FINAL INTERVENTION: Post-meeting analysis

Saturday 7 July 2007

Post-meeting analysis

Dear collaborators,

Thank you all again to those of you that were able to make the meeting and the very helpful, and honest, comments that you gave in the evaluations. For those that couldn’t be there, we’ll be emailing you the list of contact names, statements and email addresses of all collaborators to FINAL INTERVENTION. We will be displaying a transcript of the meeting on the blog shortly.

Following the meeting we have identified 7 areas that we need to work on in the development phase of FINAL INTERVENTION.

To research:

1) Councils and developers receptive to this initiative;
2) Funding opportunities;
3) Similar past/present/future projects and organisations and to make contact with them;
4) The viability of running conferences and/or lecture programmes prior to and alongside any FINAL INTERVENTION exhibitions;
5) Develop and promote the conceptual grounding of FINAL INTERVENTION (critical writing/articles/catalogue/website);
6) The possibility of smaller-scale projects to either function as fore-runners or alongside the larger-scale initiatives;
7) How FINAL INTERVENTION can positively involve the community, learning from past projects: What did they do well and where did they go wrong?

Which topic most interests you? It was suggested in the meeting to split into groups, so we propose to use these identified areas of research as the basis for 7 smaller discussion groups.

Please let us know which group you want to join by emailing us. If you want to join more than one group, of course you can. We hope that splitting into smaller groups in this way accurately reflects your feedback.

Keep us informed of any developments, so that the wider group is kept up-to-date. It is essential that Noëmi and Joy must be involved in any major decision. Each distinct group will operate within the larger group dynamic which Noëmi and Joy will oversee, providing the effective direction which is essential to make FINAL INTERVENTION a success.

We look forward to reading more of your thoughts!

Joy Stanley & Noëmi Lakmaier
FINAL INTERVENTION

7 comments:

helen grundy said...: Hello.

I want to direct people to links for groups who have put on exhibtions in derelict buildings. The first is one in a tower block. I only visited this, the second was 'Intervention' where I was a participating artist.

For Intervention we transformed 5 derelict houses into a gallery and we involved the community by encouraging people to hang their work in the gallery and we also created an outside stage where local budding musicians could perform , this was very popular with local teenagers. we realised the venue was becoming a meeting place so set up a place for people to sit and drink tea and coffee. We researched the history of the buildings and found some notes scratched on the walls of the cellar from WW2 about air raids, we contacted local historical groups who photgraphed the notes and then traced the families. Some of the ex residents came and visited the project.

We also invited local schoolchildren and gave them guided tours and got them to fill out worksheets.

The links are:

Haddon Tower

http://behindcloseddoors.org.uk/about.html

Intervention:

http://www.d-log.info/intervention/intervention.html

To see what Sozo are doing now go to:

http://www.festival-xtremebuilding.org.uk/terms.php

I wasn't able to take part in this one as I was commissioned to make a site specific installation in Northampton. To see info about that and the organisers, go to:

http://www.osop.org/

Hope this is helpful

Helen; 9 July 2007 at 05:28
Earthworks said...: I have also been using derelict houses as not exactly art galleries but more display sites for art produced by the local community.

Originally I was doing research at various sites around Blackburn but they all lacked a resident community. Working here in the Waterside area at Blackburn has been a steep learning curve.
I have to learn how to work in partnership with others.
How to manage projects so that partners achieve their objectives without compromising the projects objectives.
How to ethically present and document the work to third parties outside the communities.

This is a large emotionally and politically charged space that I am working in and so my diplomacy skills are being honed as well.

The basic question I am always asking myself is can art benefit space undergoing change and even though at present this is a personal belief I believe it does.

I can talk for ever on this, but I'll stop now and let anyone comment .

Cheers Alastair; 14 July 2007 at 15:54
Kate Terry said...: Hello all,

Good to hear about peoples' past projects.
Further to the 7 identified project/discussion areas that Joy and Noemi emailed out, I am keen to be involved in the no. 4 group: running conferences and lecture programmes alongside the exhibitions. Who else is interested in being involved in this group?
Can we have a list of all participants in each sub-group once everyone has replied? Hopefully we can start a new post for each of the 7 areas.
Kate; 15 July 2007 at 11:10
bram thomas arnold said...: Hello everyone,

Initially apologies for not getting back to you before the first meeting, Devon can be a technological wilderness sometimes. And thank you for inviting me to take part in the project it sounds more exciting all the time.

