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Lets here from you!
Inspired by elemental and the exploration of outdoor work, Helga Henry - General Manager of Fierce Earth and Producer of Elemental, produced this article for the Birmingham Post published on the 7th June 2009 - you can find it here!
Ever since 1998, the month of May finds me on the sunny streets of Birmingham, sampling the weird and wonderful delights of the annual Fierce! Festival. And although there is no festival this year, last Friday was no exception.
As part of the 2009 “for one year only” programme, Fierce! and our partners at Ikon Gallery presented the iconoclastic performer, Reverend Billy. Self-styled anti capitalist preacher (he exorcises the tills at Tescos containing “Wall Street funny money”) he gave a blistering free performance in Oozells Square with his funky backing singers, the Gospel Choir of Life After Shopping. Opposite the headquarters of the RBS, his giant quiff quivered to the message that what we spend our money on has an effect on the climate, our jobs and homes, in fact on the whole world.
Hundreds of people gathered to hear the word of the Reverend. Still more happened upon him by chance. From the clapping, cheering, whooping and dancing of the crowd, everyone had a good time.
Art in the streets is uplifting and democratic. There’s the chance that people will stumble upon something to make them laugh, cry or gasp. As an audience gathers, they share reactions, jokes and vantage points. They connect. The critic Lyn Gardner said of The Sultan’s Elephant that this work “turns a million strangers into a community.”
Same in Liverpool’s capital of culture, where grandmothers, toddlers and all ages in between waited for half a day for a good view of La Machine’s giant mechanical Spider as it paraded the streets with its live orchestra perched atop cherry-picker cranes.
Grand artistic gestures funded by public money may seem unnecessarily splashy in the current climate. But everything is relative.
Given the community cohesion this work promotes (it’s been proven that crime reduces during events rather than proliferates) and City promoting media attention it generates, they constitute good value for money. Some previous Fierce! highlights such as the Great Swallow (Benjamin Verdonck’s giant nest on the side of the Rotunda) or the much acclaimed Street pianos (15 pianos in community settings emblazoned with “Play Me, I’m Yours”) were produced for the public money equivalent of two duck houses, a moat and some manure. Or a fraction of 1% of what we’ve spent to bail out a bank like the RBS.
Play Me I’m Yours has, from its Birmingham beginning, has taken place in Sydney, Australia, Sao Paolo, Brazil and is now hogging media attention in London. But the city, and Fierce! had it first. The region has some great unusual spaces to see great performance – check out Soweto Kinch’s Flyover show under the Soho Road on June 13 if you want to discover it for yourself. Great music in a stunning location.
And bring on Birmingham’s spiders and elephants: they do more good than MP’s manure.
Our keynote speaker for the event was Rose Fenton, Co-Founder of LIFT talked about her experiences around times of boom and bust, linking to the theme for the region:
‘In the South West our focus is on partnerships required to make work happen - a practical and inspiring session from someone with experience in times of boom and bust!’
Following Rose’s great presentation (which will be posted as very soon), Richard Crowe, London 2012 regional Creative Programmer gave his overview of the Cultural Olympiad and the ‘Inspire’ initiative.
The second part of the afternoon took shape as breakout sessions looking at real issues in the sector.
Were you at the South West event? Please share your experience from the event by commenting below.
To see more about the South West please click here.
“In the North West our focus is on how local authorities and producers of Street Arts and Circus can use the prospect of a large international event in their city to promote a relevant programme of outdoor activity.”
They began by showing an example of their work from the Manchester Commonwealth Games closing ceremony, see below:
Here is the presentation given by Liz and John:
Liz and John gave an insightful, honest and human account of working with large scale sporting events and how this has impacted positively on the artists they worked with, individuals and the company as a whole - quite inspiring.
The elemental team would like to extend a big thank you to Liz and John for stepping in at last minute, and again to Maggie Clarke and her team at Xtrax for their help in giving the North West event, a regional feel.
