Inspired by Russian Sound artists of the 1920’s , including Arseny Avraamov and Leon Theremin I devised this KS2 experimental sound project with Dave Birchall. The aims were to

• Introduce the notion of experimental music and sound, raising the awareness of sound in their daily lives through keeping sound diaries
• Develop listening skills
• Introduce key sound artists including John Cage & Joseph Bueys
• Make junk instruments
• Create a Graphical score and look at the links between symbols and sound
• Create their own soundscapes
• Perform as ‘Noise Orchestra’!

Sound Drawing

Throughout the sessions we undertook Sound Drawing exercises through listening to a wide range of soundscapes and field recordings encouraging the young people to draw how the sound made them feel and what they thought the sound looked like. Over the project we assembled a Sound Dictionary containing all the descriptive words we had come across when talking about sound. We asked the group to keep sound diaries at home and write down or draw reflections on different activities or times of the day.

Junk Instruments and Graphical Scores

Working in teams we created four different types of instrument, these were straw flutes, tubes, shakers and drums. Through playing these instruments the groups had to decide on a variety of symbols that related to the specific sounds they could make from the materials. Taking turns we then organised ourselves into the noise orchestra and drew a graphical score which we performed at the final session.

Performance!

Taking it in turns to conduct we performed our tracks in the final session. Each sound had it’s own symbol and was painted onto a huge graphical score with a key. Check out the video below…

To accompany the miniature theatre show of ‘The Icebook’ (worlds first projection mapped pop up book and part of the Big Imaginations childrens theatre festival) I ran a Big Draw workshop for audience members who had watched the show. The show itself is a magical experience using paper, light and projections. I wanted to reflect the aesthetics of the show and run a fun and engaging workshop for adults and children alike.

The workshop

Teenagers of Manchester & New York City Unite!

Summer 2013 and we have teamed up with Rush Philanthropic Youth Arts Centre in Brooklyn, New York City to explore what it is like to be a teenager in Manchester and NYC. We will be looking at language, music, street style, history and culture and creating a digital map of our city that tells the story of what it’s like to be a teenager in Manchester today.

On the project we;

• Learned about life in Brooklyn and what is important to teens
• Worked with MC Visceral to create a Manchester poem
• Created a visual timeline of key historical events and inventions
• Made an Urban Dictionary and compared the language with slang from NYC
• Visited Museum of Science & Industry to find out about our industrial heritage
• Interviewed teenagers around Manchester
• Screen printed a map that will be sent over to Rush

Project Blog… click below

The young people created a blog to support and document our project, so please click on the link or the image to see what they young people got up to.

http://mcrvsnyc.wordpress.com/

Here are a few pictures from the project…

Beside the Seaside was a fun, creative and colourful summer project for little people aged 7-11. The children worked with me for a week taking part in holiday themed activities.

The children learned how to make their own sketchbooks out of a variety of found paper and material scraps. We also ran holiday drawing challenges and experimental sound drawing exercises using seaside soundscapes and weird sonic clips. We used oil pastels to make our own multi-coloured starfish and created 3D Paper sandcastle hats complete with turrets!

Paper Sandcastle Hats

The children created these paper sculptures using paper of different colours and textures, working together to carefully measure each others heads and make their 2D and 3D turrets and flags. The session involved design, decoration and construction skills and the results were fantastic.

Oil Pastel Starfish

One of my Sound Picture series was exhibited as part of the ‘Happiness’ exhibition at Nexus Art Cafe in July.

The piece is called ‘Busker’ and depicts a father and daughter busking up in the hills of Dharamsala, Northern India. The accompanying sound piece is a recording of the father beautifully playing the saranghi, a haunting and mesmerising sound, his daughter collects the coins of passing appreciation. For me this piece signifies happiness, that of the natural surroundings, the relationship and expressions of the father and daughter and the sound of the haunting music.

Artist Statement

“I am interested in using sounds to transport the viewer/audience to a different moment.
I am interested to see if a moment can be re-created or re-experienced.
I am interested to see if sound is the best medium in which to evoke a feeling once felt.
Do you feel happy?”

Nexus Arts Cafe is an arts hub in Manchester’s Northern Quarter, host to a variety of community arts projects, workshops and exhibitions.

Internship for Neukolln based arts collective for their first festival ‘Agora Collects’.

Agora is a network that creatively facilitates the exchange, development and encounter of ideas, skills and resources amongst people and projects.

About Agora: This network is a cultural hub where educational, artistic, and entrepreneurial values are cultivated and exchanged. Housed in a restored Altbau in the heart of Berlin, Agora hosts people and projects from various backgrounds giving them the space, infrastructure and accessory, allowing their ideas to succeed.

With bright office spaces, large art studios, silent zones and a bustling cafe, Agora provides a complex that can be transformed and curated for a range of uses and purposes, depending on its members necessities.

