A young woman in white leggings waddles past gracelessly. Her arse looks like a carrier bag full of bread buns. John the Nonce scowls at her but secretly thinks, “I would.”
Saturday, 2 October 2010
Friday, 1 October 2010
A Story A Day
I have decided to write a short story everyday of October and post it here.
Each story will be exactly 31 words longs. One a Day. For 31 days.
Day 1:
Each story will be exactly 31 words longs. One a Day. For 31 days.
Day 1:
Turning to face the skinny kid at the bar Dave the Dive shouts over the music, “Do you know why she served me? Cause she likes her teeth in her head!”
Friday, 10 September 2010
Chased By Wolves
A couple of weeks ago I ended up huddled in a cramped sweaty Kitchen in Heaton, Newcastle clutching a bottle of wine and a plastic cup, very excited about the imminent arrival of a North East band I've wanted to see for ages.
The band was Chased by Wolves, and they are incredible. Like the last post, I'm not going to go into the specifics because as Elvis Costello said, "Writing about music is like dancing to architecture."
But if you like heartbreak songs sung in a heartbreaking voice, then you may just have found your new favourite band
Photo's from Chased by Wolves' 'secret' show by Dee Chaneva www.loveandsweat.com (copyright belongs to the photographer.2010)
Hear songs by Chased by Wolves here http://www.myspace.com/followthewoods
Go to their shows, pull them close to your cold, cold heart as if they were a comfy winter sweater.
Ben Gross- The Year
In January Manchester photographer and designer Ben Gross decided to document his day to day life from a point of view perspective. He has since posted an image a online everyday since the new year.
Using his iphone's hipstamatic app Ben has created a beautiful archive of images which celebrates the ubsurd and the beautiful in the seemingly mundane.
Rather than talk about the "flawless composition" or the photographer having a "meticulous eye for capturing the poetry of day to day life" (all true of course) I thought it best to let the images speak for themselves. Enjoy.
You can view the whole year plus more of Ben's work here at http://www.flickr.com/photos/10316811@N03/ or follow him on Twitter @thenarrowescape
All copyright belongs to the photographer.Ben Gross 2010.
Tuesday, 3 August 2010
'100 Faces, 100 Stories'- Participation & Inclusion in Community Arts
I recently collaborated on a new Art Project tackling perceptions of homelessness at the charity Crisis' Newcastle resource centre. I wrote this article about the project and some of the issues faced by participatory arts projects in general.
Listening to Alan Lyddiard talk about his new arts project ‘100 Faces, 100 stories’ can be both a frustrating and enlightening experience. Such is his passion for the arts in all its myriads of forms, Alan can have a tendency to go a little; shall we say, off topic? He often goes off on wild tangents, telling meandering tales of his experiences and influences often all in the same sentence.
Alan made his name as a theatre director, specialising in George Orwell adaptations. He has extensively toured his own particular renderings of Down and Out in Paris and London, 1984 and Animal Farm, playing to audiences worldwide to considerable acclaim.
Alan is pretty much everything you would want, or maybe expect, in a theatre director. He’s enthusiastic, passionate, manic, camp as Christmas and a man with a genuine empathy for presenting authentic voices in art.
It is this search for authentic voices which gave Alan the idea for ‘100 Faces, 100 Stories.’ Alan is to oversee the production of an installation at the Crisis Skylight centre at City House in Newcastle. The installation will feature 100 stories and 100 complementing images all exploring themes of destitution, vulnerability and homelessness.
The stories are to be gathered through collaboration between service users of Crisis Skylight, which is a resource and education centre for homeless or vulnerably housed people, and a number of the regions writers as well as artists and photographers. Writing sessions will take place at formal workshops but there is also a strong sense of autonomy in regards to what work the writers choose to submit.
Writers may craft work which is based on their own experiences, of the experiences they have seen around them. Some accounts may be fictional, others anecdotal. The writers will also try to document the experiences of those who use Crisis Skylight, including those service users for whom not having a secure place to stay, is a daily reality
There are few boundaries for the project and it will encompass sculpture, performance and other mixed media art. In short, ‘100 Faces, 100 Stories’ will be a melting pot of ideas and a beautiful mix of style, thoughts, cultures and techniques.
“I wanted to get writers involved either to write stories or to help them the service users to write their stories or to act as a kind of mentor.”Alan Said. He hopes the project will work as a conduit to give an artistic voice to those who are marginalised. On his motivation to create the work, he said, “We want to focus on the idea of empathy and to see the world through other people’s eyes.” He added, “I want to get under the skin of these people who are vulnerable and I want to see into the soul of these people.”
When Alan speaks about ‘100 Faces, 100 Stories’, Alan often sets off on ebullient flights of fancy. On paper there is much that would make Alan sound very much the rambling pseud. I must admit, when he makes airy proclamations such as, “I like the idea of putting pieces of paper on walls. I think there is something quite religious in that. You see it quite often in Eastern Europe,” It’s hard not to chuckle at the absent minded artistic posturing.
But, catch Alan in full flow and it is hard not to be swept up in his excitable stream of consciousness visualising. He is also nothing if not ambitious; he predicts that ‘100 Faces, 100 Stories’ will be “Just the beginning of something special.” Alan hopes to take some of the experiences and results of the project and incorporate it into his theatre work and then, taking it global.
“The next stage is using these stories and people with difficulties in their lives and professional actors and making a play about it. I would like it to be a kind of contemporary Down and Out in Paris and London” He said, adding, “I want to take it to cities all over the world such as Manila which is the poorest city I have ever been to.”
For the meantime though, the project is very much rooted in the North East. It is the Crisis Skylight centre which is to house the installation and provide much of its initial inspiration. The Newcastle centre was opened in 2007 by the national charity for single homeless people, Crisis. The centre was the first Crisis opened outside of London and provides education and training to help homeless people gain employment, as well as offering a range of classes focussed around well being such as yoga, meditation and creative writing. The centres act to allow service users to learn the skills to help themselves.
Crisis are keen to point out that there is a much bigger picture to consider in regards to issues of homelessness. They are keen to dismiss the common assumption that you must sleep on the streets to be considered homeless.
The Crisis website states, “Homelessness is about more than rooflessness. A home is not just a physical space, it also has a legal and social dimension. A home provides roots, identity, a sense of belonging and a place of emotional wellbeing. Homelessness is about the loss of these.”
Homelessness remains is a major social issue and there are some pretty shocking statistics related to this ‘bigger picture’ view of homeless. For every one rough sleeper in this country, there are roughly 100 people living in hostels, and approximately 1100 people living in unsecure or overcrowded accommodation.
Based on figures collected by the Department for Communities and Local Government for England in 2007, There are approximately 500 people in England sleeping rough each night, 50,000 staying in hostel accommodation and just over half a million people living in cramped and vulnerable conditions. Despite these estimations at the time those figures were collated, only 84,900 of these overcrowded or vulnerable households were classified as homeless. There is a very clear disparity in these figures, and in how hopelessness is perceived in general.
While the ‘100 Faces, 100 Stories’ project certainly hopes to allow the voices and experiences of those affected by homelessness to be shared, Alan Lyddiard has a different focus for the project. Alan sees homelessness as a worthy subject to make art about but his priority is to create a competent, accomplished and engaging work of art over any social agenda.
“What I want to find out”, he said, “is can we create great art with everybody? Some artists think there is amateur art and professional art. I want to go beyond that. I think we can create great art, working class art, with a small group of people.”
I find Alan’s intentions and honesty refreshing. Many in the community focused arts world would choose to focus on the ‘worthy’ angle for a project like this but Alan clearly has a lot of belief in the people involved in the project, and also in people in general, as well as high expectations. Regardless of Alan’s motivation for driving this project, the desire to create inclusive, participatory art can reap huge emotional and psychological rewards for those service users and artists involved.
In 2008, Arts Council England published the paper ‘Great Art, Good Intentions’ the paper aimed to address some of the stigmas and limitations within the field of participatory arts. The intended outcome was that by 2011 the Arts Council would support arts organisations “To overcome barriers to engagement and participation in the arts, focussing in particular on reaching those who at present rarely or never attend or take part in the arts.”
Those involved in the arts have a lot of responsibility in maintaining the balancing act between social inclusiveness and creating high quality art. They must at once create a high value aesthetic, which is seen as valid to other artists, the public, funders and other organisations while delivering positive social and community relevant outcomes.
The Arts Council believe there is much value in participatory art practices, stating in the ‘Great Art’ paper, “It is a malleable dialogue that informs the work of the artist, builds and develops audiences, engages with communities, promotes learning and forges routes into active experience and artistic creation of many kinds.” Alan Lyddiard supports the views of the Arts Council. He said, “I want to go for great art but I want good intentions to be integral to that.”
Writer Tim Joss ruffled the feathers of many in the profession with the publication of his book ‘New Flow: A Better Future for Artists, Citizens and State’ in 2008. Joss was deeply critical of the existing models of, participatory arts practice in England.
In ‘New Flow’ he said, “A public debate grinds on about the value of the arts in society. It has set up a misleading polarity between the arts intrinsic and instrumental benefits.” ‘New Flow’ called for a reform in the participatory arts to create a comfortable space where creativity meets inclusion. This public scepticism of the value of the arts is something Joss believes must change.
Alan Johnson, Secretary of State for Health agrees, “I would like to see the benefits of participation in the arts recognised more widely by health and social care professionals.” he said, adding, “Access and participation in the arts are an essential part of everyday well being and quality of life.”
In these collaborative, creative environments the skill of the professional artists combine with the creative energy of the participants to create that “something special” Alan had foreseen with his project. The outcome of such processes is that all involved quickly become more than the sum of their parts.
This improvement to well being is one of the most simple benefits of taking part in participatory art. In a 1997 study, Francois Matarosso identified over 50 different positive outcomes from participation in the arts. It can bring us pleasure, it can relieve stress and it can be deeply cathartic.
I hoped to feel some of these benefits when I decided to contribute to the ‘100 Faces, 100 Stories’ project and get involved first hand. I headed down to one of the weekly writers workshops down at Crisis Skylight in Newcastle City centre. The workshops are an opportunity for writers to get feedback on the stories they have collected and written, as well as an opportunity to catch up on the progress of the project as a whole. The latter is an incredibly important element of the workshops as I found out. Alan’s vision of what he wants to achieve from ‘100 Faces, 100 Stories’ is constantly evolving, sometimes so quickly it’s hard to keep up.
At the workshops I was witness to some really great work being moulded and formed. I saw the beginnings of some beautiful complex sculptures featuring themes of ornithology, disease and renewal. The piece featured taxidermy merged with medical apparatus to create an unnerving amalgamation of the natural and the artificial coming together with an eerie disharmony.
I also had the opportunity to hear some of the stories which have been compiled for ‘100 Faces, 100 Stories.’ Many of the stories were written by the service users of Crisis Skylight themselves. Some of the stories were light-hearted tales of happier times, of childhood and family. Others tread a much darker, more contemplative path. Alan showed us a video of one service user telling his story where he admitted to trying to kill his mother in a drunken rage.
Another story detailed a young man’s experiences battling mental health taking in destitution, incarceration and attempted suicide. Many of the stories were deeply sad but many of the protagonists are now able to focus their lives towards positive goals. I still couldn’t help but feel a sense of melancholy when hearing the stories as they were so short in length (around 500 words each) we were always left with a sense of ambiguity in regards to the fate of those in the stories resulting in a great sense of pathos.
