Category Archives: Arts

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Changing Spaces

Walthamstow based artist Jonathan O’Dea has a new exhibition opening this weekend at the Waterworks in the Lee Valley Park. I’ve known Jonathan for a few years now and we’ve spent the odd evening in the Rose and Crown talking, I am sure very wisely, about art and music, amongst other things. One subject we both keep returning to is Waltham Forest’s position on the edge of the city – and the way that this perhaps denies this part of London the identity and attitude of its East London neighbours, or the home counties security of adjoining Essex.

The first exhibition I saw of Jonathan’s work seemed to me to directly reflect these themes – a series of abstract landscapes on whose horizons shimmered objects which may have been trees, or could have been industrial buildings. Perhaps these were echoes of this part of the East End’s memories – of the factories and warehouses which were cleared from the Lee Valley when work began on the Olympic Park, or maybe they were natural features which have been covered up by the urban sprawl – future echoes from the utopian world of William Morris’s News from Nowhere.

Artwork from London is London, England is England

Jonathan took some of these ideas further in a show at Walthamstow’s Vestry House museum last year. In London is London – England is England the St George’s Cross rose above those abstract landscapes – a symbol of a national identity which this Irish artist struggles to perceive in 21st century London – England, for Jonathan, doesn’t assert itself until way beyond the M25.

When I visited Jonathan in his studio a few weeks ago those landscape canvasses were stacked in racks in the corner – and he has clearly compartmentalised that work mentally as well as physically. The pieces he was working on for this exhibition are strikingly different. Jonathan has had free reign to remove junk and waste from the Lee Valley park and has produced a series of pieces using materials he has found there, or reclaimed from disused rooms in warehouses. Wooden pallets have been transformed into organic looking structures, bricks neatly mounted, painted, and then partially annihilated. Wooden materials are made to look metallic and old disused pipe work is newly painted.

The most ambitious piece in the show will be a large site specific sculpture in which a slowly decaying tree is encased in a wire mesh.

Site Specific sculpture in the Lee Valley Park

As this piece rises at the edge of the glistening Olympic park and those transformed pieces of rubbish are mounted as artworks near to where they were once abandoned, this show promises to encourage viewers to reflect on the way we change and transform the landscapes around us, to imagine how the ground beneath our feet was once different, and wonder how future generations will transform the places we know so well.

 Changing Spaces is at the Waterworks Nature Reserve Lee Valley Park from 16th June to 8th July

Jonathan has been blogging about the project at http://wwwchangingspaces.blogspot.co.uk/

Images of artwork from London is London,England is England (2011) and Changing Spaces (2012) used with the permission of the artist.

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Secrets of Successful Collaboration

Collaboration is certainly a buzz word at the moment. In the current climate working together is presented as a way of maximising shared resources and reducing overheads – from neighbouring local councils sharing services to open source software developed by volunteers across continents – when joining up works it can be of benefit to all. This is an area of particular interest to me, both because I work for two organisations which have realised the potential benefits of collaboration and decided to work together,and also because a lot of our work at present is exploring the process of collaboration in artistic practice, along with its many challenges and potential pitfalls.

Last week I was involved in helping put together an event at the Barbican – The Secrets of Successful Collaboration. This session was part of the Digital Shoreditchfestival, and was itself a collaboration between us and the digital consultancy Unthinkable Consulting. We had put together three case studies of different types of collaboration, which provided an interesting range of contexts to think about the issues surrounding working together, and to explore whether there were commonalities, rules, or secrets which apply at all levels of collaboration across sectors and at different scales.

The first project which was discussed was the consortium of companies collaborating on an Internet radio project with speakers from Totally Radio and Mixcloud. They were all working in the same area – all had different skills and specialisms which they bought together with the shared aim of strengthening the way which their sector worked and addressing some fundamental problems which affected them all.

SecondlyPunchdrunk , the extraordinary immersive participatory theatre company, discussed their collaboration with MIT media lab. The mutual aim here was to explore how technology could be used to link people attending their show in the real world with participants in the virtual world. Was it possible to create the intensity of a Punchdrunk experience in someone’s front room? Could interacting over a computer make someone terrified, excited or transported into another world? They ran a small scale pilot within the New York presentation of their show Sleep No More which required the Creative application of new technologies which linked pairs of real world and virtual participants.

This first pair of case studies were very different, but having thought about it since the event I think there were some striking similarities gave an insight into what the Secrets we were looking for might be:

The fundamental starting point for both collaborations was that all parties involved were genuinely invested in the outcomes of the projects – if the projects were successful, each partners area of work would be enabled to move forwards to a new place. I found it interesting that early on in the internet radio project one of the partners had walked away, mainly because although their knowledge would help the collaboration, they didn’t feel they would get enough out of it.

