Guest post: Autumn Neagle describes a glimmering light installation at Cogges Manor Farm

Our latest guest post comes from Autumn Neagle, Marketing and Events Manager at Cogges Manor Farm, who helped attract visitors with a Museums at Night evening of music and an outdoor glowing light installation.

The grounds of Cogges Manor Farm

The history of our venue

Cogges Manor Farm is a historic farmstead just 5 minutes walk from the centre of Witney, a town once known for its thriving wool trade.

Cogges has a fascinating history going back 1000 years. It is listed in the Domesday Book and the first owner Wadard appears as a Norman knight on the Bayeux tapestry! The manor is one of the oldest remaining houses in Oxfordshire with 15 acres of grounds, 17th century farm buildings, a walled garden and Victorian apple orchard.

Popular with locals and tourists with over 40,000 visitors this season, Cogges is now attracting visitors from all over the world due to appearing as ‘Yew Tree Farm’ on ITV’s Downton Abbey.

Using the orchard

The beautiful outside space gave me the idea to hold the main attraction for our first Museums at Night event in the orchard. We aim to present the site in a unique and inspiring light to visitors, so focusing the event in the orchard after hours was a great way of creating a new experience.

The lights of Field Test glimmering in the orchard. Image courtesy OCM

Creative collaborations

I got in touch with Oxford Contemporary Music and they suggested an installation by Alex Bradley, a Bristol-based artist they had been working with. We were delighted to be able to host Alex’s outdoor installation Field Test.

Alex has a family history of cataracts, and this installation is inspired by the Visual Field Test used to examine peripheral vision. Mixing audio, technology and instruments with birdbox speakers and 800 solar LED light units, ethereal harmonies came from all around as people wandered through the trees.

Glimmering LEDs as part of Alex Bradley’s Field Test. Image courtesy OCM

I programmed harpist Steph West, and singer Jess Hall with cellist Barney Morse Brown in the barn, and we served soup and a drinks bar. We had artwork and demonstrations, storytelling and kids activities led by volunteers.

The visitor experience

We welcomed over 300 regulars and new visitors. People meandered around the farm while it was still light and gathered in the orchard as the skies darkened.

The evening was unique for Witney, and we were lucky with the weather, as it was a beautiful summer evening and people stayed outside till 10pm. It was wonderful to see families picnicking and children playing and many commented how special it felt.

People loved the event and enjoyed spending relaxed time in beautiful surroundings after hours at Cogges, a place at the heart of the community and special to many generations.

Harpist Steph West performing watched by young visitors. Image courtesy Verity Hoper

Financing the event

Alex’s installation was produced by OCM and was funded, which is why we were lucky enough to be able to host an artistic piece of this calibre at no cost to the charity. We charged just £2 entry to encourage as many people as possible to come along and see it. On this special occasion, none of the performers charged a fee, and we broke even.

What we learned

Lessons learned included providing more food stalls in future, and lighting dark areas, as we had to keep the orchard and surrounding area unlit for the installation.

Communicating the artistic nature of the event was challenging: from descriptions of the lights, some visitors said they had expected a laser show. Providing suggested tweets in the press release might have helped to describe the event more clearly, and several visitors asked us for more information about the artist.

Overall, though, the event was very well received with lots of 10 out of 10s on the visitor survey.

OCM gratefully acknowledges the support of Arts Council England, PRSF, Oxford City Council and Oxford Brookes University.

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Autumn Neagle is Marketing and Events Manager at Cogges. She has worked as a PR and Programming producer for music and arts organizations and projects in Oxfordshire and London at live music venues, community arts organizations, festivals, carnivals, museums and galleries.

Find out more about Cogges on Facebook or follow @CoggesWitney on Twitter.

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Thanks, Autumn!

If you’d like to write a guest post or share a case study about any aspect of audience development, event planning or marketing in the arts and heritage sector, please email rosie@culture24.org.uk.

Guest post: Third time lucky for Felicia Smith of Arnos Vale Cemetery

Our latest guest post comes from Felicia Smith of Arnos Vale Cemetery in Bristol!

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Last year Arnos Vale Cemetery entered the Connect10 competition for museum venues to win an artist. We had no idea then that it would lead us on an adventure which will come to fruition in an art installation later this summer…

Arnos Vale Cemetery trees at dusk

We had already had a taste of the possibilities of bringing contemporary art to the cemetery in 2012’s competition, so when Museums at Night rolled around in 2013, we couldn’t resist entering Connect10 again.

We were looking for an artist who could help us engage our visitors in a discussion around attitudes to death, remembrance and how cemeteries should look in the future. Julia Vogl is an artist who specialises in community artworks which pose thought-provoking questions to visitors. It seemed a perfect match and Arnos Vale was lucky enough to be shortlisted – a huge honour for such a small charitable trust as ours.

There were helpful benefits too: establishing our popular “Night at the Cemetery” after-dark tours which now run through the year (and again this May for Museums at Night); and the shortlisted prize money bought us new lanterns and torches for safe after-dark exploration.

Alas, we were pipped at the post in the public vote by the Discovery Museum, Newcastle, who hosted “Collect. Select. String & Hoist,” in May 2013. It was a major disappointment, as we had been looking forward to working with Julia.

