Sky.l.Ark – Artangel Open 100

Sky.l.Ark – Artangel Open 100

Sky.l.Ark – Artangel Open 100
2013

Sky.l.Ark is a series of ‘spaces above’ that form an arc across the sky and metaphorically replicate the Alauda Skylark’s ‘mile high’ space – for things heard but not seen, where humanity can be held in mind, where fear of the unknown is suspended, and the question is open for imaginative possibility, absorption, preoccupation and collaboration.

The project opens up through a call and response to find other communities and their spaces above which are hidden to the public and difficult, if not impossible, to visit. This is the ‘set aside’.

And just as the skylark’s birdsong at breeding time, a call and response will extend to other artists’ voices across the UK whose enquiry is on the edges of the known, where the poetry of their work hits the discomfort of the prosaic and bounces up into the mile high space.

THE RESEARCH

Labern+Lloyd will become parallel researchers alongside post-doctoral scientist Dr Elodie Briefer who has studied the skylark’s song, carrying out various analyses and playback experiments in the field and amassing considerable material as a powerful resource. At one hundred metres high the skylark bird cannot be seen, while its voice can be clearly and distinctly heard. The song is described in terms of dialects (geographical variations) and complexity (ordering of acoustic units). Skylark males produce one of the most complex song among songbirds; geographical variation exists (dialects): in a given patch, males (neighbours) share several sequences of syllables in their songs, whereas males settled in different patches (strangers) have no sequences in common. Using playback experiments (broadcasting songs with a loudspeaker), Dr Briefer has also shown that dialect allows birds to recognize their neighbours and differentiate them from strangers, reacting with low aggression to neighbours, compared to strangers (‘dear-enemy effect’). Re-organising syllable sequences within the song, she has tested how fragmented it can become before the bird no longer recognises its own voice – just 2 seconds of reordered syllables played back to the bird leads to a ‘stranger’ response.

Skylarks nest on the ground, and for Labern+Lloyd this is the grit of the project where the collisions of experience, ideas and form of the work takes place. The artists will draw upon their own extensive work as socially engaged artists on housing estates, homeless housing project, post conflict zones, refugee camps, transit centres, inner-city refugee programmes, HIV/Aids centres, Traveller and Gypsy sites. They will explore both the perceived and real fear of danger within communities which creates neighbour-neighbour, neighbour-stranger, stranger-stranger dynamics between people – this questioning and exchange beneath the mile high space feeding directly into the work.

THE SPACES

Labern+Lloyd will curate a series of works in both inhospitable and aspirational spaces situated ‘above’ specific communities within the UK and held at the very edges of the sea by two bird observatories, north and south:

  • the discrete roof eaves above a homeless hostel in Camden (Arlington, where they have been running ‘Irregular Bulletin’, print and social media workshops with Space Studios using cut-out / cut-in text and image)
  • On the housing estate in E17 wherethe drawing shed has had its base since 2009, Labern+Lloyd will build a new inaccessible physical space as a platform for the community to witness and engage in this project
  • In two bird observatories situated on islands at northerly and southerly points of the British Isles – Fair Isle in the Shetlands and the Portland Bird Observatory on the Isle of Portland, Dorset (a decommissioned lighthouse with its glass domed light space still intact and where Labern+Lloyd have already begun work and to develop relationships – noting the thousand skylarks landing unexpectedly on the isle of Portland last winter and logged by the bird keeper as ‘refugees’) – both inhabited by a disparate community of individuals who find freedom of expression through the arc of the birds as they map their paths between continents, creating maps of experience that echo a human diaspora.

Potential ‘other’ communities of interest will also be sought – voices challenging, beautiful, dissonant, unheard – the growing community of people silently lining up for the daily soup kitchen in E17; a trans-gendered community whose ‘set aside’ space has been ‘carved out’, wrestled from the mainstream, an example of the ambiguous, the shape-changing spaces that people create for themselves; the Algerian community, now economically active as migrants to east London but experiencing acute and hidden levels of homelessness. Social media will be used to make a call-out, bringing the artists’ attention to unique spaces above these specific communities. Like the ‘set aside’ necessary for the nesting skylark’s safety, they are hard spaces to find, have to be fought for or literally opened up. They may become new sites for contemporary art works – perhaps only to be visited by the communities of interest beneath.