To see more about the North West region click here.
Infrastructure:
Circomedia, Theatre Bristol (Creative Producer for Circus and Street Arts), CAST, agencies supplying paid work.
Resources:
The Albany Centre, training space at Artspace Lifespace, Desperate Men studio, Circus Maniacs
Funds:
Bristol City Council Key Art Providers, Arts Council England, South West Relevant commissions from Bristol Harbour Festival, The Bristol Do and Theatre Bristol/ Bristol Old Vic.
Ramshacklicious
Bristol Artists making work for outdoor contexts and contemporary circus include:
The Wonder Club, Acrojou, Desperate Men, Tom Marshman, Cirque Bijou, Stickleback Plasticus, Marc Conway, Ramshackiliscious, Invisible Circus, Fair Play, Frenetic Engineering, Above and Beyond, Once Arts and Ceremonies, Bongo Bolero, Luci Gorrell-Barnes, Pickled Image.
Important Festivals:
The Bristol Do, Bristol Harbour Festival, Mayfest, Glastonbury Festival
Strengths:
Needs:
This was sent to elemental by Kate at Theatre Bristol following the elemental event in the South West, to find out more about the South West look at the South West page or click here.
Below is the presentation Marta gave at the event at Manchester City Library, prior to Xtrax later that evening.
To download your own copy of Marta’s presentation please click here for the pdf.
To find out more about the North West region click here.
Do you have comments or opinions about the sector or presentation, if so please let us know by commenting below!
Julie Tait used two presentations introducing Kendal Arts International then Lakes Alive:
Lakes Alive:
To download copies of the documents please click the relevant document names - Lakes Alive, Kendal Arts International
For more about the North West please click here
Verena Cornwall from the Circus Development Agency was our chair for the day, firstly introducing the unfortunate news André Pérusse our keynote speaker had missed his flight due to a Montreal road incident.
Fortunately, Liz Pugh and John Wassell (Co-Founders & Co-producers) from Walk the Plank stepped in to talk about their work for the closing ceremony of Manchester’s Commonwealth Games.
Starting with a little context from London 2012 Creative Programmer for the North West, Debbi Lander, she talked about the three areas that were her priority:
Moving on to talk a little about the curating and commissioning of the ‘We Play’ initiative and the ‘Inspire’ programme for smaller scale projects.
Following Debbi, Julie Tait (Director of Kendal Arts International) talked the work her company are involved with and they work on the premise of partnership and sustainability with around 15 – 20 core partners.
Julie talked about the pilot projects they have worked on and a little more about Mintfest, leading us into her presentation about Lakes Alive – moving from “small scale to large scale in one big step”.
Liz Pugh and John Wassell, then stepped in to talk about the work of Walk the Plank, and showing a piece of video to illustrate their closing ceremony work and with the limited timescale of making:
Something to be truly in awe of…It helped their organisation step up to the next level, strengthen core staff ready for the next large projects – Liverpool 08 opening and currently working with Kinetika on ‘Imagination: Our Nation’
After a short break, Marta Almirall Elizalde arrived with her translator and talked about her work as an Artistic Director and her work as Director of Festivals for Barcelona City Council. She spoke about the lessons to be learned from Barcelona Olympics and what happens after large scale sporting ceremonies.
The presentations of the days speakers will be online very shortly, to read all about elemental in the North West, please click here.
Were you at the event? Do you have any burning comments or feedback – lets get people talking on elemental…
Here is the presentation by Neil Butler and live notes from the event will follow:
To download your own copy of Neil’s presentation please click here.
Were you at the event? Have you seen any of the events Neil has been involved with? Please let us know by commenting and starting a conversation on this site…
All notes from the event will be typed up and added, so please subscribe to the site by email for full updates.
To download straight to your desktop as a pdf - click here.
Do you commission new work? What are your recommendations for commissioners if you are an artist?
For more information about the themes and East Midlands region, please click here.
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