Agora Collects Festival

Agora Collects is a three day long event
that compiles makers, artists, scientists, designers, philosophers, activists, social entrepreneurs and explores experiential ways to visit Agora’s multiple spaces.

A weekend-long event based on the notions of collaboration and crossovers that proritizes formats of interaction, in the fields of arts, technology, entrepeneurship, food and innovation. Here is a link to the full programme http://agoracollective.org/agoracollects/programme/

Highlights include

The Waiting Room

D. Agullo, D. Paranyushkin, C Layes & P. Stamer.

Interactive performance piece

A waiting room, tables, chairs, reception. Forms, applications, questionnaires. You take a place, waiting for your turn. Your name is called and you are led to a different space. Behind the door is your interview partner. It may be an interviewer, your best friend, a trader, a dancer, an actor, maybe even yourself – you never know what to expect.

The Waiting Room opens space for encounters between strangers and it plays with the social rules of curiosity and interest, everyday behaviour and communication. You always come back to where you started: the waiting room, which itself becomes the space for mixing up the impressions and suspending the patterns.

Skywater

Fernanda Trevellin

Installation

Fenanda Trevellin opens Sky water a permanent water collecting system which filters rain into drinkable water, will sustain Agoras new window farm and is a beautful living installation in Kurz Von Eden Cafe.

The Kubrick Effect

Jonas Wendellin, Hans Henning Korb, Rodrigo Maltez Novaes, and AEAEAEAE

Kubrick Moment will occupy the second floor space during Agora Collects. A collaboration between four artists, Kubrick Moment present a layered, narrative-based installation, the results of which will then evolve into an exhibition piece.

Hopf Collective

Céline Pelce and Vicky Fischer

Parisian Food installation!

The French duo present Food Apparatus—a food experience set in a performance and laboratory style framework.

This installation is set like a laboratory space, where cooking process will be exposed and activated to create a participative experience for the public. It invi­tes reading food transformation, via the fermentation phenomenon. This process is the work of mysterious forces, which aren’t domesticate, and emphasises the cycle of life. Using several visual process (videos, sounds, actions, objects and tools), we will present five fermentation principles, generating a menu.

Process

Lead up to the festival.

Programme meeting

Review meeting for organisors of Agora Collects. Team were Taina, Marcela, Kaiki, Pedro, Chris, Vicky, Marie and Morgane.

Items discussed were

• Artist Liason
• Promotion, website/listings/press
• Technical requirements
• Logistics, clearing the floors, moving out the Co-workers for installations
• Cafe/refreshments/Hopf food installation
• Neighbour problems, music annoyance.. outside cinema will now be inside!

Kurz Von Eden…

is the beautiful Cafe space with open windows out to the garden serving organic food and German beverages. Also acts as the main meeting space for artists and co-workers. The cafe hosts small exhibitions, parties and cultural events. They have a late bar licence but music must stop at 12pm outside due to the neighbourhood location.

Here you can see Marie, Taina and Marcela hard at work… email city.

Beautiful garden, tunes pumping out of the window, today the Chef Marco left. There was a heap of quality food to eat all day long, a smorgasboard of fancy (and i mean fancy) cakes to snack on.

Agora LOVES pallets. Owner Pedro went on a pallet course where he was shown all the creative ways you can use pallets for tables/beds/desks whatever! We are making tables for the garden area… check out the hard work of Faizal and Sonya.

Market Space

As part of the Festival we turned the Agora Atelier into an Artist Marketspace that looked just like a normal house. The marketplace showcased local Berlin artists and independent outlets such as TillAirPlants, tHERAPY and Dimitry with recycled fashion hung on tree trunk hangars by Sasha.

The art works were hung all  around the house and there was tea and cake served throughout the event.

Here you can see some of the tree trunk hangers and reclaimed wood lamps dotted around the space.

Cocktails and Synths

Like cocktails? Like Synths? this participatory art session was fantastic, the top floor of Agora was turned into a Synth jam factory, with 4 different workspaces where audience members could visit a table, put on headphones and join in a live jam with old German Analogue synths! So Berlin…

The Performative Curatorial Studio

Part of the festival involved a programme of talks and debates, one of which invited curators from across berlin to participate in a full day workshop focussing on the performative aspects of curation.  The curators began the morning with a discussion and talk about their present work and experiences, in the afternoon, guest speakers and the audience were invited to join the group and a performance developed throughout the day.  The project used ‘The Narrative Machine’ as a metaphor with 40 different wooden shapes that were moved throughout the day to create different spatial designs and choreography through their morphing form. Other talks were from Dimitri Hegemann talking about Forgotten Spaces and we had a debate around the importance of culture in organisations with Berlin start up managers.