THE FORM

Labern+Lloyd will work with residents of the homeless hostel, housing estates, transgender, Algerian and birding communities and so on, to develop both audio and visual conversations, using recordings and playback, cut-in and cut-out text, opening up questions that make possible both the imaginative and the uncomfortable. These artworks will be created using both sound recordings from Dr Briefer’s extensive archive, and new recorded sound developed within communities. Other artists will extend this conversation.

Lloyd+Labern will choreograph social media Twitter as a performative space (as currently used by the drawing shed in E17 and other locations), sharing their thoughts across the ether between locations and inviting others in, asking questions that have always needed to be asked.

Sound works will explore possibilities for Stranger-Stranger, Stranger-Neighbour, Neighbour-Neighbour held within the structure of the skylark’s song. Labern+Lloyd will ask, how can the song be re-choreographed, re-sung, relocated; how can the ‘set aside’ be formed, what is its shape? Between each location and community of interest, the artists will choreograph Sky.l.Ark, playing out new voices in a multiple arc across each other, acting as the physical ‘metronome’ of the work, tempering in the mind’s eye of the audience, the song re-sung.

Cultural Wellbeing 2013

Cultural Wellbeing 2013

Cultural Wellbeing 2013

bride and bike01.small

Image from post 2011 riot exchange on the estate during the E17 Art Trail.

In September 2013, we were invited by Wandsworths Arts Council to join other artists, academic and cultural commentators and leaders Cultural Well Being Provocation Lunch on SW11 to discuss what the term ‘cultural wellbeing’ might mean and how it can (or not!) be useful for the work of arts and culture leaders. Bobby gave one of the provocations in response to the questions.

The key objectives of this project were to explore and come to some fluid conclusions about what we mean by cultural well-being in Wandsworth and further afield – moving towards a possible working definition.
The questions were:

  • How can a clear understanding of cultural well-being inform work across a broad range of areas including: Public Health, public realm and environmental design, place-making and regeneration, participatory arts practice…?
  • How can we most effectively measure and evaluate the impact of ‘cultural well-being’ initiatives?

This is the wdwth_wellbeing_final-3 document that came out of the process.

#BasicSeven7

#BasicSeven7

#BasicSeven7

#BasicSeven7 is an ongoing project for co-lead artists Sally Labern and Bobby Lloyd of the drawing shed and was originally funded by London Borough of Waltham Forest, Hoe St Ward Funding alongside the UCL Bartlett Wild Screens research project (see below) which allowed us to extend and deepen the use of social media as a creative tool, holding complicated conversations around the issues of work, mental health and housing, inviting personal and network responses to questions of responsibility for homelessness.

the drawing shed artists fed into project engagement through their historical experience and community contact with people living on and off the streets in Leytonstone, in Hoe Street, Waltham Forest and in Camden – so as to ask the following questions:

• Can the situated screen and online social media (twitter) and Instagram be of any relevance to particular challenges such as a community discourse on street homelessness?

• Does the use of Instagram and other Social Media as a creative tool allow the drawing shed artists to synthesise and transmit ideas related to their own critical practice and engage a wider audience as participants in major debates of our time?

http://www.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk/graduate/screens-in-the-wild/Artists-in-Residence

HOMELESSNESS

Under the banner of Irregular Stage, the drawing shed  worked on two projects in London in relation to homelessness:

• Irregular Bulletin was a 6 month residency at Arlington House in Camden, with Space and One Housing, using the drawing shed’s mobile PrintBike alongside the Social media tools Twitter/Instagram with long/short stay residents, January-July 2013;

this is linked and feeds into/is fed by:

• Basic Seven#7 which took place in E17 in Waltham Forest as a series of critical and inclusive arts events/workshops/exhibitions and encounters on the theme of ‘homelessness, housing, mental health and work’, February 2013 to January 2014

many joined the conversation:

#homeless   #sitw @wordinthehand @wildscreens

the drawing shed tested out these questions initially  during March in the following four locations:

·       Tuesday 5th March 1.00pm – 4.00pm –  Streets of Leytonstone E11

·       Tuesday 12th March 9.30pm – 12.30pm –  Soup Kitchen and homeless hostel, Walthamstow,         E17

·       Wednesday 13th March 10.00pm – 1.00pm –  Islington, N1, we proposed to work alongside a         long-term Arlington House resident selling The Big Issue but inclement weather deferred.    

·       Tuesday 19th March 1.00pm – 4.00pm  –   Streets of Leytonstone E11

We continue to work on this project and earlier in 2014, we attended a day of presentations and discussion involving many partners across London, led by the Christian Kitchen, a group local to E17 who run the soup kitchen whose pitch in the centre of Walthamstow and remit to support both hungry and homeless families, was being challenged by the Local Authority. Stella Creasy MP joined the debate.

The Irregular Bulletin

The Irregular Bulletin

The Irregular Buletin

arlington

the drawing shed co-authored The Irregular Bulletin a contemporary arts project using its iconic PrintBike – a mobile pop up printmaking studio activated by it’s sponsored Brompton Fold-up and artists Bobby Lloyd, Sally Labern, and Joseph Kopiel. Space Studios and Arlington were our funding partners. Arlington provides temporary hostel accommodation and services for homeless people.

The artists consistently led and supported the workshops with Arlington residents, creating a community workshop atmosphere around the ideological concept of ‘The Irregular Bulletin’ – inspired by and rethinking the work of avant garde artists and drawing from popular culture and radical forms of poetry, [lending a contemporary take on William Burroughs Cut-Ups, John Cage ‘s Rules, Corita Kent’s Open Studio ethos]. Here the ‘making and re-making’ of rules allows us to work with whatever is brought into The Creative Space in Space Studios: Studio5 by residents taking part.

Corita Kent, John Cage and William Burroughs were working and active during at the height of the Civil Rights Movement and the anti vietnam war campaigns in the 60’s. Sister Corita’s community screen print workshop with a pop up community cafe open to everyone and this became the hub for discussion, art making, teaching, the making of new rules, and shared community actions.

the drawing shed’s exhibition of The Irregular Bulletin at Arlington on 18th and 19th July 2013 as part of The Creative Space project, took the form of placards carrying screen printed image and text created with residents as both a personal and political take on the world, alongside a pop up café during the Private View in partnership with City Dining, and the more thoughtful and profoundly beautiful series of ‘lost prints’; These are created from the residual traces left on each screen as the prints are pulled. Some of these prints on A1 archive quality tissue reflect the fragility, resilience and endurance of participants and The Irregular Bulletin as the contemporary form chosen by the artists.

PrintBike itself was transformed into a huge lightbox; The Irregular Bulletin format mirroring the ad hoc lightbox created by a resident during a workshop, and showed a series of hand screened multiple prints on foolscap tracing paper.

Paper Stencils as multiple objects of the vast number of prints created throughout this project flooded over one wall of the Creative Space itself so that visitors can get a live sense of Space Studio’s Studio5 as The Irregular Bulletin space.

'men with no work'-The Irregular Bulletin, A1 archive quality tissue

the drawing shed’s original proposal to Space for the Arlington Residency

“the drawing shed will take up residency at Arlington in Camden each Wednesday for a 6 month period in January 2013. In the Creative Space Studio  the drawing shed will be using PrintBike, its fully equipped mobile print workshop powered by a Brompton fold-up bicycle, sponsored by Brompton, to create new work with residents, with content influenced  and inspired by the work of (Sister) Corita Kent – the radical nun and avant garde artist known for her work in the 60′s around the civil rights movement and anti vietnam protests in the US. Kent’s extraordinary images were drawn from a collision of capitalist marketing on the streets and political community actions on the streets,  capturing the dynamism of the struggles and ideas of the times.