“Collect. Select. String & Hoist.” Julia Vogl’s 2013 Museums at Night chandelier installation at Newcastle’s Discovery Museum

Imagine our surprise then, when Rosie from the Museums at Night team got in touch a few weeks after the 2013 festival to tell us that the feeling was mutual, that Julia had already worked out a detailed project she would have loved to create at Arnos Vale if we had won her, and had asked to be put in touch with us!

Since our first excited phonecalls and meeting last August, we have been collaborating to bring Julia’s work to Arnos Vale.

A key part of the challenge has been securing funding to support our shared vision for the piece. Here is where I take my hat off to Julia, who has led the way as an experienced professional artist used to applying for grant funding. She was brilliant at drawing together all the puzzle-pieces to realise our project idea: from meeting grant advisors and crunching budget numbers, to producing glorious illustrations for the compelling project application to the Arts Council England, awarded in April 2014.

The grave ornament inspiring Julia Vogl’s installation at Arnos Vale Cemetery

We are now at the exciting development stage of the Future Memorial project, which will install a year-long participatory sculpture in the cemetery landscape from June 2014.

When we were looking for a way to publicly test the prototype for Julia’s sculpture, it seemed natural to return to where it all started – Museums at Night.

Artist’s impression of the Future Memorial by Julia Vogl, a veteran of participatory artworks.

The Future Memorial Artist Workshop on Thursday 15th May 2014 promises to bring Art, Death & Candy to the cemetery in a unique event using discussion and gumballs. Julia explains: “your input and voice is essential for this sculpture, come take part!” We’d love it if you could join us:

http://www.arnosvale.org.uk/search-events/eventdetail/439/-/future-memorial-artist-workshop

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Felicia Smith, Public Engagement Manager, Arnos Vale Cemetery Trust
Felicia has worked in the heritage sector since 2004, working on three separate Heritage Lottery Funded projects (ss Great Britain; M Shed; Arnos Vale Cemetery) which involved development and delivery of capital build and interpretive brief elements in parallel and to tight timescales and budgets.

Since 2010 she has led development of the Public Engagement programme at Arnos Vale Cemetery, including public events, collaborative partnerships and advising other historic cemetery projects.

She has a postgraduate certificate in Museum & Gallery studies (University of St Andrews, 2009), is involved in a number of professional museum bodies and is currently working towards an Associateship of the Museums Association (AMA).

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Thanks, Felicia!

If you’d like to write a guest post or share a case study about any aspect of audience development, event planning or marketing in the arts and heritage sector, please email rosie@culture24.org.uk.

 

Guest post: Nerys Williams on celebrating toilets at Gladstone Pottery Museum

Today’s guest blog post comes from Nerys Williams, Audience Development Officer for Stoke-on-Trent Museums, based at Gladstone Pottery, who tells us why toilets are the unsung heroes of the modern world!

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Toilets: the unsung heroes of the modern world. Unappreciated, sniggered at and quite literally … well let’s not go into what we do upon them, this is Culture24 after all.

A young visitor sits on some large toilet rolls in Flushed with Pride – you stick your hands in them to find things which have been used as toilet paper over the years.

Here at Gladstone Pottery Museum we think loos should be celebrated and recognised as the sanitary ware superheroes they actually are. They played a huge role in making ‘The Potteries’, but are eclipsed by the more palatable tableware we think of as establishing Stoke-on-Trent as ceramics central.

Toilets save lives literally every day and if you’d like to find out more about how please take a look at http://www.wateraid.org/uk – amazingly, one in three people in the world don’t have one.

At Gladstone we have hundreds: early ones, see-through ones, colourful ones, flowery ones, amazing Victorian painted ones, a Crapper, a Hartington flushing one similar to the one used by Elizabeth I and more. Our ‘Flushed with Pride’ section is chock full of toilet history and entertains and educates with more than an occasional nod to toilet humour.

Taking part in Museums at Night

Crowds gather on the cobbles for beer festival as part of the inaugural Gladstone Gig, December 2013

Buoyed up by our initial foray into Museums at Night last year we’ve quite got into this after-dark malarkey, with our splendid Beer Festivals and out pants-wettingly brilliant inaugural Gladstone Gig last December bringing a new lease of life to our cobbled courtyard.

A partnership opportunity

When I heard that those funny Modern Toss people were up to toilet related shenanigans for Museums at Night it would have been rude not to take part. An exhibition of their prints in OUR toilets was just too good to miss.

It includes the Periodic Table of Swearing, which anyone who has developed workplace Tourette’s due to council cuts needs a copy of. (Number 91 is my current favourite).

‘Toilets by Twilight’

The chance to display Modern Toss’ Cistern Chapel exhibition was just too good to miss, so after a few hasty discussions to check what I was planning wasn’t too silly, here we are. A week from now, we’ll be hosting ‘Toilets by Twilight’, an all out loo extravaganza. Visitors can wander around our fabulous ‘Flushed with Pride’ building – the only permanent exhibition to the humble loo in the world, whilst enjoying some slightly-better-than-average wine.

Gladstone Pottery at dusk

There’ll be the chance to quiz a toilet expert – for yes, in my role I have access to these people! When you feel the need to ‘go’ you can do so in one of the best appointed facilities around – our visitor toilet has not only the commonplace pan but a urinal and a ‘Lady P’ female urinal, and the walls will be adorned by the edgy (and very funny) prints Modern Toss are providing.

To top it all off we’ll be showing ‘Carry On At Your Convenience’, simply because it would daft not to and there’s always room for a nudge and a wink!