The Kubrick Moment

A collaboration between 3 graduate artists from Universitat Der Kunste

Hopf Collective, Paris

Garden Events

Agora People

‘Interrogate Hulme’  Unit X  is a collaborative module for all first year students at Manchester School of Art. Acting as ‘Urban Archaelogists’, students from Photography, Three Dimensional Design and Film Making worked together in twenty four collaborative groups to interrogate Hulme and it’s rich social history.  Over the past few months they have explored the area through people and places with a story to tell.

Z-arts is the project hub in the heart of the community and our role is to provide the students with inspiring source materials and perspectives to help them decide on their collaborative project. We have programmed a series of talks, resources and films screenings and are hosting their group tutorials and crit sessions.

Hulme Talks

To provide an insight into life and creative activities in Hulme we invited the following speakers to talk about their work…

• Paula Carley: Neighbourhood Engagement Officer for Hulme.
• Mike Mayhew: Hulme Artist. ‘Dogs in Heaven’ Hulme Crescents live art
• Liz O’Neil: CEO Z-arts. ‘Zion 100′ history project
• Helene Rudlin: Hulme Community Garden Centre volunteer coordinator
• Sophie Bee: Unconvention Music Festival

Collaboration: Group Tutorials and Team Building

Fresh into their collaborative groups, the students took part in creative sessions aimed to encourage team spirit and collaborative working practices. These sessions included object handling, creating a narrative sequence and story out of seemingly disparate objects and sculptural prjects , building the tallest tower in teams from paper, paper clips and masking tape.

Exhibition

The artwork created in response to the project was exhibited site specifically around the public spaces in Z-Arts, on stairwells, corridors, nooks and crannies and varies from installation, documentary and interactive pieces. Other work was in the form of art trails around Hulme with maps and directions starting at Z-arts.

Critical Analysis

As part of my Creative Learning MA Module I looked at how the course structure and the role of the tutors helped to foster creativity and aid the collaborative process. You can read the analysis here…

Staff Room 3 

Cross Platform Exhibition

Staff Room 3 is a cross-media exhibition showcasing the creative talents of staff working in Manchester art venues. Featuring dark cinematic work, contemporary sculpture and paper art to dance projection, print pieces and musical installations; the exhibition is an insight into creative explorations away from the desk!

Curated by Vicky Clarke, Gill Balfour and Chris Machin, the exhibition features work from artists working at Whitworth Art Gallery, Chinese Arts Centre, Contact, Venture Arts, Manchester Adult Education Service, Islington Mill and Z-arts with a theme of 3.

Launch  Event

The exhibition launch was held on Thursday 28th March  6.30  – 8.30pm

Performances were from Europes premier pyjama funk band The Pyjama Party, 3 piece harmony group The Bobbysocks, singing a mix of 1940s covers and original songs, spoken word from Meshach Brencher, experimental sonic intrigue from David Birchall,  Shamisen music from Liam Morgan and Pierre Hall (Golden Glow) manning the decks.

Exhibits

Sally Gilford Joe Ford David Birchall. Bird Drawings Jon Astbury
Gill Balfour. The Third Eye

Andy Fear. Escape Routes  Tasha Whittle. Creatimation Ellie Whitfield. Comic Relief Daniel Jarvis. Brideshead Revisited

Anne Levington James Lawrence Laura Nathan Pascal Nichols Jane Lennard Jermyn Ben Williams. Culture Baby

Nicola Lester Price

Vicky Clarke. 100bpm Train Waltz Spyder

Jo BeggsElizabeth Wewiora Katy Tolman
Films: The Devils House by Chris Machin, Paris 2011 by Pierre Hall, Plug in Phase Out by Natasha Stott and Creatimation by Tasha Whittle

Performers

The Pyjama Party
 The Bobbysocks

Urban Fairytales was a cross artform project working with year 5 pupils from Webster Primary school. With an aim to inspire writing, MA Creative Writing students Karin & Ellie from MMU went into the classroom to talk to the children about being writers and the writing process. The children learnt about what inspires them from everyday characters, objects and places, where they write and listened to their own stories.

We started by looking at traditional fairytales; their motifs,characters and story structure before introducing them to the concept of contemporary Urban Fairytales. The Urban Fairytales day at Z-arts focused on characters, the children took part in drama, visual art and writing workshops with artists to spark their imaginations.

ODD Theatre Company performed a funny modern day version of Cinderella with Blackberrys, BMXs and a Manchester backdrop and explored places and settings and potential modern day hero and villain characters such as dinnerladys & librarians!

Later we ran a Live drawing session with Illustrator Tasha Whittle, learning how to add emotions and feelings to characters, the children also went on sketching walks around Hulme looking at locations and buildings.

The finished storybooks were exhibited at MMUs Out of Schools Exhibition in lovely 3D treehouses.