In order to write my own story for ‘100 Faces, 100 Stories’ I decided to spend some time at the Crisis Skylight Cafe. The Cafe is a commercially run cafe which is open to the public but employs homeless people to work there. The cafe is an excellent opportunity for those affected by homelessness to learn new, practical skills while earning money and gaining recognised qualifications.
Unfortunately, on my trip to the Crisis Skylight cafe, it was totally rammed. All my attempts to talk to the staff about their experiences were quickly aborted due to the constant flow of customers. So, sat enjoying a fair trade coffee, I thought about my own experiences and preconceptions of homelessness.
Four years ago I spent just under a year drifting from floor to sofa in a number of flats and houses in Manchester. It was a pretty uncomfortable existence. I was unemployed for much of it, penniless but glad to have a roof over my head. Since that time I had blocked this ‘wilderness year’ out of my mind having found a job and somewhere stable to live. Strangely though I never thought of myself as homeless, but then maybe that’s because I had other options, friends and family I could rely on. Perhaps I have a preconceived (and totally erroneous) notion of what a homeless person is like. Looking over the Crisis statistics on homelessness, it dawned on me that I had been one of these statistics. Slowly but surely memories began to surface of my experiences around that time. One particular memory came to mind, so I put pen to paper, Alan Lyddiard’s words echoing round my head, “Everyone has a story to tell.”
The story I wrote was detailed a time when I was sleeping on the floor of a small, damp living room in a rundown flat in a trendy bit of South Manchester. One morning I awoke to find slug trails latticing my pillow centimetres away from my face. After a failed attempt of sleeping within a circle of salt, I decided to take more drastic action. I procured some slug pellets and began liberally dousing them around the backyard where I believed the creepy gastropods were getting into the house from. I woke after an anxious night and checked my pillow. There were no slimy trails. I headed to the yard where I was met with the repulsive sight of approximately 3000 dead slugs. Horrified I checked the empty carton of pellets. The tub informed me the pellets attracted slugs and then poisoned them. I had failed to read the instructions on the back which read ‘“Use one kilogram tub per 44,000 sq feet.”
Whilst on the surface simple being a funny, if fairly unsettling story, I found the process of writing about that time cathartic. Storytelling has always been used to reflect on our experiences and make sense of our surroundings. Allan et al, in a 2002 essay about the benefits of storytelling, said, “Stories encourage creativity, help in handling emotion and help to make sense of puzzling situations.”
The value of storytelling is often neglected in the world of participatory arts. There is often a clash between what is considered timeless or classic in art versus the contemporaneous view that art, including storytelling can have a valid and beneficial social purpose.
Stories have been a community activity since the beginning of time, from when there was no other means to pass on information and histories other than to do it orally. In this tradition of community storytelling, stories are didactic tools. They have a moral or a meaning. They say, “Learn from my mistakes.”
The ‘100 Faces, 100 Stories’ project will hopefully use these incredible, rich stories as a catalyst for learning resulting in people challenging their preconceived ideas of what homelessness is. In his book ‘Storytelling in Organizations: Facts, Fictions, and Fantasies,’ Yainnis Gabriel said, “Storytelling is an art of weaving, of constructing the product of intimate knowledge.”
With this in mind, the sheer scale of the ‘100 Faces 100 Stories’ should provide a vastly educational and enlightening experience for anyone who has the pleasure to view it.
‘100 Faces, 100 Stories’ will take place in the courtyard of Crisis Skylight, 1 City Road, Newcastle on 9th, 10th and 11th September 2010
Photographs by Magali Pettier for Small Change magazine
There is a shorter, additional article on ‘100 Faces, 100 Stories’ by Ben O’Connell in the Summer 2010 issue of Small Change magazine.
Listening to Alan Lyddiard talk about his new arts project ‘100 Faces, 100 stories’ can be both a frustrating and enlightening experience. Such is his passion for the arts in all its myriads of forms, Alan can have a tendency to go a little; shall we say, off topic? He often goes off on wild tangents, telling meandering tales of his experiences and influences often all in the same sentence.
Alan made his name as a theatre director, specialising in George Orwell adaptations. He has extensively toured his own particular renderings of Down and Out in Paris and London, 1984 and Animal Farm, playing to audiences worldwide to considerable acclaim.
Alan is pretty much everything you would want, or maybe expect, in a theatre director. He’s enthusiastic, passionate, manic, camp as Christmas and a man with a genuine empathy for presenting authentic voices in art.
It is this search for authentic voices which gave Alan the idea for ‘100 Faces, 100 Stories.’ Alan is to oversee the production of an installation at the Crisis Skylight centre at City House in Newcastle. The installation will feature 100 stories and 100 complementing images all exploring themes of destitution, vulnerability and homelessness.
The stories are to be gathered through collaboration between service users of Crisis Skylight, which is a resource and education centre for homeless or vulnerably housed people, and a number of the regions writers as well as artists and photographers. Writing sessions will take place at formal workshops but there is also a strong sense of autonomy in regards to what work the writers choose to submit.
Writers may craft work which is based on their own experiences, of the experiences they have seen around them. Some accounts may be fictional, others anecdotal. The writers will also try to document the experiences of those who use Crisis Skylight, including those service users for whom not having a secure place to stay, is a daily reality
There are few boundaries for the project and it will encompass sculpture, performance and other mixed media art. In short, ‘100 Faces, 100 Stories’ will be a melting pot of ideas and a beautiful mix of style, thoughts, cultures and techniques.
“I wanted to get writers involved either to write stories or to help them the service users to write their stories or to act as a kind of mentor.”Alan Said. He hopes the project will work as a conduit to give an artistic voice to those who are marginalised. On his motivation to create the work, he said, “We want to focus on the idea of empathy and to see the world through other people’s eyes.” He added, “I want to get under the skin of these people who are vulnerable and I want to see into the soul of these people.”
When Alan speaks about ‘100 Faces, 100 Stories’, Alan often sets off on ebullient flights of fancy. On paper there is much that would make Alan sound very much the rambling pseud. I must admit, when he makes airy proclamations such as, “I like the idea of putting pieces of paper on walls. I think there is something quite religious in that. You see it quite often in Eastern Europe,” It’s hard not to chuckle at the absent minded artistic posturing.
But, catch Alan in full flow and it is hard not to be swept up in his excitable stream of consciousness visualising. He is also nothing if not ambitious; he predicts that ‘100 Faces, 100 Stories’ will be “Just the beginning of something special.” Alan hopes to take some of the experiences and results of the project and incorporate it into his theatre work and then, taking it global.
 |
| Project Leader- Alan Lyddiard |
“The next stage is using these stories and people with difficulties in their lives and professional actors and making a play about it. I would like it to be a kind of contemporary Down and Out in Paris and London” He said, adding, “I want to take it to cities all over the world such as Manila which is the poorest city I have ever been to.”
For the meantime though, the project is very much rooted in the North East. It is the Crisis Skylight centre which is to house the installation and provide much of its initial inspiration. The Newcastle centre was opened in 2007 by the national charity for single homeless people, Crisis. The centre was the first Crisis opened outside of London and provides education and training to help homeless people gain employment, as well as offering a range of classes focussed around well being such as yoga, meditation and creative writing. The centres act to allow service users to learn the skills to help themselves.
Crisis are keen to point out that there is a much bigger picture to consider in regards to issues of homelessness. They are keen to dismiss the common assumption that you must sleep on the streets to be considered homeless.
The Crisis website states, “Homelessness is about more than rooflessness. A home is not just a physical space, it also has a legal and social dimension. A home provides roots, identity, a sense of belonging and a place of emotional wellbeing. Homelessness is about the loss of these.”
Homelessness remains is a major social issue and there are some pretty shocking statistics related to this ‘bigger picture’ view of homeless. For every one rough sleeper in this country, there are roughly 100 people living in hostels, and approximately 1100 people living in unsecure or overcrowded accommodation.
Based on figures collected by the Department for Communities and Local Government for England in 2007, There are approximately 500 people in England sleeping rough each night, 50,000 staying in hostel accommodation and just over half a million people living in cramped and vulnerable conditions. Despite these estimations at the time those figures were collated, only 84,900 of these overcrowded or vulnerable households were classified as homeless. There is a very clear disparity in these figures, and in how hopelessness is perceived in general.
While the ‘100 Faces, 100 Stories’ project certainly hopes to allow the voices and experiences of those affected by homelessness to be shared, Alan Lyddiard has a different focus for the project. Alan sees homelessness as a worthy subject to make art about but his priority is to create a competent, accomplished and engaging work of art over any social agenda.
“What I want to find out”, he said, “is can we create great art with everybody? Some artists think there is amateur art and professional art. I want to go beyond that. I think we can create great art, working class art, with a small group of people.”
I find Alan’s intentions and honesty refreshing. Many in the community focused arts world would choose to focus on the ‘worthy’ angle for a project like this but Alan clearly has a lot of belief in the people involved in the project, and also in people in general, as well as high expectations. Regardless of Alan’s motivation for driving this project, the desire to create inclusive, participatory art can reap huge emotional and psychological rewards for those service users and artists involved.
In 2008, Arts Council England published the paper ‘Great Art, Good Intentions’ the paper aimed to address some of the stigmas and limitations within the field of participatory arts. The intended outcome was that by 2011 the Arts Council would support arts organisations “To overcome barriers to engagement and participation in the arts, focussing in particular on reaching those who at present rarely or never attend or take part in the arts.”
Those involved in the arts have a lot of responsibility in maintaining the balancing act between social inclusiveness and creating high quality art. They must at once create a high value aesthetic, which is seen as valid to other artists, the public, funders and other organisations while delivering positive social and community relevant outcomes.
The Arts Council believe there is much value in participatory art practices, stating in the ‘Great Art’ paper, “It is a malleable dialogue that informs the work of the artist, builds and develops audiences, engages with communities, promotes learning and forges routes into active experience and artistic creation of many kinds.” Alan Lyddiard supports the views of the Arts Council. He said, “I want to go for great art but I want good intentions to be integral to that.”
Writer Tim Joss ruffled the feathers of many in the profession with the publication of his book ‘New Flow: A Better Future for Artists, Citizens and State’ in 2008. Joss was deeply critical of the existing models of, participatory arts practice in England.
In ‘New Flow’ he said, “A public debate grinds on about the value of the arts in society. It has set up a misleading polarity between the arts intrinsic and instrumental benefits.” ‘New Flow’ called for a reform in the participatory arts to create a comfortable space where creativity meets inclusion. This public scepticism of the value of the arts is something Joss believes must change.
Alan Johnson, Secretary of State for Health agrees, “I would like to see the benefits of participation in the arts recognised more widely by health and social care professionals.” he said, adding, “Access and participation in the arts are an essential part of everyday well being and quality of life.”
In these collaborative, creative environments the skill of the professional artists combine with the creative energy of the participants to create that “something special” Alan had foreseen with his project. The outcome of such processes is that all involved quickly become more than the sum of their parts.
This improvement to well being is one of the most simple benefits of taking part in participatory art. In a 1997 study, Francois Matarosso identified over 50 different positive outcomes from participation in the arts. It can bring us pleasure, it can relieve stress and it can be deeply cathartic.