With regards to the list of areas of interest I would be interested in the conceptual side of the project as well as the potential for running forerunner events on a smaller scale. I have recently been involved with a project that delivers participants the OS grid reference of an old WW2 pillbox. The artists job is then to find said pillbox and make a creative response. These pillboxes are often forgotten and half burried, sometimes non existent, they could therefore have excellent potential as being nationally distributed spaces in which to run fore runner promotional events of some kind - if you allow the concept to expand to forgotten buildings/communities.

I also think the project as a whole has a great potential to deliver a lecture series of some sort, or a day of some such events, and second Kate's notion of developing posts for the different areas of interest though i may have to dabble in several.

On an entirely unrelated note I will be in london this wednesday and thursday if anyone wants to meet up, i plan to spend thursday pootling about east london walking down streets I've never walked down before and popping into the odd art gallery.; 16 July 2007 at 11:25
helena said...: Hello

I'm interested in the conceptual side of the project and have just become involved in a complementary venture in Bristol called Offload.this project is also engaging with aspects of regeneration - a strong subject in the city as it is undergoing major redevelopment. There is a meeting tomorrow at which i'll mention Final Intervention and the potential interest.

I am also interested in the group 4 of the project - in terms of running lecture programmes etc alongside the exhibitions.

I would also be keen to get together with any other collaborators in the south west/wales area to research
potential sites and discuss the project.

Also - when is the next in person meeting planned?

Looking forward to getting more involved in a very exciting sounding project.

Helena; 17 July 2007 at 07:34
John O'Hare said...: Hello there.
In relation to the discussion groups maybe it would be good for collaborators to say which groups they are intersted in & why on part of the blog itself.
I'm interested in 2 areas at the moment, the conceptual and critical grounding for projects, as well as the creation of satelites for projects; for me I think the 2 could work quite well together in creating alternative operational spaces to the art-exhibition site...perhaps where former residents can give a sense of historical context.
Also I'm currently organising 'Eyes, Lies & Stories' with wolstenholmeprojects(.org), this show will, in part, aim to address the staging of artistic intervention without necessarily having the means for complete simulation ie asserting the importance of going along with trickery in artistic experience. Should it be of interest to anyone I'll stick some info. on our website.
Ta ta for now; 22 July 2007 at 08:39
sara fernee said...: I am interested in doing some research around similar projects (past/present/future)in order to feed back to final intervention what seems to have worked and why. This will probably also lead to informataion about community involvement too. Has there been info sent out so we can form smaller groups for this research? If you're interested in this area as well please let me know so we can start collaborating!; 8 August 2007 at 06:00

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Mission statement

Final Intervention is an artist run initiative responding to the lack of opportunities for early-career installation artists to make and show new work. It aims to organise collaborative projects/exhibitions within buildings about to be pulled down. This will mark the buildings’ transitions between domestic/commercial use and final demolition.
The artists will be selected through an open call based on a demonstrable track record of creating exciting site-specific interventions and a sensitivity to the building’s particular context. Artists will be encouraged to visit the building and to engage with the local community to inform their response to the building once it has been vacated. Involvement of the local community is essential to the concept of Final Intervention.
Once the buildings are demolished the work is gone forever. To document it, it is anticipated that there will be a small print or online publication with each project/exhibition.
Final Intervention is supported by the Networking Artists' Network initiative (NAN) through a-n The Artist Information Company.
For more information or to to add your comments to this blog, go to: http://www.finalintervention.org.uk

JUNE 23rd COLLABORATORS' MEETING TRANSCRIPT

Meeting led by Joy Stanley and Noemi Lakmaier at the Rag Factory, attended by about 25 collaborators.

Much of the speech is paraphrased or approximate (particularly at times when the weather was very bad).
If anyone has been badly misquoted, please let us know.

Joy Stanley: First of all thank you all so much for coming – we realise that some of you have travelled from quite far away…

Noemi Lakmaier: In your packs you’ll find an agenda and a mission statement briefly outlining what we are hoping to do, also, if you can fill in the evaluation form that would be really useful… A number of people couldn’t make it very last minute – their apologies… In the second half of the meeting we really envisage it to be more of a discussion, rather than us talking at you. We have a list of questions on the agenda as a basis for the discussion:

Conceptual scope of the project – how can this best benefit both the local community and the artists?
How do you see FINAL INTERVENTION developing?
The building – do you know potential sites or have contact with developers?
Potential sources of funding.
Expanding the network – who do you know that could further this initiative?