Tickets are £5 and available by calling 01782 237777, and we welcome you to come in 1970s fancy dress if you dare, to celebrate the fact that we became a museum 40 years ago this summer.

Please come along – and if you can’t please consider this next time you spend a penny: http://www.toilettwinning.org/

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Nerys Williams, Audience Development Officer for Stoke-on-Trent Museums.

Nerys Williams says, “I am the Audience Development Officer for Stoke-on-Trent Museums, based at Gladstone Pottery Museum, a preserved Victorian pottery factory in Longton. A fancy title, but my job is to get bums on seats (or feet on cobbles, in our case) and I love it. Organising events that put our museum in the heart of our community as a fun and interesting place to be is a challenge, but fantastic when it works!”

You can follow Gladstone Pottery Museum on Facebook here and follow Nerys Williams on Twitter  @NerysWilliams.

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Thank you, Nerys!

If you’d like to write a guest post or share a case study about any aspect of audience development, event planning or marketing in the arts and heritage sector, please email rosie@culture24.org.uk.

Guest post: Ella Lewis-Collins on a night of drama at the Jerwood Gallery

Our latest guest post comes from Ella Lewis-Collins, and looks at how a change of plans meant the Jerwood Gallery had to rethink their Museums at Night event idea … and what they’ll be offering visitors instead.

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Last year, the Jerwood Gallery won the Chapman Brothers in the Connect10 competition for an event during the Museums at Night festival. Our evening with the Chapmans consisted of a party with a giant game of consequences.

Jake Chapman leading Exquisite Corpse drawing session at the Jerwood Gallery (c) Pete Jones

Participants made hideous, amusing and often obscene ‘exquisite corpses’ on 6 foot pieces of paper, passing them around to strangers to complete, with Jake Chapman jumping in and helping people add weird and wonderful details to their creations.

Visitors looking at an Exquisite Corpse artwork with Jake Chapman (c) Pete Jones

This was so much fun that we decided we had to go for another artist in the competition this year. We picked the photographer Spencer Tunick with the hope of bringing him to Hastings for a mass participation nude shoot on Hastings fishing beach.

Our campaign to win Spencer was one that got lots of support – the wonderful people of Hastings and beyond got behind the ‘Vote Jerwood, Vote Hastings’ campaign and we even had a flash mob strip completely naked on Hastings beach to help promote the vote, which made international news!

Nude flashmob on Hastings Beach, image courtesy Ciaran McCrickard / Connors

Despite almost doubling the number of votes that we got last year, it sadly wasn’t to be and George House Gallery, Folkestone won Spencer. After we found out that we hadn’t won Spencer, we didn’t want the opportunity of doing something for Museums at Night to pass us by. The tricky thing was working out to do instead.

Devising a new event idea

A few members of the team got together and we decided what we wanted was to create a gallery experience which allowed visitors to explore the gallery in a completely new way. We wanted it to have a distinctive evening atmosphere and we wanted people to remember ‘that time we went to the Jerwood Gallery’. Essentially something atmospheric, unique and creative. So then we thought of the Baron…

Baron Gilvan (c) Kipperklock Photography

The Baron is a wonderful, slightly dark and magical character who we had the pleasure of working with when we celebrated the gallery’s first birthday in March last year. He transformed the gallery’s studio into ‘The Baron’s Art School’ for the weekend and took families on a magical journey – following the character of ‘Christina the Astonishing’ in a performance workshop incorporating painting, puppetry and animation. The event sold out and was hugely popular with both children and adults.

We approached the Baron’s creator, Chris Gilvan-Carwright, to see if he would like to work for us on a special commission for Museums at Night this year. We met with Chris and Isobel Smith of Grist to the Mill, a puppeteer who often collaborates with the Baron on his performance projects, at the gallery.

Tips on working with performance artists

It’s hugely important when planning these sort of performative events that those who are delivering the performance can get a sense of the space. This is not only for practical reasons but because so often the space and the art on the walls provides new inspiration.

Chris came up with the idea of running a Baron’s Art School in which participants journey into the paintings, transporting the audience into another world. This provides the audience with a completely new way of looking at and experiencing art in the gallery; the activities will also make them active participants rather than passive observers to the works on the walls.

The Baron’s Art School (c) Kipperklock Photography

I really believe if you find the right performer, then the best thing to do is trust them with the development of the performance or the event. Whilst practicalities need to be considered by the venue, it’s usually best to allow the artists to work and get their creative juices flowing – the event will be all the better as a result.

Marketing the mysterious 

In terms of marketing the event, I wanted to convey a sense of excitement and anticipation. I did this through providing snippets of enticing information without giving too much away. There’s more excitement if there’s a bit of mystery!

I always try to listen to the words that the artist or performer uses to describe their work in order to help me develop the marketing copy. Sometimes even writing down verbatim (or recording – with their permission) what they say in planning meetings can be incredibly useful, as their passion and enthusiasm for what they do really comes across and helps to enthuse the audience too.

Images are also hugely important. People find it a lot easier to imagine themselves at an event if they have a visual sense of what it will be like. This can be tricky if a similar event hasn’t taken place before, however some sort of image conveying the atmosphere of the event is essential. Fortunately Chris had a number of great shots from previous events with the Baron, which we were able to use.

