Theatre. The session started at 5. The plane landed in Amsterdam at 3, the train to Rotterdam left at 4, the underground ran on time, and I arrived with 5 minutes to spare. If any of those elements had slipped then I would have been a no-show.  The Bread and Puppet Theater is a politically radical puppet theater, active since the 1960s, and was opening the ICAF conference with two pieces of work. The first was a piece premiered 50 years ago, and the second was developed in the last year. Their style is about sophisticated storytelling with simple puppets. Their puppets are rough and ready, but somehow develop a soul in their animation.  The first piece was based on a traditional Japanese story, about a body in a river. Taller than life puppets moved gracefully across the stage, gently telling a timeless story. The second, The Legend of the True Cross, was about the last twig that came out of paradise that grew over ages to become the wood of the cross.  The final moments of this second piece had a space in it at the end, left deliberately in order to find a local group of participants to fill it. 

This was what my smooth running travel schedule had allowed me to be part of.  A group of about 30 ICAF delegates made up the willing participants, and in the next couple of hours we built something to go in the space. Led by Peter Schumann with his supporting cast of puppeteers, our group became a single entity, and was 'operated'. It was an interesting process, very physical, with a sudden breaking down of personal barriers...30 new friends whose names I didn't know, but who were standing very close!  The overall performance was about an hour, and our group were part of the final moments. Elements started to unfold, from a cast of 30 hidden in plain site in the auditorium, we moved on stage for a stylised battle scene. No sides, no goodies or baddies, but everyone dies in the end.  What was a mystery to us was the story that took us there. 

To that end, we were back to being audience again, all be it audience in a black suit and tie. A small clue was given by one of the performers when he told the audience that the second piece was an hour long. That was all we knew.  Our cue was the small tap of a hammer on a nail, as the True Cross was used for the first time. We all stood up, one on the end of every row of seats, looming suddenly over the audience. Simple physical gestures were communicated up and down the line as we moved together. Gradually, we made our way onto the stage. Again, simple clear cues, the crash of a symbol, the line of a song, meant our single unit of 30 moved together, slowly, with clear and deliberate movements. This time, there was a sense of understanding, not just because we were performing in front of a live audience, but because we too had been told the story, and now knew how we were part of it.  This was a simple shared moment with the rest of the 30. 

What did it do for me as a participant? It opened up another company's process for a moment that gave me an insight into the 50 years of artistry that Bread and Puppet Theater have developed. It took me out of my comfort zone, and demanded a leap of faith in the process, because there was a moment in there that meant, without context, we were just puppets.

Alison, City Arts

Feeding into CAL-XL training



Tuesday afternoon saw the Caravan of Dreams rolling up at the Kunst-Balie venue in Tilburg to join a training session organised by Sikko Cleveringa of CAL-XL.

As far as we understood some arts centres had been awarded contracts to use the arts for community development by housing associations and this was training for the appointed workers. We came in towards the end of their day to give some insight into our experiences. Each EMPAF organisation gave a short presentation illustrating how they had tackled a particular issue through using the arts. Afterwards the training participants chose one EMPAF presenter to talk with further with the task of coming up with a mind map at the end.  

I was very surprised to learn that some (maybe all?) had contracts of only one year to undertake their work and wondered about the expectations of what they might achieve in so short a time. But it was not my role to ask them questions rather to try and answer theirs.  

We had a lively discussion about engaging young people through on street activities and how you might try to manage the dilemma of younger children joining in and potentially driving the older ones away.  

Talk then turned to working with elders and I had to admit that this wasn't an area of my work but that I had had my 88 year old mum living with me for the past 4 years which I was told was a very unusual phenomenon here in the Netherlands.  The session then continued with much laughter and many questions about my experience and before we knew it time was up and no mind map had been produced.  

The verbal feedback by one of the group focused primarily on the latter discussion so I hope this was also valuable for them for their work. I really enjoyed meeting with the group and wish I had had more time to find out about what they were going to be doing and how. I had been very impressed with the achievements and dedication of Wikke Peters in a Eindhoven neighbourhood who had hosted us the previous day and if members of this group approach their challenges with the same determination as her then who knows what they will be able to achieve in one year?