To give you a brief background about how the idea came together… Joy and I went to college together in Winchester, and really the idea for doing a project like this has been bubbling away for 5 or 6 years, or longer. We are both installation artists and had the idea already in college. After leaving art school we very quickly realised that there isn’t that much opportunity to show work as an installation artist and to stay involved in large-scale practice. The typical problems being: it’s very expensive, a lack of space, high risk, and a low number of potential spaces to work in… I [Noemi] work with large-scale installations with a lot of DIY products (tiles/carpet/flooring). I am interested in emotionally changing a space by the objects in it and manipulating the viewers by manipulating the space…

Joy: We were both on a painting course originally, a very intellectually based way of looking at art. I really rebelled against this, being much more interested in materials. For me installation art is all about materials, space, viewer and context. And during my course I decided that I was really interested in the temporality of installations and that something about them is so different to a lot of art that is meant to be permanent… That’s really all we need to say at this need. We just wanted to introduce ourselves and say where we’re coming from…

Noemi: To get back to how the idea has grown. We moved from Winchester to Stratford in east London suddenly there was this big change and lots of derelict buildings. We kept finding ‘perfect’ buildings, but nothing ever really happened with it. Of course there’s all the changes with the Olympics now, changing the landscape of East London.

Last year the Jerwood ArtAngel Open came around and we thought ‘we have to apply for that’. We got all the stuff together and applied for that, then realised that around 33,000 other people also applied! That was a slightly different idea (same concept) but to use an entire tower block, for example using 50 flats and 50 artists). To be honest half a million probably wouldn’t have covered it! As we had the proposal ready, and I [Noemi] went to a networking event led by Networking Artist’s Network (NAN) and found out about the New Collaborations Bursaries, we felt that this was very appropriate for us and the project. We got it! I think I scared half the people in the street when I got the phone call. The bursary is for £2000 for the development stage of FINAL INTERVENTION: to find a building, to build a network of artists and to find further funding for the first initial project. So the NAN funding stops once the initial development stage is over.

Joy: Looking over our mission statement, at the bare bones of the concept: at this stage it’s actually a very simple concept. We want to find a building, find installation artists who want to work in the building in a very site-specific way and we also want very clear links with the community. The concept is that the building is not going to be there for much longer before being demolished, and this is a sort of ‘goodbye’ to the building. We don’t want it to be some grandstanding statement as a protest to say that it shouldn’t be ripped down – that’s not where we’re coming from. It would be a building that it’s already been decided to be demolished, and it will be. We would go in at the point before that happens. Living in East London, you see buildings being demolished all the time. A couple of week’s later, you see a new one being put up, and you can’t quite remember what was there before. It’s that type of issue that we want to deal with. In a community sense – there is a gap, and it should be seen as a gap, and putting any building there is not going to fill that.

Noemi: The last thing we want to do is to alienate the community. We don’t want to be seen as annoying outsider artists who have no idea what’s going on.

Joy: As well as the network with the community building up a network among ourselves is very important to us. Because we want to work in a site specific way, it’s obviously not going to become clear exactly how people want to work with it until we have a specific building. We want to get everybody’s different ideas on what this could be, and how it could work and how it will work. Also with the temporality issue, we are very, very keen to have good documentation of the project so that although it no longer physically exists it still exists in people’s memories, online, and also to publish a catalogue – so there is a static statement. We want to discuss with you how that might alter, how that might change, and also what we’ve not thought of or overlooked.
We are just going to outline our roles. Pooling our strengths: I’m in charge of locating the building and finding amenable councils and developers.

Noemi: I’m predominantly responsible for finding the money: fundraising. Obviously it’s really important that we work closely together and that our roles overlap, and, more importantly now, we’ll be working with you, and keeping in touch through the blog. So far we have set up the website, giving FINAL INTERVENTION a public face. This will change, along with the development of the blog. This will hopefully develop good communications within the network, with each other. We have made contact with a fundraiser, and he is helping us for free to work on the initial budget for the first project. He put the budget at £50,000. Then we advertised for collaborators: over 120 people applied. We thought that we would be able to invite everyone to the meeting, but had to make a choice on who to invite tonight. It just shows how relevant the project really is.