There was a shared understanding of each others worlds – in the Internet Radio project this was perhaps inherent as all the organisations were working in a relatively specialist field. In the Punchdrunk project it was interesting to hear how those working on the technology became immersed in the narrative of the show – as having an understanding of this directly informed the technical solutions they created.

Neither of the collaborations challenged or threatened any of the partners core business – success would help everyone, failure would be disappointing and of course time, effort and money would have been lost, but everyone involved could walk away without having lost everything. I think this is key because it enabled a high level of risk. Although layers of complexity were added on top of Punchdrunk’s core business of producing an extraordinary show, the core experience for their ticket buyers was not fundamentally changed. Similarly as the consortium were working away the Radio Player and Mixcloud people could still get on with doing what they do….

Nothing was said about money. I am sure there were various deals and agreements between the partners in both case studies, but it was not the jumping off point or the reason for the collaboration. In her introduction to the evening Sarah Turner from Unthinkable referred to a quote that collaboration between two arts organisations was ‘the suspension of mutual loathing in pursuit of shared funding.’ I don’t know where that originates from, but I wouldn’t mind hazarding a guess about how that collaboration turned out.

The third case study took a relatively small digital consultancy, FridayFriday, working with a large company – the coop. This was essentially an exploration of a client/ customer relationship – a very different dynamic from the other two case studies. It had clearly been a successful and happy relationship, which resulted in the consultancy delivering work of which they were proud and with which the client were happy. There were some really interesting insights into the way Friday got to the heart of what the client wanted – for example everyone who works for them can draw! However, where one party is buying services from another, does this really provide the basis for a true collaboration? Interestingly the client in this relationship were not present to speak at the event itself.

The event ended with a few short call outs from people looking for collaborators – the one which sticks in my mind was from The People Who Share – whose underlying philosophy is essentially that we – people – will have to work together a lot more to survive much longer, whether through sharing the planets resources or sharing knowledge to solve the problems we face now and in the future. This ‘Sharing Society’ is going to have to just become the way we live – which is why it is worth us trying to get to the heart of what makes a successful collaboration.

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Where’s our music service gone?

A bit of arts education news which doesn’t seem to have filtered through to local level yet, is that Waltham Forest Music Service is, to all intents and purposes, no more. Given some quite vocal protest when the music service was threatened during the borough council cuts, this may seem surprising. However, my opening sentence was deliberately flippant, and I, along with others working in this field am generally optimistic about the new landscape for music education.

Historically, music services have existed for most local authority areas. They have received government funding via local councils, and have provided services including local youth orchestras and ensembles, peripatetic music lessons in schools, and instrument loan services for children. London had one music service for each borough, ranging from the extraordinary to the sub standard. Waltham Forest was not among the best.

Last year the government commissioned Darren Henley, the Managing Director of Classic FM to undertake a national review of music educationof Music education. Henley consulted widely across the sector and produced a report which contained a survey of the state of music education, and a number of recommendations. He found a very diverse landscape, with pockets of good practice, and a number of serious gaps in provision. His primary recommendation was that the government produce a National Plan for music education, to set and ensure high standards of provision across the country. To their credit, after numerous delays, the National Plan for Music Education emerged last autumn, and was generally well received by the music education sector.

The Plan enshrined another of Henley’s key recommendations – that music education should be led by Hubs, each Hub serving a geographical area and being composed of a consortium of organisations working in partnership. Most hubs therefore would include music services, along with arts organisations and other service providers. It was widely envisaged that there would be many less hubs than there were music services, with organisations joining together and forming new partnerships. Generally speaking, when the hubs were announced a couple of weeks ago, that did not happen – there remains a hub, mostly led by the music service, in pretty much every London borough. Not Waltham Forest however – it was conspicuously absent from the listof organisations awarded funding.

Fortunately that does not mean there will be no music education provision for the young people of Waltham Forest – whether the existing music service put in a bid to continue existing I do not know, but in the event a new hub has been formed, led by Redbridge music service, to deliver across both boroughs. It is a shame this type of merger doesn’t seem to have happened more widely – maintaining over 30 organisations in London, all doing the same job for relatively small geographical areas must surely divert resources away from providing children with amazing musical opportunities and towards management, overheads and other running costs. It will be very interesting to see how this new North East London hub’s delivery compares to the single borough hubs going forward.

The other key change is that hubs are funded and monitored by the Arts Council of England unlike music services which received funding via local councils. This is definitely a good thing – the arts council will have an overview of the national picture, will help share good practice and make links between hubs and other arts organisations, and if it does it’s job properly will push for the highest standards and quickly challenge those which are not performing.