Sally, Soft Touch

Notes from Incubate Festival, Tilburg

Joost Heijuthuijsen from Incubate hosted us on the first part of our visit to Tilburg. Based in an elegant and stylish building that they managed to get for a knock-down price, Joost gave us a presentation about the Incubate Festival.

This is an annual week-long event featuring 'cutting edge' art work, that, in the 9 years since it began, has developed into what has been described as "one of the most interesting festivals in Europe".

What makes this festival interesting and distinctive is its combination of cutting edge work and community involvement. These are some of the words and phrases that Joost used to describe the values and flavour of Incubate:
"do it yourself - use what you have around you to get things done"
"Don't fear mistakes, learn from them"
"It's better being different than being average"
"Be innovators not imitators"
"Content is king"
"Value your values"

From a small start with hardly any funding, the festival has grown into a full-time operation with a turnover in the region of €900k and income from local and national funds, sponsors and ticket sales. The event now attracts visitors - and artists - from around the world while still retaining the involvement and spirit of Tilburg's local communities.

We were struck by how the festival organiser's radical approach and commitment to leftish ideals were being embraced by authorities who could see the tourist and economic benefits of 'doing something different'.  We were also impressed by some of the different ways that local communities were engaged, starting with internationally renowned artists being hosted by local people not hotels.

Although the festival has grown significantly, this open and welcoming practice continues. Using familiar music, such as folk, audiences who wouldn't normally be interested in other art forms and especially cutting edge work, are drawn in to new experiences and social spheres. Community forums have been created to involve local people in curating aspects of the festival and, despite some fears that this might 'dumb down' the content, this more open approach has helped keep a bold, exploratory edge to the programme.

Madeline, City Arts

Thursday 27 March 2014

Brief thoughts from our interviews

We have lots of work to do on the masses of video we have collected - but while we wait for the final results here are just a few samples.  They represent a few of the ideas we've found repeated in themes across many of our encounters.





Wednesday 26 March 2014

Caravan of Dreams - Intro Video!

So finally after waiting for what seems like days and days and days....


I have managed to upload the short film made which introduces the Caravan of Dreams nicely! Please enjoy - and if you really enjoy - please share and tell all your friends!

Millie =)



Ultimate team building… a view from the van


How do you build a network of wildly different organisations spread across a region of 6,000 square miles into a team of co-workers? 
A snap shot of an EMPAF meeting would show you that there are not enough hours even in a day-long meeting for passionate people to get everything off their chest.  Everyone has so much to say, share and hear from each other – our UK meetings often end when people suddenly stand up and say “I have to be on the train at 10 past”, put on their coats and walk out.  Then everyone travels back to their part of the region thinking of all the things we didn’t talk about; how interesting it would be to get views on a pressing issue that wasn’t on the agenda.

What was discovered at ICAF 2011 was the space to explore anything and everything on people’s minds, and the content of the conference itself as a catalyst to brand new thoughts and ideas.  Well, so I was told – I wasn’t there; my colleague Jill Turner was the High Peak representative that year, and she came home with a twinkle in her eye and a spring in her step.  So the Caravan of Dreams was born at some point between then and 2013 when our planning began.  Taking that idea of finding the space to work together intensively, we now have four of us sharing a journey in a van (two in relay), plus the reinforcements of another three who have joined us.   And I have to say it has been such an honour to visit and be welcomed by so many wildly different and passionate workers here in Holland.  They almost feel like part of our extended network now and reflecting on their practice has shone a light on our own.

I’ve loved being in the van – Andy Barrett from Excavate talks in his blog posts about approaching each encounter with a sense of mischief.  Yes, having witnessed him leaving a food parcel by the door of the family who told us where to find the supermarket, I can attest.  His warmth and energy have made an impression on me and it is exactly this kind of close working which we have no space for back in the UK.  Millie Ferguson from the Core in Corby is a legend of digital knowledge – I have been quietly sucking up new information and loving seeing how someone does it properly.  Keeping up with technology is a major issue for a tiny organisation like ours, where I am the default IT Manager, but am entirely self taught.