Joy: I’ll just say what I’ve been doing. I’ve had initial contact with a developer currently working alongside the council. A leisure centre and an office block are to be ripped down and construction should start next September. I’ve also been looking at possible receptive areas, which are primarily London, Birmingham, Southampton, Cardiff, Glasgow and Sheffield – these are identified as culturally deprived areas and as such are being targeted with Arts Council funding. Particularly for the first project, they are our target areas.
On the development side, I have also been looking into 1% for Art, which is exactly what is says – a developer needs to put 1% of their funds towards art, to enable big projects to be green-lit. There’s also something called the Section 106 Agreement, where a planning obligation arises before permission is granted. This is particularly relevant in cities/towns, especially in the South East, where there is a big push for a massive amount of affordable housing.

Noemi: I think what you haven’t mentioned with the 106 Agreement is that, depending on the area that it’s in, it is actually an obligation for the developer to put 106 Agreement money into any project that they do. It’s not their choice, it’s an obligation.

Joy: Inside London, it’s relevant to a development of over 15 dwellings. There is dedicated officer in a council who looks after the 106 Agreement within a council. They come under a few different names: planning gain, planning benefit, community benefit or community obligations, but they all mean the same thing. So it is to balance the possible pressures or negative effect any development makes on an area, to make a positive contribution to the community. It can be a green space or crèche etc – it doesn’t have to necessarily be permanent, it can be temporary. It definitely has to benefit the community, but it can be for a short period of time. It’s not every development that would have this, but only if it’s deemed to impact the community in a major way. For instance if a factory was being demolished and a tower block going up, or a row of terraced houses being replaced by a luxury apartment block, they would be instances where the Section 106 could be applicable. That’s also something that developers would be well aware of. Art could be the way to go for their section 106, and with it being a temporary thing, they might look on that in a positive way.

Anon: How would verbalise that it’s lasting impact would be beneficial then, if it’s so temporary?

Joy: That’s actually a really could question…

Lucy Williams: I can give a really good example, where flats were put up in Greenwich on a previously green space where people used to go walking, the developers paid for 9 months community training, so that was a tangible benefit.

Noemi: I think that we would have to really play it with the community benefit and involvement. Say we worked with Creative Partnerships and we work with the local schools, for example, or community centres, you could argue that the long term benefit might be in integrating communities that might not necessarily be involved with art otherwise, to get people in touch with art in their locality, and in the long term take that out into the wider art world. We are very interested in getting them on board. They would be very helpful in working with communities and schools and have funding to do that. We have links with Southampton and have been talking to them about it, but there are a number of offices in London who we plan to contact.

Joanne Austin: We could remind councils of section 106 and could target councils if you know that a building is up for demolition.

Joy: That’s definitely something that we want to do. Also in the Arts Council there are going to be certain people in particular jobs who will be more interested in what we have to say.

Noemi: Useful links with councils are the Visual Arts Officer and Arts development Officer and Planning Officer, although not all councils have all of these posts, like in Hackney…

Joy: At this point we want to throw it open to questions, or if there’s anything that you’d like to discuss…

Pippa Koszerek: I had a thought about a project in Liverpool there was a high profile project in a block up for demolition, though there were still residents living there. It was a pilot project where artists lived in the building, for a period of six months. The community loved it so much - it was so successful that the community put up half the funding. They had been exposed to all the contemporary artists and the community chose artists who were contemporary, 6 were chosen by curators and 6 by the community…

Hannah Lammin: I don’t know if you’re aware of the regeneration of Thames Valley Gateway, and the purchasing of buildings in the Olympic area from Hackney towards the river. That might be a good place to approach, because you’ll get buildings that are being taken away from the local community. There’s a big area there, all around the canals. There’s money there.

Joy: We are trying to get in contact with someone from the Thames Gateway Project…

Polly Carter: I might be jumping the gun…I’m just wondering if you have a vision of how you’re going to develop the organisational aspect of FINAL INTERVENTION? Would there be a curatorial committee? Or are you talking about more of a free-for-all? ...

Noemi: At this point it is still open to discussion. I think that what we have in mind is that in 5-10 years we would like it to be a stable organisation with employees and a board overseeing it. There would be artists selected from a core group and moving out of that group, rather than always sticking with the artists in the core group. Central to the concept as well is working with early career artists, based on career success, not on age or time out of college.