I hoped to feel some of these benefits when I decided to contribute to the ‘100 Faces, 100 Stories’ project and get involved first hand. I headed down to one of the weekly writers workshops down at Crisis Skylight in Newcastle City centre. The workshops are an opportunity for writers to get feedback on the stories they have collected and written, as well as an opportunity to catch up on the progress of the project as a whole. The latter is an incredibly important element of the workshops as I found out. Alan’s vision of what he wants to achieve from ‘100 Faces, 100 Stories’ is constantly evolving, sometimes so quickly it’s hard to keep up.
At the workshops I was witness to some really great work being moulded and formed. I saw the beginnings of some beautiful complex sculptures featuring themes of ornithology, disease and renewal. The piece featured taxidermy merged with medical apparatus to create an unnerving amalgamation of the natural and the artificial coming together with an eerie disharmony.
I also had the opportunity to hear some of the stories which have been compiled for ‘100 Faces, 100 Stories.’ Many of the stories were written by the service users of Crisis Skylight themselves. Some of the stories were light-hearted tales of happier times, of childhood and family. Others tread a much darker, more contemplative path. Alan showed us a video of one service user telling his story where he admitted to trying to kill his mother in a drunken rage.
Another story detailed a young man’s experiences battling mental health taking in destitution, incarceration and attempted suicide. Many of the stories were deeply sad but many of the protagonists are now able to focus their lives towards positive goals. I still couldn’t help but feel a sense of melancholy when hearing the stories as they were so short in length (around 500 words each) we were always left with a sense of ambiguity in regards to the fate of those in the stories resulting in a great sense of pathos.
In order to write my own story for ‘100 Faces, 100 Stories’ I decided to spend some time at the Crisis Skylight Cafe. The Cafe is a commercially run cafe which is open to the public but employs homeless people to work there. The cafe is an excellent opportunity for those affected by homelessness to learn new, practical skills while earning money and gaining recognised qualifications.
Unfortunately, on my trip to the Crisis Skylight cafe, it was totally rammed. All my attempts to talk to the staff about their experiences were quickly aborted due to the constant flow of customers. So, sat enjoying a fair trade coffee, I thought about my own experiences and preconceptions of homelessness.
Four years ago I spent just under a year drifting from floor to sofa in a number of flats and houses in Manchester. It was a pretty uncomfortable existence. I was unemployed for much of it, penniless but glad to have a roof over my head. Since that time I had blocked this ‘wilderness year’ out of my mind having found a job and somewhere stable to live. Strangely though I never thought of myself as homeless, but then maybe that’s because I had other options, friends and family I could rely on. Perhaps I have a preconceived (and totally erroneous) notion of what a homeless person is like. Looking over the Crisis statistics on homelessness, it dawned on me that I had been one of these statistics. Slowly but surely memories began to surface of my experiences around that time. One particular memory came to mind, so I put pen to paper, Alan Lyddiard’s words echoing round my head, “Everyone has a story to tell.”
The story I wrote was detailed a time when I was sleeping on the floor of a small, damp living room in a rundown flat in a trendy bit of South Manchester. One morning I awoke to find slug trails latticing my pillow centimetres away from my face. After a failed attempt of sleeping within a circle of salt, I decided to take more drastic action. I procured some slug pellets and began liberally dousing them around the backyard where I believed the creepy gastropods were getting into the house from. I woke after an anxious night and checked my pillow. There were no slimy trails. I headed to the yard where I was met with the repulsive sight of approximately 3000 dead slugs. Horrified I checked the empty carton of pellets. The tub informed me the pellets attracted slugs and then poisoned them. I had failed to read the instructions on the back which read ‘“Use one kilogram tub per 44,000 sq feet.”
Whilst on the surface simple being a funny, if fairly unsettling story, I found the process of writing about that time cathartic. Storytelling has always been used to reflect on our experiences and make sense of our surroundings. Allan et al, in a 2002 essay about the benefits of storytelling, said, “Stories encourage creativity, help in handling emotion and help to make sense of puzzling situations.”
The value of storytelling is often neglected in the world of participatory arts. There is often a clash between what is considered timeless or classic in art versus the contemporaneous view that art, including storytelling can have a valid and beneficial social purpose.
Stories have been a community activity since the beginning of time, from when there was no other means to pass on information and histories other than to do it orally. In this tradition of community storytelling, stories are didactic tools. They have a moral or a meaning. They say, “Learn from my mistakes.”
The ‘100 Faces, 100 Stories’ project will hopefully use these incredible, rich stories as a catalyst for learning resulting in people challenging their preconceived ideas of what homelessness is. In his book ‘Storytelling in Organizations: Facts, Fictions, and Fantasies,’ Yainnis Gabriel said, “Storytelling is an art of weaving, of constructing the product of intimate knowledge.”
With this in mind, the sheer scale of the ‘100 Faces 100 Stories’ should provide a vastly educational and enlightening experience for anyone who has the pleasure to view it.
‘100 Faces, 100 Stories’ will take place in the courtyard of Crisis Skylight, 1 City Road, Newcastle on 9th, 10th and 11th September 2010
Photographs by Magali Pettier for Small Change magazine
There is a shorter, additional article on ‘100 Faces, 100 Stories’ by Ben O’Connell in the Summer 2010 issue of Small Change magazine.
Monday, 2 August 2010
Where Did You Sleep Last Night? Crisis Skylight Story
I recently did some work with the homeless charity Crisis Skylight in Newcastle. I was part of a writer’s workshop, working with service users at the centre to write 100 stories about homelessness and to capture their experiences of destitution and combine them with 100 portrait photographs of those who have contributed. I also wrote an article on the project and storytelling and participatory arts in general which I will also post along with some of the portraits.
This is the story I have contributed: Where Did You Sleep Last Night?
Walking into the kitchen for the first time I noticed someone had just been to the supermarket. Every surface was swamped by bulging Morrison’s carrier bags. It was only on closer inspection I realised all of the bags were full of rubbish due to the resident’s reluctance to empty the main bin which itself was spewing out debris like a grotty fountain. With no money, no job and nowhere to stay I had been rescued from a looming nervous breakdown by three kindly friends who said I could sleep on their living room floor. Unfortunately for me, the boys were not the most house proud of fellows.
One morning I woke to find my pillow covered in threads of silky sticky dew. On closer inspection I found that slugs had got in under the kitchen door and made a steady somnolent pilgrimage towards my cosy pillow. I felt pretty disgusted to say the least. I began to sleep within a ring of salt in order to keep any wayward molluscs at bay. I felt particularly pleased with my ingenious solution to this problem until one night I woke up to see a dozen slimy gastropods hovering around the perimeters of the salty fence I had erected.
Skin crawling I vowed to take more serious action against my tormentors. I headed to Woolworths and bought a large tub of slug pellets. Returning home I set about dusting the yard with said pellets. I felt a bit like an olden-days farmer sowing the seeds of his crop. I suspect the reality of the situation was that I looked like the star of a camp, albeit, murderous Shake n’ Vac advert. That night I felt wary sleeping without my sodium moat. I convinced myself that the pellets would present enough of a barrier for the slugs and eventually I fell asleep.
When I awoke I checked my pillow for silky trails. It was clear bar a small wet patch from where I had been sleeping open-mouthed. I inspected the kitchen (also clear) then ventured into the yard. Very little could have prepared me for what assaulted my eyes. Looking out across the 6ft square yard I saw approximately 3,000 shrivelled up, very, very dead slugs. Filled with guilt and Horror, I grabbed the empty tub of pellets that I had discarded in the kitchen. My eyes darting across the words on the packaging, I found the bit that says ‘instructions for use’ they said; “This product works by attracting slugs to the pellets, drawing them away from plants and crops then eradicating the slug by means of poisoning.” The packaging also went on to say, “Use one kilogram tub per 44,000 sq feet.”
Copyright Mark Dawson 2010
This is the story I have contributed: Where Did You Sleep Last Night?
Walking into the kitchen for the first time I noticed someone had just been to the supermarket. Every surface was swamped by bulging Morrison’s carrier bags. It was only on closer inspection I realised all of the bags were full of rubbish due to the resident’s reluctance to empty the main bin which itself was spewing out debris like a grotty fountain. With no money, no job and nowhere to stay I had been rescued from a looming nervous breakdown by three kindly friends who said I could sleep on their living room floor. Unfortunately for me, the boys were not the most house proud of fellows.
One morning I woke to find my pillow covered in threads of silky sticky dew. On closer inspection I found that slugs had got in under the kitchen door and made a steady somnolent pilgrimage towards my cosy pillow. I felt pretty disgusted to say the least. I began to sleep within a ring of salt in order to keep any wayward molluscs at bay. I felt particularly pleased with my ingenious solution to this problem until one night I woke up to see a dozen slimy gastropods hovering around the perimeters of the salty fence I had erected.
Skin crawling I vowed to take more serious action against my tormentors. I headed to Woolworths and bought a large tub of slug pellets. Returning home I set about dusting the yard with said pellets. I felt a bit like an olden-days farmer sowing the seeds of his crop. I suspect the reality of the situation was that I looked like the star of a camp, albeit, murderous Shake n’ Vac advert. That night I felt wary sleeping without my sodium moat. I convinced myself that the pellets would present enough of a barrier for the slugs and eventually I fell asleep.
When I awoke I checked my pillow for silky trails. It was clear bar a small wet patch from where I had been sleeping open-mouthed. I inspected the kitchen (also clear) then ventured into the yard. Very little could have prepared me for what assaulted my eyes. Looking out across the 6ft square yard I saw approximately 3,000 shrivelled up, very, very dead slugs. Filled with guilt and Horror, I grabbed the empty tub of pellets that I had discarded in the kitchen. My eyes darting across the words on the packaging, I found the bit that says ‘instructions for use’ they said; “This product works by attracting slugs to the pellets, drawing them away from plants and crops then eradicating the slug by means of poisoning.” The packaging also went on to say, “Use one kilogram tub per 44,000 sq feet.”
Copyright Mark Dawson 2010
Hideous Small Change Press Photo's
There was a bit of interest from the local press in Small Change magazine, so the University of Sunderland PR folks came and took these press shots. Frightening. Bearing in mind Colin's of more, ahem, 'vintage' years than myself, I look so knackered we could be brothers.
Small Change Magazine
It has been a long long time since I've updated my blog. One reason was that I lost everything on my hard drive including 5 or 6 articles I had written. Hopefully I will get them written up again and on here soon.
The second reason is that I have been tied up with finishing the first Issue of new free North East culture magazine, Small Change.
We have distributed nearly 3000 complimentary copies of Small Change around the North East so be on the look out for it in a bar/gallery/knocking shop near you. It's wonderful. It was designed by the incredibly talented Mickey Devine (www.mickeydevine.com) and edited by yours truly and Colin Young alongside the Sunderland University MA journalism students. If you would like a copy send me a mail on mark@smallchangepublishing.co.uk
The launch was at Plugged Inn, Sunderland and the guys there were most welcoming and helpful. I'd recomend it for a do or a even just a quite pint.
Issue one features pieces on the Bobby Robson Foundation, Sunderland Youth Music Workshops, Middlesbrough Music Live, Urban Exploration, Stockton Globe Theatre and much much more.