Everyone at home thinks I’m away on the ultimate Jolly.  But we have worked till near midnight on most days, and with a sense of panic over the volume of footage shot, the photos to upload, the coordinates to plot on Empedia.  Now is the time to make sense of it all and get gifts for those at home who have planned so hard and supported us while here (yes, Amy Smith, that’s you, and Tony that’s also you and many more…).  ICAF 2014 starts today – so watch this space for the fireworks that sets off.

Sophie, High Peak Community Arts

Monday 24 March 2014

Reflections on Eindhoven

We are just reflecting on our visit to Eindhoven where we were warmly greeted by the lovely Wikke Peters, a key and now only, remaining staff member of the Drents Dorp Angels project.

Sikko, had asked us to visit people and projects to find the similarities and differences between community arts practice in the UK and Holland.

We were all struck by the beauty and simplicity of the small, especially commissioned building where we all felt at home when we walked in.  And the glamour of the host who told us that local people had been initially very sceptical of the design but now like it.

Madeline was struck by how well the 'shabby chic' style of the building might work in a post industrial space in Nottingham.

We were interested to learn of the design credentials behind the building project by Piet Hein Eek a nationally renowned designer specialising in using recycled materials.  His company is housed in one of the many empty industrial buildings that were occupied by global electronics giants Phillips, before they moved to Amsterdam in the '90's leaving the area decimated.
We were fascinated to hear how extensively housing associations engage community arts projects ostensibly to connect with the people living in their houses.  Sally, as someone with a town planning degree, who has always had people questioning the link between this and working in community arts was delighted to find a living example of just what that link is.  Julie was very interested to hear about the process of ownership of projects and how similar it was to what she considers best practice in the UK, this being at the start it is the organisation that sets the meetings and agenda and as the project progresses it is the local community that takes this over and invites the organisation to attend their meeting.  Sally was very envious of the lack of funders restrictions on how the project met its objectives.  However because the project had worked so well the housing association had decided that they had made themselves redundant and 2 out of the 3 Angels are now no longer there.  The remaining one has no idea of how much longer she will be there. The question for us is that the Angels have clearly done some amazing work with engaging the residents in determining their own future and identity, however will the parallel project of creating a designer driven 'cultural quarter' on their doorstep continue to engage them or could it create a growing divide? 

Our heated debate continues.

Madeline, City Arts
Julie, People Express
Sally, Soft Touch

Common People

'Common People’, the greatest social commentary pop song ever written, is playing in the van as we head towards Eindhoven looking for the HQ of Drent Dorps, which we are told is a wooden building underneath a flyover. As it turns out it’s no ordinary wooden building underneath a flyover. This wooden building underneath a flyover was designed by Piet Hein Eek, who is one of Holland’s most respected designers. But more of that later.

Our host today is Wikke Peters; one of the Drent Dorps Angels project. There were three of them, these angels, all women, running all kinds of arts interventions on part of a site of a huge former Philips factory, that was built in 1922. I never realised they were a Dutch company. The first time I saw the name was on my father’s electric razor. They were responsible for making Eindoven what is it today, we are told, bringing together a series of little villages into a city that employed thousands of people to make its many products here on this site. There was cheap labour. And there was sand. Which was needed for the glass. For the lightbulbs. It was when they had pretty much exhausted the lightbulb market that they branched out into other projects. This is a landscape drenched with a history of innovation.

But Philips moved out in the 90’s, went to China and took the jobs with them. The local authority took over the site; then the architect Piet Hein Eek moved in (the later bit comes later); and housing associations took over the housing stock. Mr Philips was a paternalistic employer. He apparently had a fondness for Marx. (I remember seeing a statue of Marx in, I think, Vienna, standing in front of the Philishave HQ, which was what my dad’s electric razor was called). Eindhoven has always had a more left leaning attitude in local politics; the recent elections have returned someone with a ‘socialist leaning’; whatever that means these days.

Wikke and the Drent Dorps Angels create work to deal with a range of issues on this site where new people have moved in and which is going through a major process of change and redevelopment. There were three of them; one a writer/illustrator, one a designer, and one a theatremaker/photographer. Now there is only one. After three years the Housing Association doesn’t need them so much. The residents themselves have begun to initiate projects themselves. And so Wikki is the last angel standing.