Polly: Would you put that in place for the first project?

Noemi: Yes, although maybe the first project will be more of a pilot, but we will need a structure in place.

Tamsin Clark: Is it perhaps dependant on the space, though, as to what artists will be chosen?

Joy: Yes! I think we couldn’t call it site-specific otherwise. We’re thinking that it wouldn’t be a proposal with a completely fixed idea of what they want to do. That’s not really our idea of site-specific – it needs to be changeable/flexible –to be truly site-specific.

Pippa: Could committee members also put in proposals to show? Would you hope to show work as well, what are your roles, as artists or organisers?

Noemi: I think not in the first one. Maybe further down the line on later projects. But for now we have to be able to stand back from it. As for committee members, I don’t see any reason why not.

Anon: Did you envisage just one building to be worked in, and only in London?

Joy: We are looking around London for the first project, mostly for convenience, because it’s where we are based, but also because of the Olympics. But from our research, as we mentioned earlier, there are also other ‘culturally deprived’ areas which would be easier than other places to get funding for.

Lucy Williams: I worked with an artist collective in South East London and we curated small shows and held local workshops and we came across a huge semi-derelict building which cost us £300 for two weekends. In order to navigate the space we had 20 ushers with torches to show people round and held an open call to artists to put in work. We had a number of approaches. Some people looked at the space, and sat in it and felt the physical space and its vibrations. While others brought in work that they though would work in that space. It resulted in a very patchy show, to be honest, because nobody curated it. There were arguments over where people could place work and so on: it really must be curated, there has to be coherence.

Noemi: I totally agree. You can’t just throw people into a building and hope that they’ll sort it out among themselves. I think particularly if we do manage to raise that kind of money, and fir instance if we do get money in from the Arts council, they will be very keen to see that it has been organised and put together properly.

Lucy: We may have to pay for the keys to a space undergoing development. I think that’s just something that you might want to factor in.

Hannah: I think it will depend in the long-term, how much good publicity you can get.

Joy: I know a lot of you have worked in derelict buildings. Have you all had similar experiences?

Beverley Broadhead: In Norwich, there is an artist run initiative ‘Target fellow’ in Norwich and they are involved with the a shoe factory which houses the fringe festival. They donate the building for the duration of the festival. I’m assuming that is to comply with the Section 106.

Pippa: I worked on a project in Hull where we got a large warehouse, and although we didn’t have to pay, in terms of site-specific work we only had about a month at the most to do work and you have to be quite ready to adapt.

Joy: That would really be quite high on our list of desirable qualities for the artists.

Noemi: Our initial idea on how to select the artists would be to select a group of artists and then pay a lump some for the development, then once we get the building, to go through a second selection process, where they can produce work in response to the building. It’s the model of how some organisations work this type of project, so it’s one way of doing it.

Beverley: I’d like you to clarify how collaborative you envisage it to be between the artists. Is the work to be collaborative?

Noemi: It really depends on the artists, on how they want to work. I think it’s very difficult to say how it’s going to pan out before we have the building.

Hannah: I suppose that one way to approach it, by having an over-arching concept for a building – that you could ask people to give a proposal in relation. This is an area, something about the area or building or theme. I’ve worked with big disparate groups – without that type of focus it turns into a big mess. I’m interested in this project because I think it’s different from that.

Joy: Going on the budget of it. £50,000 would go for 5 artists, to produce a professional show, covering fair artist’s fees, the catalogue, workshops, promotion.

Tania Carson: As far as developers go, it’s slightly different, but in Sweden, there is often a system where the artist rents out a derelict space from developers at a low rent, using the space as studios, then the developers move in and the artists give them payment in kind, i.e. something to put on the new building’s walls, so there is a payment in art.

Laura Napier: Maybe it could be a series of prints, or a limited edition for the developers. That could be their 1% for art.

Noemi: It could even be a condition that each artist produces a limited edition.

BREAK FOR REFRESHMENTS

Joy: If we go through the first question and then see how it goes from there… We wanted to briefly discuss the conceptual scope of the project, how you think it can best benefit both the artists and the community. What are your thoughts on how it could develop?

Hannah: Who do you mean by the community? It’s quite a vague term… How are we going to identify them?

