What Does a Community Arts Project Actually Involve? (Part 1)
When people ask me what I do, I often find it hard to know where to start: The teaching aspect of my work is quite self explanatory, but client commissions, and specifically working on community arts projects can sometimes take a little more explanation.
In this blog post I thought I’d give you some insights into my working process on a current commission as a Community Artist - this will cover the planning and process parts - I’ll write another post about the end product once I can share that with you :)
The Project
In May (2022) I was asked to work as Community Artist on a project for The National Trust: The Workhouse, Southwell, together with Southwell Minster and Southwell Town Council as they had some Arts Council funding to create a community project to celebrate The Platinum Jubilee.
The theme of the project is community and isolation, particularly in reference to the pandemic, and those who have, and continue to live in isolation, and to highlight the role of the wider community in supporting people who are isolated.
My brief as the Community Artist was to run workshops with various community groups in order to co-create a trail for the town which explores themes of community, whilst also weaving in local historical stories - particularly connecting to the Workhouse and The Minster.
This is not the first trail I have been asked to create for The Workhouse as I worked on both the visitor interpretation and created an arts trail to accompany the amazing Do It Different project by Morgan Tipping which was due to open in April 2020 which sadly never fully opened due to the pandemic. Having already done this work with the National Trust, I had gained quite a bit of knowledge around the histories, and also the town centre where the Do It Different Trail was predominantly focussed.
The approach of the Do It Different project was also one of co-creation: using the artists’ ideas, drawings, artworks, photographs and even handwriting to weave together engaging visual and informative content. This project ran for over 6 months with daily workshops with the Lead Artist and other collaborators, so there was an enormous amount of content to draw upon, whereas in this project, the workshops were to be one-offs and had to be completed by the end of June (for funding reasons). Because of this, I knew I needed to design the workshops in such a way to generate a lot of content in a short time.
In terms of the content, through early planning meetings with the National Trust, we had agreed that the approach would be one of combining strands of:
The past (historical stories and recorded interviews with members of the community recounting their memories)
The present (focus on how the community supports people) and
The future (conservation in terms of heritage, sustaining local businesses in the community, and wildlife.)
We felt quite strongly that there should be some interactive aspects of the trail aimed at younger visitors so that the trail can be something for whole families to enjoy doing together, and accessibility was also another key consideration.
With all this in mind, I set about planning the workshops.
The Workshops
3rd Southwell Guides
The first workshop was with 3rd Southwell Guides, and this was quite a large group of 26 girls, so I devised 3 different activities on rotation to keep group sizes relatively manageable so everyone got to have a go at all 3.
The first activity was a simple drawing task - there would be a lot of visuals needed for the trail, so I asked them to draw some locations around the town, as well as lots of different types of local wildlife - this would be a key focus in the future strand of the trail, so I wanted to gather lots of drawings by local young people to reflect this visually.
The second activity was a prompt game - rolling dice to select them, I devised 6 prompts to respond to which could inform the design and content of the trail - these prompts included questions like “if Southwell was a colour, what would it be?” and “Draw or describe your favourite place in Southwell” among others - setting it up in this way meant that I could gather a huge amount of input in a relatively short time - and this prompt game also went into the local library for a couple of weeks to gather more input from local people.
The third activity was apple printing. Southwell is famous for (among so many other things!) being the home of the Bramley Apple. We discussed how the story of the Bramley Apple connects to conservation, and experimented with cutting the apples in different ways to explore shape, pattern and mark making, which we then developed into representations of birds and insects to link to wildlife and the future strand of the trail. The girls really loved this and created some really gorgeous prints!
Flower Pod
The next workshops were with Flower Pod Southwell, which is a garden full of flowers helping people with learning disabilities connect with both nature and their local community through gardening, wildlife, crafts, floristry, and other transferable skills that help people gain in confidence and to develop towards living more independently.
We did 4 different tasks in the first workshop:
First we completed some location drawings from reference photos to help illustrate the trail whilst we talked about the places around the town.
Next we went out into the garden to collect some of the beautiful flowers they grow in the garden to create Cyanotypes. It was a beautiful sunny day so the cyanotypes developed within about 60 seconds and everyone loved seeing them develop before their eyes!
The shapes and silhouettes created from these will make excellent graphic shapes to use within the design work.
Next we used the collected flowers to make rubbings, picking up all the details and texture from the plants and exploring the sensory process of scribbling over the plants to create the images.
Finally, we used any leftover flowers and popped them into flower presses which will create beautiful assets I can use in the design work.
I ran a second workshop with Flower Pod, but this time we focussed more around our own communities - we started by talking about the people and places which make up our community, and we created people garlands to celebrate them.
Next we did some mark making and made patterns with rubber stamps which initially was part of the garland making activity, but they enjoyed it so much we extended it to create more designs just from the rubber stamps, and these will also create lovely marks and textures I can use in the graphic development of the trail.
After this we did some more drawing as we reflected on the people, places or things which make us happy in our environments and communities. This was really fun as they loved talking about their loved ones, pets and hobbies.
Coffee Morning
I was invited to a coffee morning with some of Southwell’s older adult residents, to hear about their memories of Southwell and reflect on the community, which was so interesting - some of them had lived in the town for over 50 years and many recounted some very vivid memories.
Alongside chatting, I also brought along some objects from The Workhouse’s handling collection of objects - amusingly some of the china I brought from the collection was exactly the same as that being used at the coffee morning :) We used the objects to create some rubbings which I will also be using within the graphic work in the trail.
Audio Recordings
In addition to the workshops, I also wanted to speak to some residents of Southwell and record them - the audio files being accessed on the trail via QR codes. Initially we had just thought this would be for the older members of the community to hear some oral histories alongside the more research based historical information, but as I spent more time in Southwell talking to different residents, it was clear there was so much potential for this part of the trail to be expanded upon.
I spoke with some of the business owners on the high street about their role in the community, particularly during and since the pandemic. I also spoke with a variety of local residents who volunteered to be recorded about their memories of it historically, or more present reflections on the community. I would have loved to interview far more people than I could but those I did speak to were so fascinating to listen to!
Trail Route and Historical Research
Of course a big part of this project is the trail route itself, and also the historical information which weaves in characters from Southwell’s past. The Workhouse has an incredible network of volunteers who dedicate their time and skills to research, so I was very happy to have help from Jane, who as well as having an incredible knowledge of local history, also knew the footpaths and road layouts to help ascertain the most interesting (and access friendly) route for the trail along with Jan from the Workhouse. The 3 of us walked the trail together and Jane was amazing at recalling some interesting facts at every turn.
Southwell is no stranger to historical trails - in fact there are already 6 heritage trails about different aspects of the town’s history. For this reason, we wanted to find some interesting little nuggets which possibly weren’t already known, and Jane did a great job of coming up with lesser known gems!
Walking the trail also gave me the opportunity to brainstorm some interactive aspects of the trail, and determine the most appropriate spots for certain activities I had in mind.
What Now?
I am now at the stage where I have a lot of information, a lot of amazing artwork to incorporate, some really interesting audio recordings, and some ideas around how to make the trail appealing to a range of different visitors. I can’t show you too much until the project is signed off - and it’s still a work in progress, but expect a part 2 Blog Post in the future where I can show you what all this work has resulted in - I can’t wait :)