I think this year’s Museums at Night with the Baron will be a magical one. Our event – The Baron’s Art School presents Bringing Painting to Life – will take place on Friday 16 May. Tickets cost £15, and you can find out more about the event here: http://www.jerwoodgallery.org/whatson/events/79/the-barons-art-school

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Ella Lewis-Collins is the Communications and Marketing Manager at Jerwood Gallery. She joined the gallery in January 2012, prior to the gallery opening in March 2012. Before this Ella worked at FEI, an arts consultancy company. She has an MA in the Reception of the Classical World from UCL. You can follow Ella on Twitter @ellalc, and the Jerwood Gallery @jerwoodgallery.

 

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Thanks, Ella!

If you’d like to write a guest post or share a case study about any aspect of audience development, event planning or marketing in the arts and heritage sector, please email rosie@culture24.org.uk.

Bring Modern Toss or their Cistern Chapel exhibition to your Museums at Night event

This is a very unusual offer of an artist-led Museums at Night event and / or an exhibition for your venue’s toilets! Three venues can host the exhibition, and one can host the event.

This isn’t right for every organisation, but if you think this could be just the thing to attract a different audience to your venue, please contact Nick Stockman: nick@culture24.org.uk or 01273 623279.

MODERN TOSS – THE CISTERN CHAPEL – CHAMBER WORKS

For the first time ever satirical artists Modern Toss (Jon Link and Mick Bunnage) will take their prints on a gallery-tour outside of London to celebrate a decade of their work. This exhibition can be hung at a venue without the other elements of the evening.

The exhibition will reflect the manner in which these works have been displayed in people’s homes up and down the country and will primarily focus on the special relationship between the work, and the room which they traditionally inhabit.

The Cistern Chapel will feature a bespoke selection of classic Modern Toss pieces displayed in the public toilets of three arts or heritage venues, allowing the viewer the opportunity to experience the work in a space appropriate context, whilst hopefully leaving enough elbow room for a pee, if you need one.

To celebrate a decade of their ground-breaking satirical artwork Modern Toss present for one night only:

The Modern Toss Late Night Activity Centre 

Modern Toss has created an event made up of five different elements, including the Cistern Chapel Chamber Works show.

1) The F***YEUX 2 Tapestry – A live drawing event

Modern Toss and gallery visitors creating the first F***YEUX Tapestry (c) Modern Toss

Join Jon and Mick as they try to break their previous world record for the longest single panel cartoon with the F-word in it. This multi-participant drawing event will take place on during Museums at Night 2014; just turn up, we’ll supply the pen. Afterwards see your work immortalised in the commemorative online scrolling tapestry, and in book form.

2) The Living Cartoon

Visitor posing a a Living Cartoon (c) Modern Toss

The living cartoon is a unique opportunity to experience what it feels like to be a character in a Modern Toss cartoon.

3) The Modern Toss Portrait Booth

Enter the Portrait Booth (c) Modern Toss

Get your portrait drawn by either Jon or Mick as you sit in their specially constructed Portrait Booth.

4) The Periodic Table Of Swearing

Come and witness the amazing Interactive Periodic Table of Swearing: press a button and it swears back at you. Get a right earful off this state-of-the-art technological miracle.

The Periodic Table of Swearing (c) Modern Toss

Interested? Your next step:

Download this information as a 2 page PDF to discuss with your team.

This won’t be appropriate for every arts or heritage organisation, but if you think Modern Toss’s offer of an exhibition in your toilets, or an exclusive pop-up Museums at Night event could be just the thing to attract a different audience to your venue, please contact Nick Stockman on nick@culture24.org.uk or 01273 623279.

Connect10 artists to speak at Museums at Night briefings

We are delighted to announce that in addition to the expert speakers joining the Museums at Night team for our jaunt round the country in late September spreading the good word about Museums at Night and Connect10, we’ll also be joined by three of the artists who took part in the 2013 festival: Richard Wentworth, Julian Wild and Julia Vogl.

Richard Wentworth at Whitworth Art Gallery for Museums at Night 2013 (c) David Oates

On Monday 23 September we will be joined at the Jewish Museum in London by Richard Wentworth CBE, sculptor and academic who worked with Manchester’s Museum, Art Gallery and the Whitworth Gallery on a joint project to curate visitors’ collected objects for Museums at Night 2013.

Richard Wentworth welcomes visitors to the Whitworth Art Gallery for Museums at Night 2013 (c) David Oates

Richard has played a leading role in New British Sculpture since the end of the 1970s. His playful approach to using everyday and found objects reinterprets them and breaks conventional systems of classification. His Museums at Night event in Manchester invited visitors to think about curatorial and classification issues within the context of their own possessions. The event also featured an entertaining coach journey between the museum and the gallery accompanied by costumed interpreters. We are honoured to have Richard along on what is sure to be a fascinating session.

Book your place at the free London briefing session here: http://museumsnightlondon.eventbrite.co.uk/

On Thursday 26 September, Birmingham University’s Winterbourne House site welcomes artist and sculptor Julian Wild.

Julian Wild and young visitors collaborating on the Making the Connection sculpture for Museums at Night (c) Enginuity

Julian lit up Ironbridge Gorge’s Enginuity venue during Museums at Night when he brought half a kilometre of plumbing pipe for visitors to play with!

Julian had spent hours painting the pipes with light sensitive paint so that once the visitors’ skeletal-like abstract construction was completed and the lights turned off the piece glowed, a bluish hue bringing to mind a ghostly shipwreck. We look forward to hearing more about Julian’s long nights in the shed with a paintbrush!