Small Change publishing will be looking at producing issue two of Small Change come September, as well as another new Arts magazine venture called Don't Hate focussing on innovation in the arts. Keep your eyes peeled.
The second reason is that I have been tied up with finishing the first Issue of new free North East culture magazine, Small Change.
We have distributed nearly 3000 complimentary copies of Small Change around the North East so be on the look out for it in a bar/gallery/knocking shop near you. It's wonderful. It was designed by the incredibly talented Mickey Devine (www.mickeydevine.com) and edited by yours truly and Colin Young alongside the Sunderland University MA journalism students. If you would like a copy send me a mail on mark@smallchangepublishing.co.uk
The launch was at Plugged Inn, Sunderland and the guys there were most welcoming and helpful. I'd recomend it for a do or a even just a quite pint.
Issue one features pieces on the Bobby Robson Foundation, Sunderland Youth Music Workshops, Middlesbrough Music Live, Urban Exploration, Stockton Globe Theatre and much much more.
Small Change publishing will be looking at producing issue two of Small Change come September, as well as another new Arts magazine venture called Don't Hate focussing on innovation in the arts. Keep your eyes peeled.
Wednesday, 24 March 2010
Dee Chaneva- ‘Dwelling’- Plugged Inn (formally the White Room), Sunderland, From March 29th 2010, Then Touring.
I did a press release/review thing for my friend Dee's photography exhibition. Go see it, it's very good.
‘Dwelling’ is a series of photographs by Newcastle based photographer Dee Chaneva. The images were shot in her native Bulgaria, at her grandparent’s house, following her grandfather’s death.
‘Dwelling’ is a beautifully rendered mediation on grief, loss and memory. The images document Dee’s grandmother’s desperate need to hold on to the memory of her husband by the objects and space they shared, for fear of losing the memory of him all together. These are possessions not just as precious things, but as necessary things.
The Artist says, “After my grandfather's death, the driving force behind everything that ever moved in that house was gone and a thick layer of grief, dust, lethargy and melancholy seems to have covered the beds, the chairs and one can even smell it on the curtains. My grandmother fears anything and everything that might shake up the delicate arrangement and preservation of her husband's possessions and the little traces he's left behind”
In dwelling, the artist presents what was once a home as a tomb or mausoleum, no longer a place of companionship. The images are presented with the keen, thorough eye of an archivist. The images often seem detached and trivial as we see the last tangible remains of a life reduced to photo frames and ornaments. Yet as we are presented with more work it becomes increasingly claustrophobic and acutely painful to look at, like the bittersweet sting of loss itself.
‘Dwelling’ is deeply moving and will surely strike a chord with anyone who has experienced grief and loss, or is interested in beautiful, thought provoking photography.
Dee Chaneva is currently studying in her second year of Photography at Newcastle College. This project was shot during the summer of 2009.
Dee has a website here, http://www.loveandsweat.com/
‘Dwelling’ is a series of photographs by Newcastle based photographer Dee Chaneva. The images were shot in her native Bulgaria, at her grandparent’s house, following her grandfather’s death.
‘Dwelling’ is a beautifully rendered mediation on grief, loss and memory. The images document Dee’s grandmother’s desperate need to hold on to the memory of her husband by the objects and space they shared, for fear of losing the memory of him all together. These are possessions not just as precious things, but as necessary things.
The Artist says, “After my grandfather's death, the driving force behind everything that ever moved in that house was gone and a thick layer of grief, dust, lethargy and melancholy seems to have covered the beds, the chairs and one can even smell it on the curtains. My grandmother fears anything and everything that might shake up the delicate arrangement and preservation of her husband's possessions and the little traces he's left behind”
In dwelling, the artist presents what was once a home as a tomb or mausoleum, no longer a place of companionship. The images are presented with the keen, thorough eye of an archivist. The images often seem detached and trivial as we see the last tangible remains of a life reduced to photo frames and ornaments. Yet as we are presented with more work it becomes increasingly claustrophobic and acutely painful to look at, like the bittersweet sting of loss itself.
‘Dwelling’ is deeply moving and will surely strike a chord with anyone who has experienced grief and loss, or is interested in beautiful, thought provoking photography.
Dee Chaneva is currently studying in her second year of Photography at Newcastle College. This project was shot during the summer of 2009.
Dee has a website here, http://www.loveandsweat.com/
Monday, 8 February 2010
Writing Like Jack Kerouac
I've been reading a lot of Jack Kerouac lately. After around 12 years of being indifferent to his writing, enjoying some of his novels, being bored to tears by others, I think I've finally got him.
I was doing a bit of reading about his 'spontaneous prose' method of writing. Kerouac wrote many of his novels in a matter of days using the method which focussed on an uninterrupted, trance-like burst of stream of consciousness writing.
When writing like this Kerouac seldom cared for the restraints of punctuation so used "No periods separating sentence-structures already arbitrarily riddled by false colons and timid usually needless commas."
So, I thought, can't be too difficult, I'll give it ago. What resulted was a 1000 word long sentence which is, perhaps inevitably, pretty poor. And it was pretty tiring too. I suggest any aspiring beat writer or beat cynic to give it ago.
Oh, and Kerouac also believed writing with an "image-object" in mind. Mine was the River Wear.
Here goes:
"When the icy blast hits from the Wear you will begin to associate academia with stupidity sorrow and loss as your neck cricks against a stiff pillow the self doubt will well up as you crumple on the snooze button desperate for any empty respite before you continue your quest to be elite your excuses becoming further than far fetched and instead of attend you hike up river to feel the chill in your bones dressed in your fathers jacket and murderers gloves to feel alive instead of shamefully clutching your burgeoning gut last year you still felt sad and loved the pub anticipating the disappointed look of the pretty barmaid when you order a third pint and confound her expectations after the flirting before you embarked on that glorious waste of time now swapped for books and debate and all the things you hate and love and never wanted anyway you will never be happy with what you have you have proved that time and time again the couples with their homes and their children and their duality cause much concern like nerves in the stomach between jealousy and disgust and how you fit in amongst this town you were so proud of until back there and shame at the commoners and lack of dietary concern makes you realise you were the fraud you knew you were all this time like the cod at the mouth of the North sea curiously sauntering into Roker bay to take a look up river and die in indignation at what is no longer there taking last gasps through gills while glassy eyes reflect the two pathetic cranes that are left of the shipyard standing stoic the stubborn bastards dead but for the occasional chik chik chik of the chain retracting or a knackered vessels last resort dry dock with men selling lobsters poached and took to the club at opening midday while wives do what wives do and they drink of course and why not what else if not drink work let them down and quickly followed their bodies and one day minds like car batteries left to rot the acid evaporating once toxic and real and now nothing but evaporated little more than air just disappointment and inevitability as the key turns and the engine responds in a flat fart like a complacent man sat in his home belligerent greying in the beard with watery sad eyes sunk back further than you remember but don’t want to because they look like yours miles away from the stuffy hall and fat women waddling to listen to discourse then talk about discourse then ask questions about discourse but when they ask questions they really are just giving their own little opinions banging their daft little drum for all its worth but the sound that emanates is nothing more than a fart like the dull thump of a heartbeat if they had hearts rather than giving it up for discourse and comfy offices and complaining about the stink from the Wear when it is low and the cormorants struggle to find anything to eat the cormorants are unconcerned with the fat women’s chelping if they were to ask a question they would ask it to gain an answer rather than pour out ill formed distain and opinion flat and empty like the sallow skin around necks and eyes which no longer sparkle like marbles scuffed on a concrete schoolyard where children still sway and dance and wriggle from the electricity that flows through them untamed by the disgusting concepts they are yet to learn like restraint and self awareness and not making a scene and being normal and not being considered weird for there is seemingly nothing worse than being considered weird why did you say that That’s a bit weird kind of discourse favoured by academics in stuffy halls with concrete scuffed marbles instead of life in their eyes all playfulness long gone surely there must have been something there a walk in the meadows a picnic too many drinks and the talk of big big plans together there must have been drinking and dancing in the bedroom at lunch time with the stereo turned up full and both topless with the curtains and windows wide open to feel the cooling breeze against bare skin as you pass each other the camera and strike your most Hollywood pose until collapsing together and falling into a deep contented drunken dreamless sleep as the afternoon sun falls on the two bodies squeezed together so tight like lumps of plastecine you can hardly see the join and you awake as the sun is falling and the breeze is cold and spitting in the sink there is nothing but the mix of red wine and blood from kissing too hard and before you know it you’re back in the pub and two men on stage are playing songs about railroad tracks and midnight trains in matching suits all self aware but you can’t hear anything at all but the rushing torrent of blood in your ears and the whisky burns in your throat because she is over there and talking to him and in slow motion you see it happen a touch behind the ear and then a kiss and you feel a rush and before you know it the bottle you are drinking from has been swift smash halved on the table as you tear her from him and thrust the shard edges deep into his eye but didn’t and you would have had you been a man had you not been a burnished marble a soft lad a cool kid instead you will stay quiet and seethe to yourself and it will eat you up and burn inside of you at the shame and disgust at doing the right thing knowing its far from right"
Kerouac's Essentials of Spontaneous Prose can be found here:
http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/kerouac-spontaneous.html
I was doing a bit of reading about his 'spontaneous prose' method of writing. Kerouac wrote many of his novels in a matter of days using the method which focussed on an uninterrupted, trance-like burst of stream of consciousness writing.
When writing like this Kerouac seldom cared for the restraints of punctuation so used "No periods separating sentence-structures already arbitrarily riddled by false colons and timid usually needless commas."
So, I thought, can't be too difficult, I'll give it ago. What resulted was a 1000 word long sentence which is, perhaps inevitably, pretty poor. And it was pretty tiring too. I suggest any aspiring beat writer or beat cynic to give it ago.
Oh, and Kerouac also believed writing with an "image-object" in mind. Mine was the River Wear.