In Dutch ‘angel’ also means a sting; like a bee’s sting. And the work they have been doing has been spiky; dealing with issues amongst the residents head on and in a really engaging and amusing manner. This place, Drent Dorps, a sector of the overall development, is an island, rows of houses surrounded by the former Philips factories that are currently in transition. The housing association who now own these properties and the tenants weren’t getting on; there was a lack of communication; a sense of distrust. Renovation of the factories was about to happen and there was concern about what was going to occur. People in Drent Dorps were co-existing but they weren’t connecting.

The Angels were employed by a Housing Corporation, but were allowed to keep their distance from them. They wanted (were asked?) to find out what residents wanted from their housing – which is all social here in Drent Dorps. What did these people want to happen in the area; what neighbourhood facilities did they want? Wikki mentions the word ‘social cohesion’, adding ‘but I hate that word; it sounds official’. I suggest that it’s maybe about investigating the ‘soul’ of the place and she agrees. It’s in part a search for the identity of Drent Dorps.

The Angels, all three of them, like Charlie’s, rang everybody’s bell first of all, to say hello. There are around five hundred and fifty door bells here in Drent Dorps. They went out on guerrilla flower planting and graffiti excursions. They gathered thoughts on how the renovation that was happening should proceed.

Some things didn’t work. Eindhoven is seen as a major design centre (more on this also later). Last year it was voted as the smartest region in the world, Wikki tells us, but I’m not sure what in exactly. But it’s to do with design. The angels had a designer come in to work with residents to contribute a product for the major Design Expo that is held in Eindhoven, centred around the ex-factory site, which is known as Strijp S. But she told the residents what they should make rather than seeing what they wanted to make and they weren’t having that. The Angels tried to set up committees to steer projects but they didn’t really work either.

But what did work was the fact that they were here, right in the heart of the neighbourhood. They were able to change plans as they went. To be lightfooted. And to feel able to make fools of themselves. And it’s this sense of fun that attracted me most to their work. The idea of simple projects that are are faintly ridiculous. So – there are issues with domestic pets; dogs, cats and, we were told by several people, with rabbits (they run about all over the place apparently; we never saw one). So the Angels held an Animal Roadshow where people could bring their pets to a red carpet. Another project involved a tattoo table where people could come and draw out their tattoos on a large sheet of paper and tell stories about why they got them and what they mean. There was a real sense of play in these projects. Of mischievousness even. (It’s how I’ve been approaching people on this trip. Assuming that they won’t mind me being, well, a bit cheeky. It’s how I always approach people. I think people understand it; mischief. It’s a game; it’s play and I think that people, deep down, understand play, however much it’s been kicked out of them).

Wikki told us that Housing Associations are now paying less for cultural activities; there’s a developing belief that this is not their job. But that the people who live in these neighbourhoods where there is a tradition of activity are beginning to understand this and are looking for how they can raise money for themselves.

Tijs Rooijakkers comes to talk to us and shows us some images of a beautiful project he has been doing with a rapper called Fresku. Fresku, who is to rap in Holland what Pietr Hein Eek is to design (this still isn’t the later bit), writes on strips of wood which Tijs then bends and shapes into fantastic structures. (Have a look at a really great film about this on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_kspKGmLMk) After doing the first of these he developed the project further in Woensel, where a designers collective called Tante Netty live, making interventions in the area. They have made and given out bird houses. They have painted the houses that have been left empty before they are demolished as redevelopment happens. When they think of something, Tijs says, they just do it.

They are trusted now. They are embedded.

Tijs work in Woensel has been to continue with the idea of people writing on slats of wood, only these are written on by people who live there, and rather than being in an art gallery they are hanging in the trees. There are ten different areas in Woensel with over 700 slats suspended up above the heads of those that live there. He doesn’t call himself a community artist. It’s about power. He knows that he is making the work, the decisions; and that those who contribute are adding to something that he is making. 