Book your place at the free Birmingham briefing session here: http://museumsnightbirmingham.eventbrite.co.uk/

The last leg of our autumn odyssey reaches Bradford’s National Media Museum on Friday 27 September where we will be joined by Anglo-American ‘social sculptor’ Julia Vogl.

Instructions for Julia Vogl’s participatory social sculpture (c) Nick Stockman

For Museums at Night 2013, Julia worked with visitors to the Discovery Museum in Newcastle to collect 2,500 empty plastic bottles. On the night visitors were asked to choose a piece of coloured paper matching the regional location they most identify with and pop it in one of the bottles. The bottles were then strung together to create a structure resembling a giant jellyfish hoisted around the central chandelier of the venue’s Great Hall.

Julia is dedicated, articulate and entertaining so the visitors to the northern session are in for a treat!

Book your place at the free Bradford briefing session here: http://museumsatnightbradford.eventbrite.co.uk/

We’re confident that everyone coming along to the briefings will get something new and interesting out of them, so if you haven’t already, sign up to book your free place now – we look forward to meeting you!

Those booking links once more:

London briefing session, Monday 23 September http://museumsnightlondon.eventbrite.co.uk/

Birmingham briefing session, Thursday 26 September http://museumsnightbirmingham.eventbrite.co.uk/

Bradford briefing session, Friday 27 September http://museumsatnightbradford.eventbrite.co.uk/

Team Museums at Night on the road: join our Connect10 briefings!

Nick and I are delighted to announce that we’re going on the road this September! We’ll be delivering three free briefing sessions sharing our learning from the Connect10 competition, alongside people from venues who have actually won and worked together with Connect10 artists.

Stockman and Clarke – travelling the land spreading the word about Museums at Night

Are you interested in taking part in the Museums at Night festival and/or entering the Connect10 competition next year? Come along to our free, friendly morning briefing sessions: they’re for anyone working in a museum, gallery, historic house or other cultural institution, whether or not you’ve run a Museums at Night event before.

Museums at Night is the annual after-hours festival showcasing the arts and heritage sector, which each year offers great audience development opportunities. Connect10 is the competition that gives ten venues the chance to win an artist-led event and £2,000 as part of the festival.

Find out about the benefits and challenges involved in hosting an after-hours event, the advantages in working together with other venues and what it takes to be a Connect10 winner!

Learn how to organise a group of venues to take part in the festival, and what it’s like to host a top artist from the people who have done it before! Plus there will be plenty of opportunities to meet and chat with colleagues from your region.

We’re grateful to the Arts Council for subsidising the cost of these briefings, so they will be free to attend. There are 45 places available on each day, and we hope to welcome as many people as possible to the South, Midlands and North.

The three sessions are:

LONDON: Monday 23 September, at the Jewish Museum, 9:45 – 13:00

BIRMINGHAM: Thursday 26 September, at Winterbourne House, 9:45 – 13:00

BRADFORD: Friday 27 September, at the National Media Museum, 9:45 – 13:00

Click through to book your place! We look forward to meeting you.

Connect10 competition: what could the ten artists do for you?

Meet the ten artists who are taking part in the 2013 Connect10 competition, find out about their creative journeys and what they’d like to create. Could you see any of these ideas working in your museum, gallery, library or heritage site?

(c) Jake and Dinos Chapman

The Turner Prize-nominated Chapman Brothers studied at the Royal College of Art, and worked as assistants to British artists Gilbert and George. Their iconoclastic sculptures, paintings, prints and large-scale installations draw on confrontational imagery to question standards of politics, political correctness and obscenity in witty and frequently shocking ways: in the past they have reworked Goya etchings and watercolours by Hitler.

The Chapman Brothers’ Connect10 idea:
Off the top of our heads we’re thinking of staging either: a live human Autopsy-Turvy involving radioactive isotopes and a fun game of ‘Hunt the Spleen’; ‘Pin the Tail on the Donkey’ at a zoo; a game of Night Vision Paintball in a cathedral; a Wall of Death Motorcycle Gauntlet in a museum; or something involving industrial storage heaters at a waxwork museum. But if any participating institutions have a better idea we’re completely up for a discussion.

Insecticide (c) Mat Collishaw

Mat Collishaw (c) Axel Hoedt

Mat Collishaw

Central to Mat Collishaw’s work are the themes of illusion and desire, which he uses to draw us into an arena where everyday conventions are broken down and questioned. The photographer and video innovator is known for his hard-hitting images of beauty and cruelty, and has created adult zoetropes, photographed himself trying to catch fairies, and used phosphorescent paint to convey the brief lives of Victorian street children.

Mat Collishaw’s Connect10 idea:
I’d like visitors to help me prepare and make some of my work, in order to get a deeper understanding of my practice and the motives behind what I make and how I make it. These technical practices might include the flattening of the butterflies for my insecticide works or helping me create some of my spinning zoetropes and will be accompanied by informal discussion and guidance from me and my studio assistants.

Work No. 88: A sheet of paper crumpled into a ball (1996) (c) Martin Creed, image courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth

Martin Creed (c) Jason Schmidt

Martin Creed

2001 Turner Prize winner Martin Creed has exhibited his solo shows, performances and installations around the world. His recent works involve various art forms including music, dance, writing, sculpture and painting: pieces ranging from compositions for symphony orchestra and music for elevators to architectural commissions, public monuments and dance and performances which combine classical ballet with talk, music, film and animation.