Noemi: I think it will be different from building to building. We were really meaning the people who were involved with the building. Firstly, the people who have lived and/or worked in the building, and secondly the local community surrounding it, involved with the building, for instance community centres and local schools…

Pippa: Also there are communities of artists – if a project like this came to Hull, the local artists would be grumbling if they weren’t involved - maybe we should be reaching out to existing artists in the area to take part in the project.

Harriet: The whole business of getting involved in communities is quite a huge undertaking in itself. I don’t know whether there are people here who are interested in that particular side of it. Not that I’m not, but firstly I’m an artist – the first interest for me is the artwork… It seems to be a big issue that needs tackling, it’s not something that you can just go and find – maybe someone else needs to find the community…

Joy: We don’t want it to seem like the community angle is just to get funding. It is important in and of itself.

Noemi: We really want to avoid alienating the community.

Harriet: Yes of course - it’s just a big job to link with the community.

Polly: The curatorial element that could come under the educational remit. I suppose that it wasn’t made clear, in that will the artists have to take on community on board in what they do? Will the artwork come first? Then the education/workshop programme can be developed around that.

Harriet: What comes first? In some ways it seems to me that small collaborations need to come first, maybe from the people that are here. This would create an understanding of who we all are and our common interests and then from there it’s easier to go out and see how links with communities might work more specifically.

Beverley: We don’t even know each other, let alone getting close to a community. We need to know each other, especially with the short turn-around for the project.

Noemi: It would really depend on how much time the developers give us, or on who owns the building.

Beverley: Maybe it could be open to public interaction and more of a link with the work could be formed, so that it becomes interactive as a link between art and the community.

Anon: I think what we’re trying to say is that a building is not just made of bricks and stone, that a building is more than that…

Oliver O’Donnell: By championing the community, I think really narrows the type of developer that would be interested in the project. For instance if luxury apartments were going up the developer would be far more interested if it were to attract a different, more chic, clientele as opposed to a community building project. Perhaps the tactic could change with different strategies depending on the type of property and what it was going to become.

Lucy: I’m slightly worried about this notion of community as well. I was a community development worker for many years. My experience is that if you go in from outside and you no nobody and you’re not connected in any way, and go in and say ‘hey we’re going to do this art project’…they’ll just tell you to go away. For that outreach side, you have to embed yourself in that community and be trusted and understood.
[Beginning of thunder storm] See I’m right!
I think you need to do a small discreet project as a first step to show backers/developers that you can do it, that it could be exciting and interesting and good. You can have done one one-dayer, or three, monitor footfall and where people come from, to get the statistics together, showing evidence to say that look we can do it. And the way to start by doing small things is by asking people here if they would be willing to collaborate on a small thing. That gives you a pool of people who do want to work in that way, using the initial network. In the longer term, I would fundraise for an outreach worker to make connections and gain trust of the community, to get you known and trusted in that area.

Oliver: Especially because installation and contemporary art can be very alienating to people who aren’t involved with art, it’s just something to consider.

Noemi: How did the project that you were talking about earlier, that got the community so excited, Pippa get them involved?

Pippa: I think that the artist who initiated it had a residency at the Tate Liverpool and made contact with an artist living in the block of flats.

[Very heavy rainfall] ……

John O’Hare: Artists need to have a say in how the project starts from scratch, to work with the community. Maybe a way to go is for the community to ask for specific artists so that they have a choice.

Polly: In the initial stages the process needs to be kept transparent to the people working in and around the building. A creative change could be used by a series of artist talks/tours of the work in progress.

Tamsin: Or a preview for the community.

Polly: People might not want to be involved, but they should be allowed to engage if they want to.

Oliver: Do we want individual artists to a dissenting voice in the community or to represent the community in some way? I think that most, if not all public art falls into these two categories. I think that the project needs to be defined…

Anon: What community, what benefits? …A community of artists, that’s a community.

Hannah: Is it that we’re asking the artists to make work about the community, or is it a case of fine art being made that relates to the community?

Joy: We were originally thinking of it as the building’s place within the community…and how the artists react to the building is part of that.

Noemi: The community doesn’t exist without the building. We are not approaching FINAL INTERVENTION as community art, but envisaging workshops to involve the community.

Anon: It is the context which is important….

Noemi: Context is a really good word for it rather than the community.