And then a new word appears; almost out of the blue. Co-design. This is the term that the community artists and designers and social policy people appear to use. And there is a lot of it, this co-design. We walk past an empty tract of land that is designated as Space S where housing is to be built. There are co-design sessions where architects come to talk to potential residents about what they want to see in the new dwellings that will be put there. Four hundred ‘units’; around one hundred and fifty for students and some for the elderly. They have a Facebook page with around six hundred people conversing on it. People will be chosen to live in the new buildings on their level of participation. The more comments and likes you can get in the more chance you can live on this site where my Dad’s razor was probably made.

We go to a café to see Ingrid van der Wecht. She is an arch evangelist for co-design and is the Project Manager for Capital D. I’m not quite sure what she does. One of the projects she is involved in is called Proud, which stands for People Researchers Organisations Using Design. The door of their offices say Design / Cooperation / Brainport. It’s back to this idea about Eindhoven being very smart. Because of the innovation of the Philips factory. Where the people of Eindhoven used to work.

There’s something nagging at me. And it’s connected to Piet Hein Eek; the designer who is based here; who struck a great deal with the local authority. His work is made here; his show rooms are here; you can buy his stuff. It uses reclaimed materials. It is great. And hugely expensive. He rents out space to artists and designers. The café we go to for lunch is run by something called The Robin Hood project, a Jamie Oliver type thing where the unemployed work in restaurants that most of their friends probably can’t afford to come to. The restaurant we are shown, as we continue to walk around this huge ex industrial site, now a home for new tenants and those mainly employed in design, is one of those cavernous spaces with untreated walls. There are huge slabs of machinery and old radiograms. It is shabby chic at its shabbiest and at its chicest. It is, I suggest to Wikki, a temple of the middle class aesthetic; one that I recognise from the UK. ‘Where are the greasy spoons?’ I ask; ‘are they not allowed on this site?’ They are at the edges, she tells me, knowing exactly what I mean. The people who once worked here are not the kind of people that are being enticed onto this new site. (Wikki told us that many of the people that come to the Drent Dorps HQ don’t like the building. Even if it was built by some fancy well known designer. Like Piet Hein Eek).

And so, I ask Ingrid, from Capital D, is this design that you talk about basically all interior design; that cult that allows people to sink further and further into their own houses, the exact opposite of what perhaps they are trying to do here? But I am not understanding the situation at all. There is interior design, there is product design, there is housing design, there is scientific design. The first Television broadcast in the world was made on this site and now this is providing a vision for the future.

(I’ve just had a look and Brainport, which is actually yet another region in Eindhoven is ‘according to the Intelligent Community Forum (ICF) the world’s smartest region in 2011, and a top technology breeding ground for innovation and home to world-class businesses, knowledge institutes and research institutions. Together they design and manufacture the technology of the future to ensure a safe, green and caring society and sustainable economic development of the Netherlands. The five focal sectors of Brainport Eindhoven region are High Tech Systems & Materials, Food, Automotive, Lifetec and Design’. So that’s told me).

There is lots that is great about it; but there’s something that I’m not quite comfortable with. Maybe it’s something to do with ‘Common People’, the song that we bounced along to on the way here. Maybe it’s because I have a sneaking fear that however much co-designing is done, there will be issues of taste, that are really badges of class, that may be a bridge too far for those who have the future in their sights. That those who live on the edges, where the Angels have been doing their work, will never truly be let in to the place where they once spent their working lives and made it the area of innovation that it became. But then again maybe I don't really understand what is happening here at all.

You'll never live like common people / You'll never do what common people do / You'll never fail like common people / You'll never watch your life slide out of view, and dance and drink and screw / Because there's nothing else to do.

Andy Barrett

Points to ponder....

Millie's Log - Earth Date 24 March 2014


It is morning!

And I have awoken to sunlight streaming in to my room. I have also woken up to the slightly disorienting feeling that I have no idea what day it is and where I am. Now that I have had a shower to remove some of the cobwebs creeping round my brain, I am fully aware that it is Thursday December 17! 

Only joking! I know it's March and I am about to start breakfast before embarking on our tour for day 5 (Or is it 4 or maybe 6)!

The side of my bed looks a bit like an electronics shop with cables and batteries galore! And clothes are strewn everywhere as I try to locate my hairbrush! My derriere is still slightly sore from the saddle and I cannot find my hairbrush!

I am having an amazing time - but sometimes it feel people and places are going so fast that I barely have time to take it in before we load up the van and drive to our next location!