Box Paint Class, Wide Open School, Hayward Gallery, London (2012) (c) Cullinan Richards

(c) Cullinan Richards

Cullinan + Richards 

Cullinan Richards is a London-based artistic collaboration between Charlotte Cullinan and Jeanine Richards. Since 1997 they have been producing work ranging from painting to performance to film, fusing personal histories with fiction so as to confront shared social and cultural issues. In 2006, they established Savage School Window Gallery, a gallery exhibiting works from a window in their studio on Vyner Street, London. Together they were on the panel of selectors for the Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2012.

Cullinan + Richards’ Connect10 idea:
We’d love to create a film set for a fictional Tarantino re-make of Russ Meyer’s cult film Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! in which the visitors are the extras. Viewers will be immersed in something which looks like a film set, smells like a film set and feels like a film set – this detailed reconstruction will even feature a catering truck serving sweet tea and bad sandwiches served by gallery staff playing the part of the film crew. There will be auditions taking place in various roped off sections of the space, one of which will be a boxing ring where extras will be sparring with casting agents & directors. There will also be a backdrop of projections taking place throughout the space. There could be indoors and outdoors elements to this experience, depending on the venue.

Susan Forsyth’s Zusammen Choir at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Art, 2008 (c) Susan Forsyth

(c) Susan Forsyth

Susan Forsyth

Shortlisted for the Jerwood Sculpture Prize in 2009, Susan Forsyth tweaks the canon, using sculpture, text, participatory performance and short films to re-play the historically significant and the everyday ephemeral.  The skill and craft of sculpture-making is important in her work: she gilds; fabricates industrial sheets; casts in plaster, bronze and iron; organises scratch choirs and ping-pong games.

Susan Forsyth’s Connect10 idea:
I like the idea of creating a large scale candle-lit Zusammen Choir Procession, performed entirely by Museums at Night visitors, the more the better, accompanied by a core of professional musicians. Zusammen means ‘together’ in German, so appropriately the songs being sung will be written by Susan in collaboration with the winning venue to tell the story of its unique cultural history through a collaborative public performance. There will be no rehearsals and critically, no singing skill is required. The procession can involve any route through a village, town or city but will end at the winning venue for a gloriously out-of-tune finale.

Audience (2008) at Art Basel (c) rAndom International

(c) rAndom International

rAndom International

rAndom create artworks and installations that explore behaviour and interaction, often using light and movement. Founded in 2005 by Stuart Wood, Florian Ortkrass and Hannes Koch, the studio utilises raw fragments of artificial intelligence to encourage relationships between the converging worlds of animate and inanimate. The studio is based in a converted warehouse in Chelsea, London and today includes a growing team of  diverse talent.

rAndom International’s Connect10 idea:
Given that The Rain Room which we installed at The Barbican took 4 years to develop and execute we’re thinking of something marginally smaller in scale but which affects viewers in a similarly immediate way. For Museums at Night, we’d love to stage a one-off performative intervention that engages the wider public with unforeseen aspects of their own expectations in a highly experimental fashion. We’d like to focus this experience around the elements of nature, in particular water and more specifically the sea and the seaside, and actively invite proposals/ideas. The most exciting aspect of Museums at Night for us is seeing what ideas the venues themselves come up with so we don’t want to provide too much information, rather general ideas!

(c) Gavin Turk

Gavin Turk 

Gavin Turk studied at the Royal College of Art and rose to prominence as one of the infamous Young British Artists.  His sculptures and installations critique the construction of artistic myths of authorship, creativity and genius, often using his own image and signature to address issues surrounding authorship, authenticity and identity. Since 2008, Turk and his partner Deborah Curtis have run a project-based group of artists called The House of Fairy Tales, designed to further educational community projects to support and advocate art.

Gavin Turk’s Connect10 idea:
I’m thinking of creating a giant Magic Flying Carpet experience for visitors, accompanied by an evening of fantastical story-telling and yarn spinning, charting a mystical journey through time and history. This journey could reflect the history and context of any venue/location so could be entirely site specific. Alternatively I like the idea of making a large scale light and sound installation – the more immersive the visitor experience the better – mobilising viewers to participate in a live performance of some kind using hundreds of neon glow sticks.

Holiday Destination (c) Julia Vogl – an artwork that is also a visualisation of data collected from the local community, with colour-coded bottles showing where people intend to spend their holidays

(c) Julia Vogl

Julia Vogl

Winner of the Aesthetical Art Prize and the Catlin Art Prize, the American and British artist has shown as part of the Saatchi and Channel 4 New Sensations exhibition, and was commissioned to make work for The People’s Supermarket. Vogl’s work is committed to reflecting the community site it is placed in, with a record of scaling buildings including the 40 front windows of Mudd Library in Ohio; HOME, a self-initiated Cultural Olympiad project for Peckham Community in London; and most recently HOLIDAY DESTINATION, for Silver Spring Maryland Shopping mall plaza.