Corita Kent was a passionate teacher and set up a screen-print workshop inside the convent which was open to everyone. Kent also created the ‘irregular bulletin’ – a multi-authored publication that took various forms from posters to papers, placards and political community protests, to happenings and performances.

the drawing shed will develop and deliver a project with residents called The Irregular Bulletin with an emphasis on cutting things in, rather than cutting them out. Using PrintBikethe drawing shed is joined by artist Joseph Kopiel,  a highly experienced print-maker who will be part of the pilot phase of this project. Later in the year we anticipate Joseph Kopiel will join us, funding permitting as part of a professional development residency with the drawing shed’s lead artists to develop his professional art practice alongside a workshop programme at Arlington.”

“Consider Everything An Experiment”


Suban:
The Irregular Bulletin project opened my eyes to my abilities and possibilities – it got me motivated to go out and do the creative things I’m doing. If it wasn’t for the drawing shed I wouldn’t have done my screen printing course, so it’s helped me do the things I found that I enjoy!
The Irregular Bulletin gives me space to be myself – get stuff down and into print…maybe in future I might do an Irregular Blog!
When you have peace and some space, your mind works wonders!”

Pasquale:
” I’m very glad to be back here, I feel okay here, it’s a good space for me, I like to be around people who think like me.”

Richard:
“I’ve discovered that I have an interest in art… and talent! …. I take inspiration from other people and  I gain knowledge from looking at the artists ( Corita, William Morris, Cut-out poetry-William Burroughs), and i develop ideas from things I see around me. I think a lot so I reckon I’m a conceptual artist!”

arlington 3

arlington 2

Artists Notes :

Residents will use text and screen printing in particular to transfer expressions / visual / fluid text stories of ‘residence’ informed by identity, culture and personal experiences; workshops will be a social process, and build upon an expression of flow between imagination, ambition and the commonplace in all our lives.

The Irregular Bulletins will be created over the 24 weeks, divided into 4 X 6 week projects, and will focus on celebrating difference. These ‘bulletins’ will be created in a number of formats that will be decided with participants and may therefore include:

PAPER

  • News Paper – Bulletin – Headlines
  • TEXT – ‘From the Street to Poetry’
  • PORTRAIT ‘Self’ – Photocopy, photograph to cut out to make stencil
  • and PRINT, screen, mono-prints

OBJECT

  • a story, a Platform, a Stage
  • Signs Placards Protest
  • stories, lost and found
  • experiences, real and aspirational
  • identities, real and imagined
  • imaginative platforms – digital soap boxes, tenuous physical structures, screen printed soap boxes…!

FABRIC

  • OF ME / OF YOU
  • Overprinted on existing old T-SHIRTS – SLOGANS, like Westwood t-shirts, carrying ideas, poems and image: transformation, sublimation, transliteration

BANNER

  • protest – STORY – individuals – RULES: made, Broken, aka John Cage and Corita Kent – Rule Number 7 = WORK (artwork or work ethic?!) BasicSeven #7

HEADLINES

  • I AM…..and I AM NOT…..

PAPER – POSTER – BULLETIN

SIGNAGE

  • in the building, in the streets – TEMPORARY LOCATIONS – Concrete Poetry, Visualisation

Groups of residents may work with an introduction to text where we shall start with famous quotes referring to Freedom, Liberty, Equality and HOME etc. cut up, play with and add to, aka Sister Corita, from graphic influences around us.

Print-Making workshops will:

  • Stimulate a process of a shared enquiry  – ongoing throughout the 24 weeks
  • Enable participants to gain practical skills – and use these to lead and enter into a dialogue together and with others
  • Create a counter culture of enterprise, making products not-for-sale: t-shirt, poster, and all forms of The Irregular Bulletin to be ‘free’ etc
  • Create dialogue between texts – inspired by sharing with the local residents PeopleLikeUs Collective in E17 who have created the most beautiful ‘open source’ poetry in the form of tweets, here at Arlington we shall use existing texts and poetry/texts created by residents.