Here goes:
"When the icy blast hits from the Wear you will begin to associate academia with stupidity sorrow and loss as your neck cricks against a stiff pillow the self doubt will well up as you crumple on the snooze button desperate for any empty respite before you continue your quest to be elite your excuses becoming further than far fetched and instead of attend you hike up river to feel the chill in your bones dressed in your fathers jacket and murderers gloves to feel alive instead of shamefully clutching your burgeoning gut last year you still felt sad and loved the pub anticipating the disappointed look of the pretty barmaid when you order a third pint and confound her expectations after the flirting before you embarked on that glorious waste of time now swapped for books and debate and all the things you hate and love and never wanted anyway you will never be happy with what you have you have proved that time and time again the couples with their homes and their children and their duality cause much concern like nerves in the stomach between jealousy and disgust and how you fit in amongst this town you were so proud of until back there and shame at the commoners and lack of dietary concern makes you realise you were the fraud you knew you were all this time like the cod at the mouth of the North sea curiously sauntering into Roker bay to take a look up river and die in indignation at what is no longer there taking last gasps through gills while glassy eyes reflect the two pathetic cranes that are left of the shipyard standing stoic the stubborn bastards dead but for the occasional chik chik chik of the chain retracting or a knackered vessels last resort dry dock with men selling lobsters poached and took to the club at opening midday while wives do what wives do and they drink of course and why not what else if not drink work let them down and quickly followed their bodies and one day minds like car batteries left to rot the acid evaporating once toxic and real and now nothing but evaporated little more than air just disappointment and inevitability as the key turns and the engine responds in a flat fart like a complacent man sat in his home belligerent greying in the beard with watery sad eyes sunk back further than you remember but don’t want to because they look like yours miles away from the stuffy hall and fat women waddling to listen to discourse then talk about discourse then ask questions about discourse but when they ask questions they really are just giving their own little opinions banging their daft little drum for all its worth but the sound that emanates is nothing more than a fart like the dull thump of a heartbeat if they had hearts rather than giving it up for discourse and comfy offices and complaining about the stink from the Wear when it is low and the cormorants struggle to find anything to eat the cormorants are unconcerned with the fat women’s chelping if they were to ask a question they would ask it to gain an answer rather than pour out ill formed distain and opinion flat and empty like the sallow skin around necks and eyes which no longer sparkle like marbles scuffed on a concrete schoolyard where children still sway and dance and wriggle from the electricity that flows through them untamed by the disgusting concepts they are yet to learn like restraint and self awareness and not making a scene and being normal and not being considered weird for there is seemingly nothing worse than being considered weird why did you say that That’s a bit weird kind of discourse favoured by academics in stuffy halls with concrete scuffed marbles instead of life in their eyes all playfulness long gone surely there must have been something there a walk in the meadows a picnic too many drinks and the talk of big big plans together there must have been drinking and dancing in the bedroom at lunch time with the stereo turned up full and both topless with the curtains and windows wide open to feel the cooling breeze against bare skin as you pass each other the camera and strike your most Hollywood pose until collapsing together and falling into a deep contented drunken dreamless sleep as the afternoon sun falls on the two bodies squeezed together so tight like lumps of plastecine you can hardly see the join and you awake as the sun is falling and the breeze is cold and spitting in the sink there is nothing but the mix of red wine and blood from kissing too hard and before you know it you’re back in the pub and two men on stage are playing songs about railroad tracks and midnight trains in matching suits all self aware but you can’t hear anything at all but the rushing torrent of blood in your ears and the whisky burns in your throat because she is over there and talking to him and in slow motion you see it happen a touch behind the ear and then a kiss and you feel a rush and before you know it the bottle you are drinking from has been swift smash halved on the table as you tear her from him and thrust the shard edges deep into his eye but didn’t and you would have had you been a man had you not been a burnished marble a soft lad a cool kid instead you will stay quiet and seethe to yourself and it will eat you up and burn inside of you at the shame and disgust at doing the right thing knowing its far from right"
Kerouac's Essentials of Spontaneous Prose can be found here:
http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/kerouac-spontaneous.html
Taking the Drug Mephedrone aka M-Cat aka Meow Meow
I'm Currently working on a piece about the Drug Mephedrone/M-Cat/Meow Meow . This is a little taster
My legs have gone hollow. I look down. They’re still there, but I can barely feel them. Just to make sure they are still there I decide to do a little dance. The resulting dance looks like a cross between checking for shit on my shoes and a drunken river dance style Irish jig.
People in the bar are staring now and their stares are making the room spin. I turn to my companion, he isn’t there, some other man has replaced him, this other man is trying to be just like him, I know his game, he’s trying to convince me that he is my absent pal. I won’t fall for that, my friend is bald; this fellow has a full head of thick black hair. But he talks just like him. I become scared, who is this imposter and what does he want from me?
I look at my watch, it says 1.20am. The imposter continues to talk for a few minutes. I nod and smile, trying to suss him out, trying to find out what he has done to my friend. I check my watch again. It says 4.10am. It occurs to me I am very, very high. From this point my memory draws a blank.
Some days later, after the 48 hour migraine, the stomach cramps and the sickness, I have a realisation. The imposter was not in fact some shadowy charlatan. It was not an impersonator hell-bent on doing me harm. It was my pal wearing a woolly hat.
And the cause for this lapse in sanity? This break in the space time continuum? Ladies and gentleman, boys and girls, may I introduce to you the all new, all singing, all dancing, yet to be classified club drug of the moment...Mephedrone a.k.a M-Cat a.k.a Meow Meow.
My legs have gone hollow. I look down. They’re still there, but I can barely feel them. Just to make sure they are still there I decide to do a little dance. The resulting dance looks like a cross between checking for shit on my shoes and a drunken river dance style Irish jig.
People in the bar are staring now and their stares are making the room spin. I turn to my companion, he isn’t there, some other man has replaced him, this other man is trying to be just like him, I know his game, he’s trying to convince me that he is my absent pal. I won’t fall for that, my friend is bald; this fellow has a full head of thick black hair. But he talks just like him. I become scared, who is this imposter and what does he want from me?
I look at my watch, it says 1.20am. The imposter continues to talk for a few minutes. I nod and smile, trying to suss him out, trying to find out what he has done to my friend. I check my watch again. It says 4.10am. It occurs to me I am very, very high. From this point my memory draws a blank.
Some days later, after the 48 hour migraine, the stomach cramps and the sickness, I have a realisation. The imposter was not in fact some shadowy charlatan. It was not an impersonator hell-bent on doing me harm. It was my pal wearing a woolly hat.
And the cause for this lapse in sanity? This break in the space time continuum? Ladies and gentleman, boys and girls, may I introduce to you the all new, all singing, all dancing, yet to be classified club drug of the moment...Mephedrone a.k.a M-Cat a.k.a Meow Meow.
Monday, 25 January 2010
Sunderland Youth Music Workshops aka Dave Murrays Dreamland
One Saturday morning 12 years ago, I plucked up the courage to shuffle into the Sunderland Youth Music Workshops.
At 16, I was obsessed with music but technically hopeless. I was desperately searching for a creative outlet.What I found that day was a safe, welcoming, buzzing hub. Or what workshop founder and leader Dave Murray calls “a dreamland.”
I was elated to find a place like this existed outside of my imagination. The project then was very rough around the edges, run from the run down ‘Bunker’ rehearsal studios in the city centre.
The place has since been gentrified but former youth workers at the project inform me that they would often have to sweep the place for needles before the its participants arrived.
Regardless of the insalubrious surroundings, the workshops were incredible. I would emerge into the afternoon light blinking, ears ringing and throat red raw from screaming my lungs out.
The thing that really blew my mind was the level of acceptance and inclusion. In a city that often seemed deeply cruel, it was the incredibly liberating.
The project started in 1994 with the aim of giving young people a chance to learn to play instruments, write songs, form bands and improve their social skills in an informal, free, peer driven setting.
The project played a huge part in establishing many an aspiring Sunderland Musician and the Project is not without its high profile success stories.
The workshops were a launch pad for such internationally renowned acts such as The Futureheads, Field Music and The Casino Brawl.
And while these names help raise the profile of the project and draw extra funding they are a footnote in the legacy of the award winning institution.
Thousands of young people have came through the door and been welcomed by Dave and I there are very few who didn’t gain something positive from the workshops.
One of which is Anna McKeown, now 25, attended the project when still in her early teens and the experience has left an indelible impression on her.
“I think the project shaped who I am, it provided me with an interest in music, it inspired me, gave me ambition, a sense of purpose and a lot of friends.” She said.
Anna was so inspired by the ethos of the workshops that she now runs her own youth groups teaching broadcast journalism to young people in Sunderland.
She believes that the music projects have an important function in the community, “It's so important that projects like this exist because at the most basic level it provides an opportunity for young people to socialise outside of school, the drinking green or the x-box.” She said, adding, “they can develop skills and a sense of independence and self-worth.”
The project is still going strong as it enters its 16th year. While it has been scrubbed up with a new venue and state of the art gear, it still retains its grassroots, underdog spirit.
This is largely due to project leader Dave Murray. Dave is a no-nonsense type of bloke but he is also incredibly kind, warm hearted and likeable. Dave will do anything he can for these kids.
Been kicked out by your parents? Dave will find you a room. Need help wallpapering that room? Dave will give you a hand. No telly in the room? Dave saw one in the skip out back; he’ll get it fixed up for you.
His one passion in life is the youth music workshops and the young people who go there. Dave loves to talk about the project so much that my 20 minute interview with him nearly lasted 3 hours.
Yet hearing him talking about something he is hugely proud of is inspiring rather than indulgent.
Dave is, however, reluctant to take credit for the success of the project even though he has devoted his whole life to it.
Sat in his office surrounded by photographs from the workshops he told me, “The success of the workshops is nothing to do with me or the workers, it’s due to the young people who come, all we do is believe in them.”
The magic of the project is driven by the young people who attend, through them supporting and encouraging each other because they are so glad to have the outlet. As Dave says, “the need for the project was much bigger than the project itself.”
Chatting to Dave about the project, while thinking of the impact it had on so many other people like Anna and Stephen, I find myself wishing I was on the TV show Secret Millionaire.
I imagine myself as a wealthy philanthropist, presenting Dave with a big cheque to help out the project.
But as Dave says, “It has never, ever been about money.” Besides I probably wouldn’t get a chance, Dave wouldn’t let me get a word in edgeways.
At 16, I was obsessed with music but technically hopeless. I was desperately searching for a creative outlet.What I found that day was a safe, welcoming, buzzing hub. Or what workshop founder and leader Dave Murray calls “a dreamland.”
I was elated to find a place like this existed outside of my imagination. The project then was very rough around the edges, run from the run down ‘Bunker’ rehearsal studios in the city centre.
The place has since been gentrified but former youth workers at the project inform me that they would often have to sweep the place for needles before the its participants arrived.
Regardless of the insalubrious surroundings, the workshops were incredible. I would emerge into the afternoon light blinking, ears ringing and throat red raw from screaming my lungs out.
The thing that really blew my mind was the level of acceptance and inclusion. In a city that often seemed deeply cruel, it was the incredibly liberating.
The project started in 1994 with the aim of giving young people a chance to learn to play instruments, write songs, form bands and improve their social skills in an informal, free, peer driven setting.
The project played a huge part in establishing many an aspiring Sunderland Musician and the Project is not without its high profile success stories.
The workshops were a launch pad for such internationally renowned acts such as The Futureheads, Field Music and The Casino Brawl.
And while these names help raise the profile of the project and draw extra funding they are a footnote in the legacy of the award winning institution.
Thousands of young people have came through the door and been welcomed by Dave and I there are very few who didn’t gain something positive from the workshops.
One of which is Anna McKeown, now 25, attended the project when still in her early teens and the experience has left an indelible impression on her.
“I think the project shaped who I am, it provided me with an interest in music, it inspired me, gave me ambition, a sense of purpose and a lot of friends.” She said.
Anna was so inspired by the ethos of the workshops that she now runs her own youth groups teaching broadcast journalism to young people in Sunderland.
She believes that the music projects have an important function in the community, “It's so important that projects like this exist because at the most basic level it provides an opportunity for young people to socialise outside of school, the drinking green or the x-box.” She said, adding, “they can develop skills and a sense of independence and self-worth.”
The project is still going strong as it enters its 16th year. While it has been scrubbed up with a new venue and state of the art gear, it still retains its grassroots, underdog spirit.
This is largely due to project leader Dave Murray. Dave is a no-nonsense type of bloke but he is also incredibly kind, warm hearted and likeable. Dave will do anything he can for these kids.