If you check out http://empedia.info/maps/223 you can see just how much we have seen, but it doesn't really give you a flavour of how little time we seem to spend in each place. I am finding that there is so much for my (little) brain to process that I am feeling slightly surreal.

Yesterday for example, we met with Ingrid and Christine, we were slightly late due to my successful navigating and driving which led us to see the harbour from about 6 different views. We had a great time over coffee and 'BitterBallen' talking about our different projects - Andy's Raleigh project and some of the Concept Album projects at The Core by Lisa, and hearing about the differences in community art between the UK and Holland, before we had to say our goodbyes and head from Hoorn to Amsterdam a good hours drive away. 

Again in Amsterdam we were met by Maaike in a beautiful park which hosts community arts events every Sunday, where we had a cup of tea (because we are British), saw the workshop associated with the Umbrella Art installation, some traditional African dance before whisked of to meet Jorik to hear about the good work he has done.

Thus all leading to a general sense of over whelming!

However - the sun is shining! I have not dented or damaged the van! (I may have lost it once but thats ok as I found it again!) No one has been hit, maimed or killed - and the sun is shining!

And it's time for breakfast which I am ready for listening to the grumble of my tummy - even if I did eat a whole cow last night!

Laters!

Millie =)
PS - Still baffled at the tea making! Hot water before the bag!!!

Sunday 23 March 2014

There is a yellow gas station, there is a pink gas station.

You know those petrol stations that used to sit empty on the side of the road until the hand car wash guys moved in? Well there are two here in north Amsterdam, either side of a road that has vanished somewhere down below. One is pink and one is yellow. As in totally pink and totally yellow. The pink one is closed today, Sunday. It’s a home now to some kind of musicians collective. The yellow one belongs to Hot Mama Hot, a creative collective that has been going since 2000. Originally visual artists they branched into areas of specialism; one a cook, one an interior designer and so on. They started making installations for festivals, and providing food as well. They became well known within that scene and make a fair amount of money out of it. When they’re not doing it they’re doing this. Running all sorts of projects in their yellow petrol station, or gas station as Maikke, the woman who has taken us here, calls it. It sounds better. 

Yorick (not sure if this is how you spell it alas) is here on his own now (until his partner and two month old daughter arrive) and is telling us of some of the things they get up to. Most of it involves the local kids. Like holding a monthly meal which is cooked by children with the help of a guest chef.

This gas station (there, I’ve said it) is on the border of a group of old Dutch houses from the twenties which are lived in by a pretty prosperous crowd, and a neighbourhood that is not. One of the things that he enjoys most about the work is the way that, through the children bringing their parents along, different social classes interact.

The project was funded by the housing schemes that operate around here, by the government, and by Shell. Now the local government have decided that Hot Mama Hot should pay rent. For these disused buildings that weren’t demolished by this same government when the highway was lowered because to keep them was cheaper. The disused buildings which are now used every day by the local children. And staffed by people who are paid, not by the local government but by Hot Mama Hot. Yorick doesn’t seem to mind. They make money from their festival work so they can afford it. But still.

We go back with Maikke to the North Park where the dancers and musicians are packing up and the volunteers who have been cooking food are cleaning up the pavilion. The park sits, like the yellow gas station and the pink gas station, at the centre of a number of ‘disadvantaged’ communities. The pavilion has been here for five years. Every Sunday there is a workshop or a performance. There are coloured umbrellas hanging from lines strung between the trees. (And today there are young children handling power tools, making clothes hooks from umbrella handles). 

Maikke was a city planner and now works in the neighbourhood as part of a team running projects. The pavilion is home to around five projects a year, each based on a theme. At the moment they are running Burenbal – a Neighbours Ball. Dance ambassadors are going out to the community to invite the many different dancing groups that are out there, young and old, from the line dancers to the hip hoppers, to come together to create a new dance which will be held in the park on the 27th April. The dance will evolve from the groups that take part. It will be designed so that the audience join in, ‘so there is no audience any more’.