Julia Vogl’s Connect10 idea:
I could create a huge interactive multi-coloured map of a community using 10,000+ vessels (glass, ceramic, plastic, metal, balloon) that can contain water. The vessels could be gathered/donated by the public in the months leading up to the event, at which point I will invite visitors to colour the water with local pigments, natural colour resources or food colouring. Ideally this map could be seen from alternate perspectives in the space. The colour-coding and demographic content will be based on a subject of key interest/relevance to the venue, site and/or location. For this particular idea to work we’ll require a large forum to lay out the work (not necessarily horizontally) and the venue must be able to help me collect thousands of recycled or locally sourced vessels. The details of how we make this interactive installation site-specific are completely up for discussion.

False Ceiling (1995) (c) Richard Wentworth

Richard Wentworth (c) Cutler & Gross

Richard Wentworth

Richard Wentworth has played a leading role in New British Sculpture since the end of the 70s. His work has altered the traditional definition of sculpture as well as photography, subversively transforming and manipulating industrial and/or found objects into works of art. In his photography, as in the ongoing series Making Do and Getting By, Wentworth documents the everyday, paying attention to objects, occasional and involuntary geometries as well as uncanny situations that often go unnoticed.

Richard Wentworth’s Connect10 idea:
I’d like to explore how things are assembled, not just physically, with objects and collections, but socially, with people. As an exercise of mass observation, I’ve always wanted to kidnap an entire tube, train, bus, or tram at a random moment to find out who’s on it, where they’re going and why. Alternatively, feeding my deep interest in the history of social protest I’d like to somehow stage a silent riot which would require the participation of several hundred visitors in a large public space. Whatever the outcome of this collaboration, it will relate specifically to the compass of what the museum or gallery does.

Making the Connection at the Tabernacle (c) Julian Wild – a touring communal sculpture project in which members of the public can add to a large scale sculpture constructed from plastic plumbers pipe

(c) Julian Wild

Julian Wild 

Julian Wild has exhibited in a range of spaces including the Victoria & Albert Museum, and was shortlisted for the Jerwood Sculpture Prize in 2005. The linear structures that he makes either explore the boundaries of a pre-determined shape or the space that they exist in. His sculptures are often based on the history of the site and reference functional processes and systems. Wild is interested in construction and manufacturing ranging from the functional (e.g. stainless steel handrails) to decorative processes such as japanning. Lately he has created a series of sculptures that are three-dimensional doodles.

Julian Wild’s Connect10 idea:
My favourite idea so far is to create a unique glow-in-the-dark version of ‘Making the Connection’, using white plastic tubing and luminous paint. Members of the public will actually be responsible for assembling this piece of sculpture and at the end of the night the lights in whichever museum or space we’re in will be turned off to reveal a glowing masterpiece. The possibilities regarding the shape and scale of this event depend entirely on the spaces in a venue and if a venue has interesting suggestions as to how this can be applied, I’m very keen to discuss ideas.

Download this information as a 4 page PDF to share

The Connect10 competition is supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.

Connect10, a new project for Museums at Night 2012: information for venues

UPDATE 22 January 2013: The Connect10 competition is back with a new set of artists – find out more here!

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So, this new Connect10 project. It’s part of Museums at Night – but what does it mean for you and your venue?

Connect10 is a new national competition for cultural venues to win an artist to appear at a meet-the-artist event during Museums at Night 2012. One of ten well-known contemporary artists could be on the way to your venue on the weekend of 18^th – 20^th May 2012.

An artist-led Connect10 event could inspire your visitors for Museums at Night. Image courtesy Larna Pantrey-Mayer

How does it work?

You devise an event idea or theme that you think would demonstrate a strong connection between one of the artists taking part and your venue. If your idea is accepted you go through as one of the venues taking part in the competition – up to a maximum of 30. Each artist will end up with either two or three venues vying for them.

Once voting begins, your venue will need to use every communication method available to get as many people as possible to vote for your venue/event/artist combination. The one with the most votes wins!

The prize

Every one of the maximum 30 venues taking part in the competition will receive a bursary towards the running costs of a Museums at Night event. The venues which win will receive £500 towards the cost of holding their event. Even the venues that don’t win an artist will get £100 to put on an event: perhaps featuring a local artist or with a completely different theme.

Timetable

Culture24 will confirm the artists taking part in the run-up to Christmas, with all ten confirmed by the New Year. During this period we will release more information to venues about how to take part, the terms and conditions, and resources to support you while you’re devising events.

We will accept event ideas in January through a simple online form. The competition will go live in early February. Voting will take place throughout February and close in early March leaving plenty of time for each venue to liaise with their artist about their Museums at Night event in May.

Why take part in this exciting new project?

Exciting artists

We’re not going to give away too much yet but we are leaving no stone unturned to bring you the most engaging contemporary artists to take part in Connect10. This is a unique opportunity to bring an inspiring artist to your town.

Audience development

The competition element provides a valuable opportunity for audience development and advocacy work in your local area, galvanising support and mobilising new fans to go online and vote for your venue to win.

This is your chance to really use Twitter, Facebook and all the other social networking mediums to work hard for your venue. Creating a genuine buzz around the event you are planning will make it more likely that you will win.

Cash support

Each venue will receive a bursary to put towards the event. Each artist will also be paid, and all their travel, accommodation and food expenses will be covered by Culture24.

A special event

An exciting contemporary artist with connections to your venue or your collections will create a special evening event exclusively for Museums at Night, at no cost to you. This is a chance to delight your Museums at Night audience with an ingenious new event you might not otherwise be able to offer.