Been kicked out by your parents? Dave will find you a room. Need help wallpapering that room? Dave will give you a hand. No telly in the room? Dave saw one in the skip out back; he’ll get it fixed up for you.
His one passion in life is the youth music workshops and the young people who go there. Dave loves to talk about the project so much that my 20 minute interview with him nearly lasted 3 hours.
Yet hearing him talking about something he is hugely proud of is inspiring rather than indulgent.
Dave is, however, reluctant to take credit for the success of the project even though he has devoted his whole life to it.
Sat in his office surrounded by photographs from the workshops he told me, “The success of the workshops is nothing to do with me or the workers, it’s due to the young people who come, all we do is believe in them.”
The magic of the project is driven by the young people who attend, through them supporting and encouraging each other because they are so glad to have the outlet. As Dave says, “the need for the project was much bigger than the project itself.”
Chatting to Dave about the project, while thinking of the impact it had on so many other people like Anna and Stephen, I find myself wishing I was on the TV show Secret Millionaire.
I imagine myself as a wealthy philanthropist, presenting Dave with a big cheque to help out the project.
But as Dave says, “It has never, ever been about money.” Besides I probably wouldn’t get a chance, Dave wouldn’t let me get a word in edgeways.
Mementos and Memories: An Online Art Project
Dragging the box out from the shed, I’m hit by a musty waft of nostalgia as a vague, familiar smell leaks from it.
Later I examine the boxes contents. Among old books, records and pin badges is a torn blue paper folder. Spilling from it are piles of notebooks and scrappy bits of paper covered in manic scribbles.
The folder contains mix tapes, made by girlfriends past, Photographs of the women I had loved many years ago, leaflets for the exhibitions we went to.
Looking through this archive of my thoughts, feelings, mistakes and triumphs makes me feel both elated and forlorn.
I teeter vicariously between laughter and tears throughout the experience of sifting through over 10 years of personal history.
The reason for this foray into my past is because I have agreed to contribute to University of Sunderland student Michelle Wall’s ‘Mementos and Memories’ art project.
Michelle hopes to exhibit the treasured and everyday items we hide away in our homes which remind us of a special memory or experience.
The inspiration for the project comes from Michelle finding an ornate suitcase in her loft. The suitcase belonged to the houses previous tenants, who had lived there for three generations.
It contained bundles of correspondence between a married couple forced to live apart during the 1940’s and 50’s. Unable to see each other they shared their lives together on paper.
“The fact these letters had been kept, treasured and survived all that time was inspiring to me,” Michelle said. “I wanted to celebrate this as a legacy to their relationship by exploring the treasured memories of others.” She says of her inspiration for the project.
Michelle, who is in the final year of her fine art degree, initialised the project by collecting and displaying her own mementos. Hers were memories of adolescence and early relationships through to recent marriage and motherhood.
She has now begun collecting the mementos of others with the aim of putting together a exhibition and book that will become a collective memento of its own because, she said, “I want us all to acknowledge and appreciate the otherwise fleeting and forgotten moments in our past.”
On the things Michelle is most interested in is the way these items are stored. “These keepsakes are often tucked away, they are too precious or personal to display,” she told me.
“To anyone else a ticket stub or a melted candle would mean nothing. Yet given its history and connection to its owner it takes on a new identity.”
The memory then begins to transcend the realm of the mind. It is transformed into a tangible, physical thing, what Michelle describes as “a vessel of sentiment.”
This is why I find myself sifting through my own mementos and memories. Reading through my old notebooks it strikes me, for better or worse, how much I’ve changed and the ways in which I’ve stayed the same.
All the bittersweet experiences of life are documented in the yellowing pages. I am thankful to Michelle for dredging it all up. I can only suggest you do the same as it was horrible and wonderful.
Later I examine the boxes contents. Among old books, records and pin badges is a torn blue paper folder. Spilling from it are piles of notebooks and scrappy bits of paper covered in manic scribbles.
The folder contains mix tapes, made by girlfriends past, Photographs of the women I had loved many years ago, leaflets for the exhibitions we went to.
Looking through this archive of my thoughts, feelings, mistakes and triumphs makes me feel both elated and forlorn.
I teeter vicariously between laughter and tears throughout the experience of sifting through over 10 years of personal history.
The reason for this foray into my past is because I have agreed to contribute to University of Sunderland student Michelle Wall’s ‘Mementos and Memories’ art project.
Michelle hopes to exhibit the treasured and everyday items we hide away in our homes which remind us of a special memory or experience.
The inspiration for the project comes from Michelle finding an ornate suitcase in her loft. The suitcase belonged to the houses previous tenants, who had lived there for three generations.
It contained bundles of correspondence between a married couple forced to live apart during the 1940’s and 50’s. Unable to see each other they shared their lives together on paper.
“The fact these letters had been kept, treasured and survived all that time was inspiring to me,” Michelle said. “I wanted to celebrate this as a legacy to their relationship by exploring the treasured memories of others.” She says of her inspiration for the project.
Michelle, who is in the final year of her fine art degree, initialised the project by collecting and displaying her own mementos. Hers were memories of adolescence and early relationships through to recent marriage and motherhood.
She has now begun collecting the mementos of others with the aim of putting together a exhibition and book that will become a collective memento of its own because, she said, “I want us all to acknowledge and appreciate the otherwise fleeting and forgotten moments in our past.”
On the things Michelle is most interested in is the way these items are stored. “These keepsakes are often tucked away, they are too precious or personal to display,” she told me.
“To anyone else a ticket stub or a melted candle would mean nothing. Yet given its history and connection to its owner it takes on a new identity.”
The memory then begins to transcend the realm of the mind. It is transformed into a tangible, physical thing, what Michelle describes as “a vessel of sentiment.”
This is why I find myself sifting through my own mementos and memories. Reading through my old notebooks it strikes me, for better or worse, how much I’ve changed and the ways in which I’ve stayed the same.
All the bittersweet experiences of life are documented in the yellowing pages. I am thankful to Michelle for dredging it all up. I can only suggest you do the same as it was horrible and wonderful.
A very long article on the future of magazines
For me, magazines have always been something more than the words contained within them. As a culture starved teenager, the mile walk to the nearest suitable newsagent was so exiting, a thing of ritual. I would stand and devour all of the covers, wide eyed.
What I saw was possibility, other worlds, whether via an impossibly beautiful woman or a dangerous looking rock band. These objects were the antithesis of the town I lived in, they gave me a momentary, imaginary way out.
I began to fetishise the whole process, taking a perverse pleasure in not allowing myself to sneak a look between the pages. The titles themselves were incongruous; Melody Maker, Kerrang, The Face.
I loved, and still love the look and feel of magazines. For those hardy enough to hunt them down there are a wealth of beautiful magazines out there. Small publishers are throwing budgetary caution to the wind and creating innovative magazines filled with beautiful design and insightful writing.
Leafing through the impeccable selection of Magazines at Manchester’s Magma Books it’s clear I’m not alone in my obsession. Graphic Designer Mickey Devine is a member of the same clandestine club. “I just love the touch and the feel of magazines, to feel the different stocks of paper between my fingers” he says, adding “I enjoy everything down to the way the magazine folds.”
Some it would seem are a little less precious about how they consume their magazines and newspapers. In December 2009 global powerhouse publishers Condé Nast, Time Inc., News Corp. Hearst, and Meredith announced a joint venture to create industry standards for digital magazines to be read on e-readers, tablets and smartphones.
Perhaps for a generation raised on laptops and IPods this will cause little concern. The young people of today grew up with constantly changing, increasingly sophisticated digital technology; we just worried about how to program the video recorder.
Speaking of this digital generation, The Guardians Blake Morrison says, “They’ve eyes only for the luminous screen, ears only for the music in their headphones.” In the digital age the days of passing round a dog-eared copy of Razzle on a school lunch break are long gone, now they Bluetooth each other porn clips or stream hardcore videos live to their Iphone’s.
“Adults have always been worried about children’s playthings: television, computer games, loud music. Now the new worry is connectivity. A generation of young people is growing up with no concept of life without a screen and a keypad. Wherever they are, they’re plugged in and hooked up,” states Morrison.
These are young people who, as photographer Evan Baden puts it, are constantly “bathed in a silent, soft and heavenly blue glow.” They are not troubled by the fact their music has no physical format. As a result the music becomes more disposable.
For example, you can illegally download the entire Beatles back catalogue in about an hour then delete it if on first listen it’s not to your taste. Imagine as a teenager returning home with a seven-inch you had bought that day from Our-Price, then smashing it to pieces upon discovering that the chorus wasn’t instantly catchy enough.
With MP3 based music, and of magazine content on the web, the product or publication ceases to be a complete package. It is no longer a document. The album becomes obsolete, hit singles are retained, the rest disposed of. The same is true with Web based magazine content. The consumer is constantly fed new information. A reader’s attention is continually disrupted by links taking them away from the source, the boundaries between one site and the next blurred are irrecoverably.
There are very few people who are unaware of the increasing popularity of book style e-readers and the ability to read novels and other non-design based literature via Smartphones. This experience remains a straight up aping of the traditional book format because of course, why would we want anything else from a book other than to be able to read it? This is not the case however, with the magazine readers and tablets. Developers plan to re-invent the magazine wheel with an all singing, all interactive multi-media experience.
Amazon’s relatively successful kindle reader has silenced many of its critics by providing a comfortable and innovative means of reading and obtaining material. While the kindle has the ability to display magazine material such as electronic editions of publications, it allows limited interactivity mainly because magazines are not its core focus and also because largely the technology to make interactivity possible is largely still in development.
While the joint venture to create standards for magazine reader’s is shrouded in secrecy. Many of the parties involved have slowly came forward and revealed their own individual take on what the tablets and readers are going to be like. The first to do so was Time Inc. Time released a video showcasing their concept of the reader via their Sports Illustrated publication. While the video showed a product that certainly seemed interesting, there was an overall uncertainty to the whole thing. The video seemed rushed, the content muddled and confusing. And perhaps most importantly, the concept just didn’t seem to flow. It has all the bravado you would expect from a large American publisher like Time but it’s unconvincingly executed. I believe for the concept of magazine readers and tablets to succeed they must give a immersive, linear, traditional magazine style reading experience while bringing something new to the table that traditional print magazines and digital editions of magazines don’t have.
Hearst, who signed up for the magazine standards joint venture have been first out of the starting blocks in terms of showcasing a physical working product. They unveiled the Skiff reader at the January 2010 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The product is developed within Hearst by the company, Skiff. Skiff president Gilbert Fuchsberg stated at the show, "The Skiff Reader's big screen will showcase print media in compelling new ways. This is consistent with Skiff's focus on delivering enhanced reading experiences that engage consumers, publishers and advertisers.” The unit itself is desirable enough to have gadget fans salivating yet one thing we are yet to find out about the Skiff, and indeed its developmental counterparts, is its price, how much the content will cost and how much content will be available. The company hope to commercially release the product mid-2010.