Anon: It’s not so much that it is meant as a collaboration with the community then? …

Joy: We are not approaching this as community art, if that helps to answer that question.

Polly: We could use to our advantage the potentials of how people will react to the space. Some artists would come from a background of:
1 – Research: using interviews and collecting information, or
2 – Conceptually, the poetry or process of space, for example.
Within that there is some element of community interaction by artists who work in that way…

Joanne: We ought to make it welcoming, maybe by inviting people in for coffee. It would make it less formal, but still in an organised setting… So that they knew that the building was available for them as well as us.

Harriet: I went to a talk by the artist Thomas Aershorn (?) recently. He was working as an individual artist, but his approach was to talk to the local community and asked them to help him make his work. So he worked with a big community in a block of flats. They made an art gallery in the grounds of the building. Different people were involved in different ways…He probably had enormous amounts of money, but it was an interesting way of approaching it, employing their skills as help.

Beverley: There are two groups of artists at the moment who are working in Norwich at the moment…‘The People Speak’ a talkaoke (similar to a karaoke) – one person presents and the passing public engage in conversation around a table, then this is projected – and ends up being an interactive chat show. Also, another group of artists (in the East International coming up) leave posters and leaflets asking customers to come back on a specific day and have their photo taken, again it comes as a request.

Lucy: I agree with Polly’s comment from before. No model is the right or wrong way. What we can do is work very hard on what the Arts Council wants you to do, as a drive for Audience Development to get people coming in. That could be how we get the community involved. We would be building an audience for art, by getting them over that threshold.

Noemi: Polly, I think you were absolutely right. If it is curated very well, then the excitement of the project could come from artists approaching it in very different ways.

David Dixon: Following on from that, it may be useful to make a demarcation between the two aspects of the project:
One that deals with a derelict building, which is already abandoned and that there could be a more open response to space and architecture of the building;
And the other which is more overtly socio-political in terms of there may be people already living there who are about to be evicted/evacuated from the place.
So you have two possibly divergent aspects there which would draw a different type of artist to each concerned there. That would give the project more focus perhaps. In that situation you could get two committee teams working on these parallel routes, one on the hunt for derelict buildings and one on the hunt for active ones, which are open to cross over… You’ll get artists which have a pre-disposition to a certain aspect…We could invite a variety of artists through the different approaches…

Noemi: That would have to be made very clear when we’re selecting artists: For instance looking for artists interested in space-related, artist educational or community artists, or cross-over ways of working. That could be really interesting and dynamic to have that in one building.

Pippa: I just want to go back to the idea of pre-events. I just remembered this network in Luxembourg. Basically because it was in the Year of Culture they held lots of small events, and branded it LX5, increasing the main profile through smaller collaborations for two years leading up to it...

Joy: Originally we were thinking that maybe we could go as small as a shed. Scale can be negotiable. We are open to it being variable, one artist or ten…

Noemi: It could be over a shorter time or a smaller building – it would take less time to install and also need less money for it.

Hannah: Yes, because there’s actually no reason why you can’t fit more artists into a relatively small space, if that’s the brief. It’s also a bit ambiguous to use the term collaboration. Is it asking that a group of artists work together? Or is it bringing them all into one space and letting them work? There’s quite a lot to think about there.

Joy: Maybe we could talk about the conceptual scope in relation to the collaborative network and individual artists.

Noemi: When we originally put together our call for collaborators, we meant collaborators as we are here together now, not such much as collaborators in the project, once we are installing work. That’s not to say that it’s not a possibility, if it was the right building, context and the right artists.

Kate: How do you our roles as collaborators here working? Working in smaller groups maybe, as it’s such a large group…

Noemi: We recruited 40, out of the 120 that applied.

Joy: Smaller teams might be a good way to deal with it, with similar ways to approach the project – to focus on education or a specific part of the whole project… Those of you here seem to be mainly London-based, although some are from much further away. Going by interest might be more appropriate, by small groups based on the internet.

Beverley: What about this link with the Olympics, especially with the cuts in Arts Council funding…

Noemi: …The fact that we live a mile or so away from where they’re building the Olympic village really encouraged us to go for the project now.

Harriet: Another idea would be to have some funding without a project. For instance if there was a pot of funding that you could draw from, maybe in an area like Liverpool and starting a mini project.