They also have a project called Broedstraten (Incubator Streets), where artists are given reduced rent to come and work in and with the community. There is a Music Street where workshops are given and concerts held; Market Street where designers and makers share their products with things that local people make; Theatre Street where twenty three theatre makers share a building; Fashion Street; and Colour Street, originally the greyest street in the area but now being painted up. Each one of these Streets has its own project manager. 

Maikke then introduces us to Christine from Rhizomatic, another arts collective who are embedded within their community. They run an experimental arts space and work with many different artists on collaborative projects, but ‘they must have a strong social interest’. Then we meet a couple who will be cooking a meal in the Living Room Restaurant on Monday; yet another project. And there’s the Pop Up Restaurant space as well; an empty building that was turned into a space for would be restaurateurs to run for six weeks at a time to build up a clientele and learn the ropes. 

I’m getting exhausted by it all. And I think it’s the fact that I am so tired that makes me suddenly, whilst watching a woman get up on stage to join in with the dancers and seeing a real mix of people in this park dancing away to the music, feel as though I am going to burst into tears. And I think this. It's not a big thought, just a little one, but I feel it very strongly at that moment. That it doesn’t take much to bring people together; and yet such a huge amount of effort is made to do the exact opposite.

And I wish that more things like this happened in the U.K. But they don’t. And I think it’s about space. About the idea of a shared environment on a very local level. So much of the work is funded to some degree from the housing associations who play such a large part in the way that accommodation is provided; some private, some social (which I am told is generally really good here in Amsterdam). There is an understanding that living in a street means being in that street, not just in the house on that street, hidden away inside your four walls. In the U.K so many of us live inside buildings that we buy, and which we spend our lives paying for and adding to. We may have play parks where children can ride on the swings and parents talk to each other; or some people may decide to set up some kind of informal collective activity. But it’s not part of the culture. It’s not expected of housing associations, or architects, or city planners. At least I don’t think it is. And, of course, it should be. 

On the way back to Rotterdam, as we pass Schipol Airport yet again, there are army jeeps on the side of the road and soldiers with machine guns on the bridges overhead, security for the Nuclear Industry summit that is happening here. A cavalcade goes past. A huge number of cars and motorcycles for what looks like one car with a flag on it. We pass a petrol station that is closed. This time for security. (In this context I notice that the word ‘gas’ does not come into my mind). The way in and the way out are blocked off with huge grey concrete slabs. It is being patrolled. Maybe one day someone will come and paint this gas station bright pink or bright yellow. Perhaps some of the children who are growing up in Koopvaardersplantsoen. Or Colour Street, as it is called, at least for the time being.


 
Andy

Mienskip

We are in Petra’s home, an old primary school here in Leeuwarden which was squatted 25 years ago. It is now a mixture of apartments and workshops and is populated by printers, artists and theatre makers. We are having lunch with a number of people and we are talking about Mienskip. It is what will define the work that is done here in 2018 when Leeuwarden takes its place as the European city of culture. Everyone was surprised it was went to Leeuwarden. It’s the main city in Friesland. There was a lot of excitement when the one hundred thousandth person moved into the city. It’s a rural area, where the black and white cows that filled the fields of my youth come from. Agriculture and tourism are what happens mainly. And a lot of community art work, a lot of it theatre.

Petra tells me, as we are later cycling along a path by various dykes and the lambs, that … well gambol, that theatre is very important here because the language is very important. Friesland is only one of two languages here; the minor one, the threatened one. Mienskip is a Frisian word. The names of the two other women who are with us – Metsje and Jildou – are Frisian names. And Friesland, I am told, has a strong sense of its own identity. And the language, the pride in it and the love of it, ‘is in the veins of the people here’.

Back at Petra’s we are being told more about the task in hand for the city by Metsje and Jildou; two members of the Frisian arts development organisation (Keunstwurk Frysian) who are excited and slightly anxious. They have recently finished a three year project called The Trip or DeReis 2018 which is a ‘cultural venture that wishes to visualise the merits of Leeuwarden and other Frisian towns and villages, aiming to reinforce the sense of community among them’. They have gone into communities with no set ideas, have talked to people and have designed projects that respond to the desires of the people who they talk to. They have helped a village make a new footpath through the woods so that they don't have to walk along a main road with the traffic any more. They are passionate about this ‘method’.