One of most convincing concepts being developed is the Mag+, designed by London based company BERG and developed by Swedish product developers Bonnier R&D. Again, the product is still in the development stage but their presentation at least seems in the keeping with the fundamental pleasures of reading magazines. The developers behind Mag+ realise they are going to face scepticism towards their product and the concept in general. They acknowledge this stating, “Magazines have articles you can curl up with and lose yourself in, luscious photography that draws the eye. They’re easy and enjoyable to read.” They hope to, “marry what’s best about magazines with the always connected, portable tablet e-reader.” Plus they appear to have put a lot of thought into making the product user friendly and cohesive while being aesthetically pleasing. It is presented as a much more slick and subtle effort than its all-guns-blazing Sports Illustrated counterpart. The Mag+ flows like a conventional magazine with pages scrolling horizontally with the added touch of making the text easier to read by having it scroll down the page. This is much more innovative than many of the current methods used by digital editions of magazines. As stated earlier, if the concept is to be a success, developers and publishers must create a product which takes magazines to the next level, rather than presenting a poor imitation or faddy embellishment of existing print media. If the Mag+ can deliver on its promises then it may be the first real contender to the print throne.
While there have been means of reading magazines paper free for a number of years, none have really taken off. In the U.S, Playboy issues editions of their magazines in pdf form but it makes for a pretty uninspiring reading experience. You may find yourself squinting at a flickering computer screen, having to zoom in and scroll to read the articles then zoom out and scroll to look at a nubile models breasts. Plus, let’s be honest, probably the only reason Playboy is available in this format is to save the blushes of a 16-year-old trying to buy his first porn mag in a local newsagents.
In July 2009, newsagent John Menzies closed their Magazines On Demand service due to lack of demand. The service allowed consumers to buy digital editions of over 140 titles downloaded directly to their computer or smartphone. A statement on the services website stated, “Digital magazines have not proved as popular as we had hoped for and in this difficult economic climate it was not possible for us to continue trading.”
I feel that the service itself was fundamentally flawed. To me, the Magazines On Demand service was ill founded on the premise that the company saw there was a viable digital future in publishing but they didn’t develop their idea enough to make it succeed, as if they were clutching at digital straws hoping that everything worked out. We live in an age of tech-savvy, cynical consumers, consumers who want a fully realised vision, product and service.
One of the potentially key problems of readers and tablets is that once the race is over to get the hardware out there, there will be a number of different models out there, all potentially using different file formats. And there is no guarantee that there will be longevity in the devices or formats. For proof, ask anyone who bought a HD DVD Player rather than its rival, the now widespread Bluray.
The HD DVD Format became commercially available in March 2008 with players costing upwards of £400. By the following February, player and format manufacturers Toshiba announced that production of players and movie discs would be abandoned.
It must sting to know you have paid £400 to watch a limited selection of movies a handful of times in less than a year and there would be no more coming, ever. This is a key concern when it comes to the emergence of magazine readers and tablets especially when you consider that rumour has it the readers could cost over $2000 when launched in the U.S.
Another concern is the financial cost of developing the ‘future of magazines’. The publishing industry of recent years has experienced lean times. 2009 saw a number of magazines close their doors (Arena, Maxim, Portfolio) and very few (Conde Naste’s Love being an exception) open theirs. This technology costs hundreds, millions even to develop just a concept. Couldn’t even a fraction of this be spent on fixing the leaky vessel that is the Magazine industry by putting some time and money into delivering quality content and finding out what consumers really want rather than jumping on a bandwagon.
As a Journalist, I want my work to be read. The format doesn’t matter to me so much in that regard. I don’t have a huge problem with this technology becoming prevalent. My biggest fear is that the content will suffer, that flashy graphics and gimmicky features to show off the capabilities of the devices will dominate.
Graphic designer Mickey Devine is concerned also, “It’s a bit like when web-based content boomed, the design suffered because only web designers could contribute to the design directly. For me, a lot of the artfulness of design was lost.” Mickey also told me he is worried at potential job losses for designers who are not willing to retrain in order to get to grips with the emerging technology at a risk that the technology may be obsolete in a few years.
On the plus side, Magazines delivered digitally would be great space savers, much like swapping your records for MP3 files and crossing your fingers in the hope your laptop doesn’t get a virus and you lose a lifetime of music.
These developments may prove to be innovative, thrilling, and revolutionary even, but for those who love magazines for their tangibility, their collectability, and their gorgeousness this will mean very little.
They will simply look around their houses piled high with books, magazines and records and just sigh thinking, if you don’t understand, then you probably never will.
What I saw was possibility, other worlds, whether via an impossibly beautiful woman or a dangerous looking rock band. These objects were the antithesis of the town I lived in, they gave me a momentary, imaginary way out.
I began to fetishise the whole process, taking a perverse pleasure in not allowing myself to sneak a look between the pages. The titles themselves were incongruous; Melody Maker, Kerrang, The Face.
I loved, and still love the look and feel of magazines. For those hardy enough to hunt them down there are a wealth of beautiful magazines out there. Small publishers are throwing budgetary caution to the wind and creating innovative magazines filled with beautiful design and insightful writing.
Leafing through the impeccable selection of Magazines at Manchester’s Magma Books it’s clear I’m not alone in my obsession. Graphic Designer Mickey Devine is a member of the same clandestine club. “I just love the touch and the feel of magazines, to feel the different stocks of paper between my fingers” he says, adding “I enjoy everything down to the way the magazine folds.”
Some it would seem are a little less precious about how they consume their magazines and newspapers. In December 2009 global powerhouse publishers Condé Nast, Time Inc., News Corp. Hearst, and Meredith announced a joint venture to create industry standards for digital magazines to be read on e-readers, tablets and smartphones.
Perhaps for a generation raised on laptops and IPods this will cause little concern. The young people of today grew up with constantly changing, increasingly sophisticated digital technology; we just worried about how to program the video recorder.
Speaking of this digital generation, The Guardians Blake Morrison says, “They’ve eyes only for the luminous screen, ears only for the music in their headphones.” In the digital age the days of passing round a dog-eared copy of Razzle on a school lunch break are long gone, now they Bluetooth each other porn clips or stream hardcore videos live to their Iphone’s.
“Adults have always been worried about children’s playthings: television, computer games, loud music. Now the new worry is connectivity. A generation of young people is growing up with no concept of life without a screen and a keypad. Wherever they are, they’re plugged in and hooked up,” states Morrison.
These are young people who, as photographer Evan Baden puts it, are constantly “bathed in a silent, soft and heavenly blue glow.” They are not troubled by the fact their music has no physical format. As a result the music becomes more disposable.
For example, you can illegally download the entire Beatles back catalogue in about an hour then delete it if on first listen it’s not to your taste. Imagine as a teenager returning home with a seven-inch you had bought that day from Our-Price, then smashing it to pieces upon discovering that the chorus wasn’t instantly catchy enough.
With MP3 based music, and of magazine content on the web, the product or publication ceases to be a complete package. It is no longer a document. The album becomes obsolete, hit singles are retained, the rest disposed of. The same is true with Web based magazine content. The consumer is constantly fed new information. A reader’s attention is continually disrupted by links taking them away from the source, the boundaries between one site and the next blurred are irrecoverably.
There are very few people who are unaware of the increasing popularity of book style e-readers and the ability to read novels and other non-design based literature via Smartphones. This experience remains a straight up aping of the traditional book format because of course, why would we want anything else from a book other than to be able to read it? This is not the case however, with the magazine readers and tablets. Developers plan to re-invent the magazine wheel with an all singing, all interactive multi-media experience.
Amazon’s relatively successful kindle reader has silenced many of its critics by providing a comfortable and innovative means of reading and obtaining material. While the kindle has the ability to display magazine material such as electronic editions of publications, it allows limited interactivity mainly because magazines are not its core focus and also because largely the technology to make interactivity possible is largely still in development.
While the joint venture to create standards for magazine reader’s is shrouded in secrecy. Many of the parties involved have slowly came forward and revealed their own individual take on what the tablets and readers are going to be like. The first to do so was Time Inc. Time released a video showcasing their concept of the reader via their Sports Illustrated publication. While the video showed a product that certainly seemed interesting, there was an overall uncertainty to the whole thing. The video seemed rushed, the content muddled and confusing. And perhaps most importantly, the concept just didn’t seem to flow. It has all the bravado you would expect from a large American publisher like Time but it’s unconvincingly executed. I believe for the concept of magazine readers and tablets to succeed they must give a immersive, linear, traditional magazine style reading experience while bringing something new to the table that traditional print magazines and digital editions of magazines don’t have.
Hearst, who signed up for the magazine standards joint venture have been first out of the starting blocks in terms of showcasing a physical working product. They unveiled the Skiff reader at the January 2010 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The product is developed within Hearst by the company, Skiff. Skiff president Gilbert Fuchsberg stated at the show, "The Skiff Reader's big screen will showcase print media in compelling new ways. This is consistent with Skiff's focus on delivering enhanced reading experiences that engage consumers, publishers and advertisers.” The unit itself is desirable enough to have gadget fans salivating yet one thing we are yet to find out about the Skiff, and indeed its developmental counterparts, is its price, how much the content will cost and how much content will be available. The company hope to commercially release the product mid-2010.
One of most convincing concepts being developed is the Mag+, designed by London based company BERG and developed by Swedish product developers Bonnier R&D. Again, the product is still in the development stage but their presentation at least seems in the keeping with the fundamental pleasures of reading magazines. The developers behind Mag+ realise they are going to face scepticism towards their product and the concept in general. They acknowledge this stating, “Magazines have articles you can curl up with and lose yourself in, luscious photography that draws the eye. They’re easy and enjoyable to read.” They hope to, “marry what’s best about magazines with the always connected, portable tablet e-reader.” Plus they appear to have put a lot of thought into making the product user friendly and cohesive while being aesthetically pleasing. It is presented as a much more slick and subtle effort than its all-guns-blazing Sports Illustrated counterpart. The Mag+ flows like a conventional magazine with pages scrolling horizontally with the added touch of making the text easier to read by having it scroll down the page. This is much more innovative than many of the current methods used by digital editions of magazines. As stated earlier, if the concept is to be a success, developers and publishers must create a product which takes magazines to the next level, rather than presenting a poor imitation or faddy embellishment of existing print media. If the Mag+ can deliver on its promises then it may be the first real contender to the print throne.
While there have been means of reading magazines paper free for a number of years, none have really taken off. In the U.S, Playboy issues editions of their magazines in pdf form but it makes for a pretty uninspiring reading experience. You may find yourself squinting at a flickering computer screen, having to zoom in and scroll to read the articles then zoom out and scroll to look at a nubile models breasts. Plus, let’s be honest, probably the only reason Playboy is available in this format is to save the blushes of a 16-year-old trying to buy his first porn mag in a local newsagents.
In July 2009, newsagent John Menzies closed their Magazines On Demand service due to lack of demand. The service allowed consumers to buy digital editions of over 140 titles downloaded directly to their computer or smartphone. A statement on the services website stated, “Digital magazines have not proved as popular as we had hoped for and in this difficult economic climate it was not possible for us to continue trading.”
I feel that the service itself was fundamentally flawed. To me, the Magazines On Demand service was ill founded on the premise that the company saw there was a viable digital future in publishing but they didn’t develop their idea enough to make it succeed, as if they were clutching at digital straws hoping that everything worked out. We live in an age of tech-savvy, cynical consumers, consumers who want a fully realised vision, product and service.
One of the potentially key problems of readers and tablets is that once the race is over to get the hardware out there, there will be a number of different models out there, all potentially using different file formats. And there is no guarantee that there will be longevity in the devices or formats. For proof, ask anyone who bought a HD DVD Player rather than its rival, the now widespread Bluray.
