As anyone working in the arts or art commissioning knows, pitching for work can involve a huge amount of project preparation and planning, only for nothing to come to fruition.
This page details some of the ways I have aimed to develop my practice by using creative technology, audio and heritage objects to create socially engaged arts projects.
If you'd like to read through the original briefs click the link provided.
Each of these projects are unified by the use of audio, new technology, and object encounters.
un-commissioned project archive
Touch activated votive offerings for Exeter Cathedral
As part of their community engagement for a large Heritage Lottery funded restoration project of Exeter's famous cathedral, I developed a project working alongside a ceramicist that would create a display of contemporary votive offerings. This approach combined ceramic making
The cathedral had found a store of 'votive offerings' buried in its grounds whilst renovating and they had become part of its display collection.
Votives were traditionally offered alongside a prayer or wish. Our offerings would allow those looking over the display to hear the modern wishes of their local community.
Community audio letters mixing past and present for Berwick's Living Barracks project
A response to a commission by Berwick Maltings, as part of a 4.5m heritage project. Responding to an ask to make 'a programme without a venue' , I proposed a project that would use audio and Near Field Communication technology to allow Berwick's local community to respond to the archive of letters to barracks residents, encountering the letters in various Berwick venues inside a custom-made vintage postman's bag. The same bag that these letters were delivered to and from the barracks for generations.
'Gleaning' for Norwich Cathedral
A response to a commission by Norwich Cathedral's Benedictine Art project. My pitch drew on my history of work with homeless charities and proposed looking at the act of 'gleaning' in Christian history: leaving the edges of a harvest for the needy to gather.
The proposal would turn the relationship of privilege implied by 'gleaning' and poverty on its head: flower seeds would be chosen by the clients of St Martin's homeless outreach and left as a gift, alongside audio diaries built into 3d printed grain silos.
North Pennines land of Lead and Silver: social history of industry
The Land of Lead and Silver project, funded by The National Lottery Heritage Fund and Historic England, with additional funding from other funders, aims to unearth some of the the hidden stories of lead and silver mining in the North Pennines.
The proposal responded to a request to bring the history of lead and silver mining to life for local communities. Alongside a variety of workshop content, I proposed to create tagged blocks of steel that would host audio content from the archive related to local industry, that could be left in social spaces and used as a portal to the project's audio content.