This is what will define their year of European Capital of Culture. It’s a bid built on community art. It’s defining word is Mienskip. It means sense of community. And although it is a Frisian word now, Metsje explains, the ‘people in the Hague know it too’. The local square, a new one, only two years old, was packed when the result was read out and broadcast live. They had a one in three chance. The people who announced the decision opened an envelope; like the Oscars, like the Olympics. And now the work begins. Forty one projects will be run in 2018. But this is no ordinary Mienskip. This is Open (not the right spelling, it’s a word that means Open, it sounds like Eepen) Mienskip; a desire to share this community feeling with others; and not to internalise it, to look inwards.

We go off to a new art gallery sitting at the head of this new square. Petra is a conceptual artist, working as CP Berbee. She ran a series of projects with different groups around the development of the square. The last one involved one thousand ‘shooters’ firing six thousand pellets of different coloured paint at a large portrait of a previous Queen. (I walk there again on Sunday morning and see that it is The Ministry of Justice). Permission had to be asked for such an act. There was, she tells me, ‘an interesting tension’ for many people as they stood in their new square with a gun firing at this previous Queen (imagine a large British stamp).

It’s not free to get into the museum; it costs 10 euros, but in the NL you can buy a pass for around 40 – 50 E which will get you into any museum for a year. We meet two more artists there, Tilly and Gerard. They are building a collection of one litre jars of water; from Friesland, from the Netherlands, from Europe and further afar. People can gather it wherever they find it and let them have it. They want to get, I think, around 1500 jars. The jars are many colours but there is a lot of green. These are the dummy jars that they have filled to complete the piece; jars that they still need people to fill for them. Some is rainwater found from puddles in a local street; some from the many dykes; there is a little bit from the Ganges. It will end up in a university of water which is soon to open. There is a lot of water here. We had to drive across a lot of it on our way.

(We went wrong once or twice as roads were closed off around Schipol airport. Obama and Putin and all of the others are in Amsterdam for a Nuclear Industry summit. Apparently people nearby were told that they couldn’t got out on their balconies. There was a rush on groceries).

Then back to Petra’s for bikes and off to see a community garden. Theo, who runs it, is retired now and spends all his time here. It has 60 volunteers; a mix of the retired, the unemployed, and ‘idealists’. He is fiercely proud of it, of the fact that it hosts music and theatre events, and that out here, between a city of one hundred thousand and a village of two hundred, it is thriving and an example for other garden projects like this. ‘We teach young people to grow plans and make theatre and music’ he says. But they’ve had no luck with melons. Or aubergines. They have ‘open sky theatre’ every year. This is one of fifteen or so villages with an open air theatre. It’s part of the culture.

Kees is with us now, from a theatre company called Buog. They are more like Hanby and Barrett / Excavate (my company, we’re changing our name) than any other company I have ever met. ‘How long do you rehearse for?’ I ask him, wondering if, given all the similarities between us so far he will say ‘three months’. ‘Three months’, says Kees. His latest project, in May, is for an opening of a new lock. The King is going to be in it. The actual real King. It’s not a big part, and he can’t say any lines, and basically they were told that he was going to come up or down the river or canal or whatever it is. But still. It’s the King. In a community play.

We’re having this conversation as we continue to cycle past the dykes and the lambs who are still, well … gambolling. Paul has a bottle of water in his panier. It is from the dyke next to the café where we stopped for apple strudel. I asked Metsje and Jildou, who have a connection with the water project, if they have contributed a bottle. I chide them when they say they haven’t and suggest we ask the owner of the café for a bottle now and that we all fill it up together. Which we do. It’s a light brown colour.

That night, after Petra’s partner has cooked us a delicious meal, we go to a bar and talk again about the excitement of this city and this region being chosen as the European City of Culture. I ask Petra if there is a hope, an expectation, of local artists producing much of the work. After all it’s about Mienskip. She says that she hopes there is; but that a project as large as this in a place as small as this also has the potential to cause division as people ask who is doing what and why aren’t they being involved. I hope they all are. The work they do that we were shown was fascinating. It’s a lovely place. I recommend visiting. And 2018 wouldn’t be a bad time to come.
 

 
Andy