So, from September, Waltham Forest music service is no more, and I am looking forward to seeing how music education provision in the borough develops in this new landscape. Why is all this politics important to me? Simply because I do believe every child deserves access to quality music education and musical opportunities, that it can transform lives and impact on all areas of development and that access to, understanding of and participation in the arts makes all of us better individuals, and builds better communities. More on that later, maybe.

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The big six – what next?

This weekend brings Party on The Pitch to Leyton Orient Football ground. A pop concert, featuring a former X factor winner, and other top forty acts, the event is one of Waltham Forest council’s ‘Big Six’ events celebrating Waltham Forest’s status as an Olympic Borough and giving local residents a chance to join the party.

Although there has been well documented concerns from residents about the cost of the events and controversy over the sources of funding, I have no problem with the principle of the council investing in major events such as this as a means to fostering pride in the borough and community engagement. I do believe these aims are a genuine motivation for Chris Robbins, the leader of the council, in driving these events forward. I also hope everyone lucky enough to get tickets in the unavoidable limited ballots has a great time. However, I do feel there has been something of a missed opportunity in the design of the events.

Firstly, opportunities for local artists and performers to be a part of most of the events is something which could easily have been built in at planning stage. Waltham Forest has an incredibly rich and vibrant artistic community which really does punch above its weight. Performance slots for individual local artists or performers could have been built into the schedules for concerts, perhaps with a talent competition style selection process, and could have provided an incredible showcase for local talent. Similarly, links could have been made with major events already established in the borough – the Art Trails, Festivals in Leyton, Leytonstone, or Chingford – the investment and profile of the Big Six could have given some of these events a massive boost, and bought a local flavour to them.

This local involvement need not have been at the expense of the star acts and wouldn’t have changed the overall nature of the events, but it could have made them truly about Waltham Forest, rather than a replication of the type of event which happens in Hyde Park or at any other pop festival. It is not too late to change this – my first plea to the council and big six organisers is to find ways to engage local talent in the remaining events. This Autumn’s film festival should be exceptional – lets use it to showcase the work of local filmmakers, and use some of the available budget to enable young people and other communities to make new short films to be shown in the festival.

My second concern is about the legacy of the events. If one of the drivers is to make local residents feel good about the borough, and another to foster community cohesion, I am not convinced this will work. Imagine a 13 year old boy, living in challenging circumstances on one of the estates in Leyton. He is perhaps truly excited to hear that Dappy from N dubz will be playing on his doorstep, and if he is lucky and has access to the booking process, might get a ticket to go to this summer’s Urban Classic concert. He will have a great time – the show blew the roof off the Barbican in March. He may even be intrigued by the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s performances in the gig and want to know more. But, a week, or a month, after the show, I am not convinced his life will have changed. There won’t be another Big Six in the borough- and central London’s concert venues might as well be on the moon. My next plea is that some thought is given to what happens next….let’s find ways to engage with those people who come to events – the Barbican, The BBC, Serious and Bigga Fish are all partners in Urban Classic and all have a variety of projects and programmes which our newly inspired audience could get involved in. Let’s make sure they are pointed towards them, and that they look back on getting a ticket for a big six event as a moment that changed their life, and not as something good that happened five years ago.

Finally a note on two recent events which for me are an indicator of what could happen in Waltham Forest the next time we find ourselves with money to spend on major events to increase community cohesion. Last years National Theatre of Wales production of the passion of port talbot, drew national admiration – both as a work of art, but also as a pivotal moment for an entire community. People were truly engaged as part of something extraordinary which really did bring people together. A few years before this, the Margate Exodus had a similar impact on the Kent Coast, with local communities producing new art, music and drama, alongside some of the countries most inspirational artists.

We could still make something like this happen in our borough- what better themes to explore than the aftermath and legacy of London 2012.

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From The Edge

From The Edge is written from the fringes of London, where, depending on your direction of travel, a 20 minute journey can lead deep into ancient forest, to the heartland of TOWIE, to the birthplace of the 2012 riots, to the Olympic Park, or to one of the worlds leading financial sectors. I’ll explore these themes through writing about Waltham Forest’s people and places, history and happenings.

I’ll also be using the site to document and develop my thoughts on the arts, education and other areas I come across through my professional life and personal passions. I like to think my cultural leanings are at least close to the edge, the truth is I’m just not that hip, but, based on my diary for the next few months you can expect musings on everything from Wagner to Glass, Shakespeare to Complicite, Dickens to Neal Stephenson, and William Morris to Jeremy Hunt.