An INDIVIDUAL and Collective FOCUS

SNAPSHOTS 

Possible work with disposable cameras – to personalise the images and content, ‘snapshots’ will provide additional source material for the print workshop activities and underpin positive image and self esteem.

GROUP SHOW 

For the end of project group show we have an idea to create a focus of the The Irregular Bulletin Art works in the building – like the Sister Corita Café – we can use the Arlington Café and residents’ social spaces by working together with residents.

RESOURCES 

PrintBike is a fully equipped and totally mobile resource; It is powered by a Brompton Fold-up Bike, donated to us by Brompton and needs nothing else but the activation of artists’ and participants’ imagination to transform materials into great projects using strong ideas and a passion for  skill sharing. Throughout the project, artists Sally Labern and Bobby Lloyd will join Joseph Kopiel for each of the sets of 4 X 6 week sessions. the drawing shed are more than pleased to be able to add value to this project by raising grant funding resources to underpin the delivery of The Irregular Bulletin project.

Future Developments …. Arlington and other homeless organisations

We are proposing that later in the year The Irregular Bulletin project, with Space and  Arlington, will create an opportunity to make connections with residents through other homeless organisations as part of a drawing shed project on the wider dialogue of cultural exchange around the issues of Homelessness, Mental health and Work; it will offer a space for an exchange of voices and  explore participants’ own text through The Irregular Bulletin format, to share and disseminate ideas developed creatively with Arlington residents, with another group outside the Arlington building /area, but with others whom they may have things ‘in common’ and things ‘in difference’.

During March, April, May 2013, the drawing shed developed research as artists in residence with UCL Bartlett around a pilot project called #BasicSeven7, creating ‘platforms’ (performative happenings, screenings and physical stages) to explore and exchange ideas around housing and mental health and the importance of ‘taking [creative] agency’ in shifting the balance in how and what it is we value in ‘Home’. #BasicSeven7 is develop in its research stage over the next months as we fundraise beyond its developmental stage.

the drawing shed has been funded through HoeStWard, a local LBWF Councillor-led fund to develop this piece of work and is focusing the political framing of #BasicSeven7 around partnerships in Hoe St and beyond. Artists will be joining the drawing shed over the summer and autumn of 2013 in its new project garage ‘white cube’ space for a series of residencies for #BasicSeven7.

IF…ISH

IF…ISH

IF…ISH

“…and I see the universe with widened eyes and I see I see I see”
Between February and December 2013, the drawing shed developed an inter-generational project bringing together a diverse group of teenage girls and older people who reside in Hoe Street ward, Waltham Forest E17, through a series of interlinked creative and cultural activities.
IF…ISH New Experiences saw the girls collectively engaging in the research, planning, and participation of new cultural experiences. A Volunteer Agreement, signed by each participant and the drawing shed, marked the girls’ active participation and sustained commitment to the project and highlighted the projects’ model of co-production. Throughout the project the girls documented their experiences using a range of creative tools, including writing, drawing, photography and film, to develop content for a PROJECT BLOG. This engaged process opened up possibilities for an imaginative transmission of experiences and formed the basis of a series of communicative exchanges with culturally diverse older people within their own community, who, in turn, began to share extraordinary moments from their own lives.