Museums at Night

Museums at Night is an annual good news story: the only public-facing UK-wide campaign promoting the work of the arts and heritage sector. Whether or not you’ve run Museums at Night events in previous years, we warmly invite you to bid for a Connect10 artist, engage with Culture24 and benefit from the resources and publicity on offer as we shine a positive spotlight on the work of the sector.

By the time Museums at Night weekend comes around, you can guarantee an engaged audience who are keen to enjoy whatever event you put on.

Profile-raising

You can expect full PR and marketing support from Culture24. Our independent PR agency will help you to get local coverage of your participation in the competition and of your Museums at Night event. Plus we will maximise any opportunity we get to profile the competition on national TV, radio, print and online.

As part of your bid, you’ll undertake to improve your venue’s entry in Culture24’s DDE database. This will ensure your venue and the programming and services you offer are easier to find online, attracting more visitors.

You’re interested – what do you do now?

Start a discussion within colleagues at your venue about the kind of event you could put on. Make sure the marketing and events people in your organisation all know about this exciting opportunity. Once you see an artist confirmed who you’d like to bring to your venue, start devising an event.

Look out on www.WeAreCulture24.org.uk and here on the blog for further resources to support your event plan. If you have any questions about the competition please get in touch with us: we’d love to hear from you!

Rosie Clarke: 01273 623336 or rosie@culture24.org.uk

Nick Stockman: 01273 623279 or nick@culture24.org.uk

Click here to download a printable PDF version of the Connect10 information for venues

Connect10 project outline: what’s the big idea?

UPDATE 22 January 2013: The Connect10 competition is back for 2013!

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Last week we announced that Culture24 had secured funding for Museums at Night 2012, and that this would include a new project called Connect10. Find out more about our plans here!

Connect10 project outline 

Connect10 will connect contemporary artists, venues, and audiences in an entirely new way. Venues will compete to win one of ten well-known contemporary artists to take part in a ‘meet-the-artist’ evening event during Museums at Night 2012 (18-20 May). The competition is designed to require venues to reach out to their communities, galvanising them to vote to make the event happen.

When the competition goes live in February there will be a minimum of 20 and maximum of 30 venues vying for the ten artists in ten polls. Each venue designs an event specifically with one of the artists in mind and competes against a maximum of two other venues to ‘win’ that artist. Venues will then reach out to their communities using any channel at their disposal (email, Twitter, Facebook, websites and print media) to get as many votes as possible for their event.

Members of the public will be encouraged to go to http://www.culture24.org.uk/connect10 to vote for their favourite venue/event/artist combination. Venues receiving the most votes at the end of the competition period ‘win’ that artist for their Museums at Night event.

The prize

The prize for the venues is the artist and the prize money. Every one of the maximum 30 venues taking part in the competition will receive a bursary towards the running costs of a Museums at Night event. The venues that win will receive £500 towards the cost of holding their event. Even the venues that don’t win an artist will get £100 to put on an event, perhaps featuring a local artist instead, or with a completely different theme.

Each artist gets to embark on an exciting journey with the venue, devising a unique event, interacting with a special collection and connecting with a particularly engaged audience. As each event is likely to be small and intimate and demand for tickets high, those people who have voted will be entered into a ballot to win tickets to attend.

Timetable

Culture24 will confirm the artists taking part in the run-up to Christmas, with all ten confirmed by the New Year. During this period we will release more information to venues about how to take part, the terms and conditions and resources to support you while you’re devising events.

We will accept event ideas in January through a simple online form and the competition will go live in early February. Voting will take place throughout February and close in early March, when the results will be announced. This should leave plenty of time for each venue to liaise with the artist about their event in May.

How are the project’s stakeholders engaged?

The three primary stakeholders in this project are the venues, the audiences and the artists. Culture24 will create an online environment hosted within our family of sites where the three primary stakeholders will be able to interact.

Each of the venues will have an area to promote their bid, which will include a venue image, an event description and a link to their chosen artist’s profile. Venues will encourage members of the public to go to a Connect10 platform and ‘love’ the artist they want to win. Venues will be able to keep tabs on the status of their poll through the real time poll widget.

Audiences will be able to vote for their favourite venue/event/artist combo. When this vote has been registered the voting widget will flip to a current poll status display and there will be an opportunity to share their voting decision through a range of social media channels.

Artists will have the opportunity to read and input into the venue’s event suggestions, veto any that they are not prepared to engage with and confirm they are happy with the two or three events which will go ahead to the competition. Artists will be represented by an image and short biography on the Culture24 site.

Culture24’s specific aims for the Connect10 project are:

– To raise the profile of participating venues and the campaign

– To increase the involvement of practising artists in the Museums at Night campaign. Museums at Night has been successful in breaking down silos between the museums and galleries sector and this project will combine both in a new and exciting way.

– To connect these venues with their networks and wider communities through advocacy exercises conducted mainly through social media. As venues reach out to the public to get as many votes for their artist event as possible, they will create ambassadors and learn about social media as a marketing tool

– To build capacity in participating venues, developing their confidence in planning and marketing successful events

– To produce 10 superb events, giving members of the public the opportunity to spend time with cutting-edge artists

– To create culture-loving ambassadors for local venues

– To reinforce the work Culture24 has already done in measuring the success of online engagement

For more information on the project, please contact Nick Stockman:

01273 623279 or nick@culture24.org.uk

For press enquiries and images, please contact Pandora George:

07729 469220 or pandora@bulletpr.co.uk

Click here to download a printable PDF version of the Connect10 project outline