The HD DVD Format became commercially available in March 2008 with players costing upwards of £400. By the following February, player and format manufacturers Toshiba announced that production of players and movie discs would be abandoned.
It must sting to know you have paid £400 to watch a limited selection of movies a handful of times in less than a year and there would be no more coming, ever. This is a key concern when it comes to the emergence of magazine readers and tablets especially when you consider that rumour has it the readers could cost over $2000 when launched in the U.S.
Another concern is the financial cost of developing the ‘future of magazines’. The publishing industry of recent years has experienced lean times. 2009 saw a number of magazines close their doors (Arena, Maxim, Portfolio) and very few (Conde Naste’s Love being an exception) open theirs. This technology costs hundreds, millions even to develop just a concept. Couldn’t even a fraction of this be spent on fixing the leaky vessel that is the Magazine industry by putting some time and money into delivering quality content and finding out what consumers really want rather than jumping on a bandwagon.
As a Journalist, I want my work to be read. The format doesn’t matter to me so much in that regard. I don’t have a huge problem with this technology becoming prevalent. My biggest fear is that the content will suffer, that flashy graphics and gimmicky features to show off the capabilities of the devices will dominate.
Graphic designer Mickey Devine is concerned also, “It’s a bit like when web-based content boomed, the design suffered because only web designers could contribute to the design directly. For me, a lot of the artfulness of design was lost.” Mickey also told me he is worried at potential job losses for designers who are not willing to retrain in order to get to grips with the emerging technology at a risk that the technology may be obsolete in a few years.
On the plus side, Magazines delivered digitally would be great space savers, much like swapping your records for MP3 files and crossing your fingers in the hope your laptop doesn’t get a virus and you lose a lifetime of music.
These developments may prove to be innovative, thrilling, and revolutionary even, but for those who love magazines for their tangibility, their collectability, and their gorgeousness this will mean very little.
They will simply look around their houses piled high with books, magazines and records and just sigh thinking, if you don’t understand, then you probably never will.
NME Tour
Shockwaves NME Tour, O2 Academy, Newcastle
February 4, 7.00pm, £16
If you are the type of person who owns a Topman store card, describes things as ‘random’, and likes their jeans of the spray-on variety, then this may be the most un-missable event of your barely burgeoning year. Previous NME tours have showcased Coldplay, Kaiser Chiefs and The Ting Tings. Don’t let that put you off as this year’s bill is one of the strongest ever, featuring the forlorn delights of The Macabees, the disturbingly sprightly Bombay Bicycle Club and the achingly trendy Drums. Here’s a tip for you, not to be missed are The Big Pink and their thrilling take on My Bloody Valentine-esque shoe-gaze.
February 4, 7.00pm, £16
If you are the type of person who owns a Topman store card, describes things as ‘random’, and likes their jeans of the spray-on variety, then this may be the most un-missable event of your barely burgeoning year. Previous NME tours have showcased Coldplay, Kaiser Chiefs and The Ting Tings. Don’t let that put you off as this year’s bill is one of the strongest ever, featuring the forlorn delights of The Macabees, the disturbingly sprightly Bombay Bicycle Club and the achingly trendy Drums. Here’s a tip for you, not to be missed are The Big Pink and their thrilling take on My Bloody Valentine-esque shoe-gaze.
New NGCA Exhibition
National Gallery for Contemporary Art, Sunderland
Semiconductor: 'Heliocentric'
5 March -1 May 2010
The NGCA continues its sterling work in delivering top quality contemporary art to the North East with new exhibition ‘Heliocentric’. Created by Arts duo Semiconductor (a.k.a, Brighton based Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt) the work consists of a three screen installation tracking the course of the sun across a series of landscapes. The work promises to be both beautiful and thought provoking, and if further incentive were needed, it’s free.
Semiconductor: 'Heliocentric'
5 March -1 May 2010
The NGCA continues its sterling work in delivering top quality contemporary art to the North East with new exhibition ‘Heliocentric’. Created by Arts duo Semiconductor (a.k.a, Brighton based Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt) the work consists of a three screen installation tracking the course of the sun across a series of landscapes. The work promises to be both beautiful and thought provoking, and if further incentive were needed, it’s free.
Desmond Church at the NCGA Sunderland
Artists are contrary Characters. I appear to have hit a nerve with Glasgow artist Desmond Church.
Church is currently enjoying his first UK solo exhibition at the Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art in Sunderland.
He doesn’t seem concerned I’ve just compared his work to that of TV funny man Vic Reeves surreal drawings. It’s that I’ve suggested that the style and execution of his work is similar to the mordant cartoonist David Shrigley.
Church is clearly irked by this, “I think it’s an obvious comparison, one that I have to expect in regards of what I do, but I think it’s a lazy comparison. There are plenty of people that create simple line drawings in their art. I don’t think I have the monopoly on this.”
So, I ask, who, if anyone, influences your work? “Artists who have influenced me most are probably Jiri Kovanda, Peter Liversidge, Martin Creed”.
Martin Creed is most famous for his 2001 Turner Prize winning, ‘Work No. 227, the lights going on and off’. The installation consisted of an empty gallery with the lights periodically switching on and off. It appears Church views his art as a much more high-brow concern than I have given credit. Like I said, artists are contrary characters.
The Majority of the pieces in the NGCA show are large scale line drawings depicting the artists ideas for possible ‘interventions’ and ideas for installations and sculptures. The drawings are applied directly to the gallery walls, like post modern cave paintings, crude signifiers of our cruel times.
The artist himself seems torn between the elevated and the everyday. He recently graduated from the prestigious Glasgow School of Art with a first in fine Art yet is inspired largely by city living and the strange things he sees around him. He says, “It sounds trite but my work is inspired by everything, and in a way nothing. I just make work about what’s around me and what I experience.”
“I guess when you make work about what you experience everyday, and you live in a city, pigeons are a close runner-up on the list after people, and maybe Greggs.”
The Ghost of Martin Creed looms large in one of the works that proposes the idea for an installation in which, ‘An interesting noise coming from a darkened room that stops when someone enters…then continues when they leave.’
Perhaps Church is not quite the pretentious artist type he initially comes across as. In fact, his work is infused with a sly, mocking humour. It makes us laugh but it teases and frustrates us with its ambiguity. In the world of Desmond Church, nothing is as it seems.
I was on the receiving end of this frustration on my visit to the NGCA when I was accosted by a furious pensioner. The lady careered towards me fists clenched and spitting feathers. She grabbed me by the arm and shook it with all the might her fragile body could manage. “EEH! It bloody puzzles me! It bloody puzzles me! The lack of intelligence in these people!” Mr Church’s work is also perhaps not to everyone’s taste.
The work is funny, barbed and at times touching. There is a Woolworths sign which appears to be crying, as if mourning a loss of heritage while warning us against the dangers of consumerism.
Like the Woolworths piece, much of the work seems to serve a satirical purpose, a view that Church is keen to dispel, “I don’t have an agenda. Each individual work can have something interesting to say and together I aim to give a complete representation of my artistic practice.”
This sounds reasonable (if dull) but I can’t help feeling that given Church has just graduated and is only 23, he is holding his cards a little closer to his chest than I would like. Perhaps Church is so used to defending the simple aesthetic form of his work that he has found it easier to give a generic response when questioned rather than reveal the true nature of what he hopes to say with the work.
“While studying I’d be going into crits with ideas scribbled on A4 bits of paper, much of the time the conclusion I came to was that these works were often more successful when left in there propositional state” He says.
So what remains is the weird, the wonderful, the mundane and the laughable.
Perhaps one day Desmond Church will get to actually create some of his “little cuts into the world”. If I could suggest the first work from his sketch book, “cover plinth with laxative soaked bird seed. Display shitty plinth”. Coooo! Coooo!
Church is currently enjoying his first UK solo exhibition at the Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art in Sunderland.
He doesn’t seem concerned I’ve just compared his work to that of TV funny man Vic Reeves surreal drawings. It’s that I’ve suggested that the style and execution of his work is similar to the mordant cartoonist David Shrigley.
Church is clearly irked by this, “I think it’s an obvious comparison, one that I have to expect in regards of what I do, but I think it’s a lazy comparison. There are plenty of people that create simple line drawings in their art. I don’t think I have the monopoly on this.”
So, I ask, who, if anyone, influences your work? “Artists who have influenced me most are probably Jiri Kovanda, Peter Liversidge, Martin Creed”.
Martin Creed is most famous for his 2001 Turner Prize winning, ‘Work No. 227, the lights going on and off’. The installation consisted of an empty gallery with the lights periodically switching on and off. It appears Church views his art as a much more high-brow concern than I have given credit. Like I said, artists are contrary characters.
The Majority of the pieces in the NGCA show are large scale line drawings depicting the artists ideas for possible ‘interventions’ and ideas for installations and sculptures. The drawings are applied directly to the gallery walls, like post modern cave paintings, crude signifiers of our cruel times.
The artist himself seems torn between the elevated and the everyday. He recently graduated from the prestigious Glasgow School of Art with a first in fine Art yet is inspired largely by city living and the strange things he sees around him. He says, “It sounds trite but my work is inspired by everything, and in a way nothing. I just make work about what’s around me and what I experience.”
“I guess when you make work about what you experience everyday, and you live in a city, pigeons are a close runner-up on the list after people, and maybe Greggs.”
The Ghost of Martin Creed looms large in one of the works that proposes the idea for an installation in which, ‘An interesting noise coming from a darkened room that stops when someone enters…then continues when they leave.’
Perhaps Church is not quite the pretentious artist type he initially comes across as. In fact, his work is infused with a sly, mocking humour. It makes us laugh but it teases and frustrates us with its ambiguity. In the world of Desmond Church, nothing is as it seems.
I was on the receiving end of this frustration on my visit to the NGCA when I was accosted by a furious pensioner. The lady careered towards me fists clenched and spitting feathers. She grabbed me by the arm and shook it with all the might her fragile body could manage. “EEH! It bloody puzzles me! It bloody puzzles me! The lack of intelligence in these people!” Mr Church’s work is also perhaps not to everyone’s taste.
The work is funny, barbed and at times touching. There is a Woolworths sign which appears to be crying, as if mourning a loss of heritage while warning us against the dangers of consumerism.
Like the Woolworths piece, much of the work seems to serve a satirical purpose, a view that Church is keen to dispel, “I don’t have an agenda. Each individual work can have something interesting to say and together I aim to give a complete representation of my artistic practice.”
This sounds reasonable (if dull) but I can’t help feeling that given Church has just graduated and is only 23, he is holding his cards a little closer to his chest than I would like. Perhaps Church is so used to defending the simple aesthetic form of his work that he has found it easier to give a generic response when questioned rather than reveal the true nature of what he hopes to say with the work.
“While studying I’d be going into crits with ideas scribbled on A4 bits of paper, much of the time the conclusion I came to was that these works were often more successful when left in there propositional state” He says.
So what remains is the weird, the wonderful, the mundane and the laughable.
Perhaps one day Desmond Church will get to actually create some of his “little cuts into the world”. If I could suggest the first work from his sketch book, “cover plinth with laxative soaked bird seed. Display shitty plinth”. Coooo! Coooo!
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