Polly: I guess it’s pooling resources – using the network to collate our contacts and interests.

Noemi: The two of us have our skills and expertise but will only stretch so for. A network builds on everyone’s strengths. We have strength as a group…

Orion (protoplay): There are two focuses of interest really: one being the group and the other the building. I think personally the network interests me more.

Hannah: My understanding of the long term aims of the project. When I read your brief, was that as I am interested in working a nomadic way… that the network would actually be the constant, whereas the buildings or sites would be constantly changing. If the project succeeds in such a way – the continuity is created despite the different small projects…

Polly: In terms of the project’s development and funding – the gap that exists, that we aim to provide space for early career artists, there are lots of these artists that work site specifically in this way, it’s a genre in itself, but it’s difficult to find spaces. It important to focus on that opportunity, FINAL INTERVENTION could act as an organisation giving opportunities by finding venues. I don’t know of any other organisations that work in that way.

Rose Smith: There is the Creative Space Agency that have a list of old town halls and things like that.

Noemi: I think that in the combination of working with buildings to be demolished, and providing space and with fair budgets is unique to FINAL INTERVENTION.

Anon: But if no-one else is doing it that is the strength of the project. And I think there really is a need for the artist community.

Polly: It’s worth looking it on a national scale, and it’s good that you’ve done this call for collaborators this early on. This project is meeting a need and listening to the voice of artists.

Oliver: There’s a big tradition in the Chinese art scene, in Beijing and Shanghai both have a tradition of showing in empty buildings, that’s why the Chinese art project (organised by the Serpentine Gallery) chose to use the Battersea power station.

Beverley: Also the Berlin Biennale is shown in derelict, abandoned spaces.

Hannah: The Liverpool Biennale works in the same way I showed some work there in a derelict space, there was a lot going on…

John: Art organisations in Liverpool act as a middle man between property developers the art community, by getting tax breaks and looking good, it’s safer to have artists in there than them being empty, with an eye for them, staying longer really, the buildings aren’t generally up for demolition…

Natassa Xyddi: Can I just say something about the Olympics, because I come from Greece (from the area where the last Olympics was held)? First of all, as far as it goes, the more the deadline approaches, there are a lot of issues that get thrown up, people’s houses being demolished and most artists wished to make site-specific work in houses. There is the option to go the other way completely, and not apply for funding and just do something. It might be worth trying for something really small, for instance by interviewing people before they are evicted and put on the blog – so that we are establishing a presence rather than just aiming big; but, having said that, I really think that with the Olympics coming up, it is worth trying for something larger scale.

Hannah: There are a lot of artist’s studios that have been pulled down. I know, I used to have one. It is an area for change, and it is happening very quickly. Turnover is very, very quick.

Noemi: I’m fairly positive that there will be Arts Council Funding for this. I have a strong sense that there is such a need and from the response that we have received funding is very hopeful.

David: Is there actually a council list of buildings about to be demolished?

Noemi: The councils are surprisingly secretive.

Laura: Heritage buildings are listed for planning proposals…

David: Have you ever seen the statistics of the numbers of vacant buildings? To publish those numbers there must be a list. It would be great if we could build up a database of buildings – more of development projects aimed at region.

Hannah: There are websites of buildings for squatters.

Pippa: Council websites show proposals for what they are trying to get pushed through.

Hannah: They have to submit that information and publish it.

Rose: Maybe we could use the freedom of information in some way.

Lucy: The councils to approach in relation to the Olympics are Newham, Hackney, Greenwich, Tower Hamlets – Greenwich is like running into a brick wall. Commercial letting agencies are often a lot more open to enquiries.

Anon: It could be that the building might be in a terrible state…

Pippa: Yes, some agencies are very helpful…

Joy: We’ll have to wrap it up now. We’ll have another meeting in September and approximately once a month online meetings…Can we also remind you to fill in the evaluation form.

Harriet: Can I ask what you will be continuing to do?

Noemi: Joy will continue to look for buildings. I’ve been thinking that I might go for a smaller amount of further development funding, or for a pilot project.

Pippa: I’d like to have a bit more structure as to how to contribute.

Noemi: We’ll look at finding a private chat-room for further meetings.

Hannah: I do know somebody who might be able to give some advice on that.

Noemi: Time to head off to the pub.

FINAL INTERVENTION

Saturday 7 July 2007

Post-meeting analysis

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