Do you ever go to cultural events, exhibitions etc with friends or family?
“I don’t go to many. I don’t think I have been to one recently, however I would like to go to more but I don’t have much connection to the outside world so I might need help in finding some.”
Do you like trying new things that you haven’t done before?
“I really don’t know I’ve just been one of those girls who aren’t afraid of trying new things. I find it good for myself because it boosts my confidence a lot more.”
“Yes I like trying new things because it takes me out of my comfort zone and allows me to believe in myself more and gives me confidence in things which I think I could never have done before. Prime example would be Hackney WickED Festival. I would never have gone there but when I went there the people were warming and I got a real buzz out of it.”
New Experiences
For the first new experience, on a day trip to Walthamstow Marshes the girls worked with local filmmaker Paul Fletcher to explore documenting their experiences using their mobile phones. The girls’ footage was compiled to create two short films which were subsequently screened at Walthamstow International Film Festival 2013. Watch the films here: Film 1 / Film 2.
As the project progressed the new experiences the girls engaged in included outings to an exhibition at the Hayward Gallery and a special event at the Victoria and Albert Museum, experiencing design, film, performance, photography and spoken word in an evening of activities that explored the hidden voice of women and how they express this through their creativity. Joining other members of the community in Walthamstow Town Square the girls watched a performance of Puccini’s opera La Rondine as it was screened live from the Royal Opera House, while at Hackney WickED Arts Festival they explored the Open Studios and participated in arts workshops, making Photograms and learning how to do Finger Knitting – a skill that was subsequently shared with members of the community and family members. During Words Over Waltham Forest festival the girls worked with local writer Nichola Charalambou to explore new writing techniques and creative responses to respond to shared words, ideas and objects, and joined an evening of poetry and music at Walthamstow Assembly Hall for An Audience with Carol Ann Duffy. For the final group outing, the girls collectively decided on experiencing Jonzi D – Lyrikal Fearta: The Letter & Broken Lineage, a choreopoetry hip hop dance theatre production at Sadler’s Wells, with a guest performance from spoken word poet GREEdS.

What do you think about younger people engaging with older people?
“I think it’s a good idea because older people can teach the younger generation more about what they should know. It may be difficult at first because young kids tend to be shy around older people. The benefits could be that younger people learn more things from the older people and vice versa.”
“Positives: Share experiences, different lifestyles. Negatives: Youths are known as scary toward older people”
“Challenging as some old people may be scared to talk to the younger generation as there is a bad name put out for the younger generation.”
Inter-generational Exchange
The project integrated the girls’ introduction to high quality contemporary arts experiences with exploring and strengthening inter-generational relationships, opening up the possibility of meaningful engagement and increased understanding between older and younger local members of the community. Their reflections on their new experiences and creative content shared on the Blog served as a tool for instigating discussion and knowledge exchange in wide range of situations, structured and spontaneous, group-based and one-on-one.
At a community event at Greenleaf Baptist Church for International Women’s Day the girls participated in group skill-sharing with older Afro-Caribbean women and communicative exchange with members of the Waltham Forest Somali Women’s Association, in addition to numerous one-on-one interactions with diverse older individuals from the community. The girls also shared their experiences with a large number of older community members at the Walthamstow School For Girls annual community Christmas tea party.
During the outing to the Hayward Gallery, an interaction between one of the girls and an older male employee at the Hayward Gallery that began as initial exchange of responses to an artwork developed into sharing childhood memories and experiences of darkness and light in Sierra Leone and Ghana. Listen to a recording here: – Audio Player
00:0000:00Use Up/Down Arrow keys to increase or decrease volume.

As a result of being involved in the IF…ISH New Experiences project, four teenage girls from the group also participated in the inter-generational Live Art writing project STRANGER : NEIGHBOUR. Working with the drawing shed, the national writing charity Arvon, and writers Jacob Sam-La Rose and Nichola Charalambou, the girls joined an intergenerational group for a 3-day residency at William Morris Gallery and Winns Gallery. Working individually and in groups, the residency enabled participants to experiment with writing on paper and old fashioned typewriters, and joined members of the community and a wider public in the digital ether for a TWITTER PERFORMANCE exploring the themes of home, stranger and neighbour. The participants worked with filmmaker Paul Fletcher who was commissioned to make a SHORT FILM in response to the project, and produced personal content for an anthology of the poems and writing created during the residency.

UNTITLED
I get out of bed and open my curtains
I look out the window,
I see the morning sun say good morning to me as
it casts its fresh yellow beams on my pale
colourless walls.
The playful breeze kisses my cheek as I look up to
see the birds flying high in the blue heavens.
I look through a different window,
I see a sheet of darkness,
Large flakes flutter to the ground like ashes after
flames, each with a different story to tell.
I stood there, viewing life through my frosted
window pane.

A HYBRID HOME
The birth of a new species, I think.
A hybrid culture.
A hybrid race.
How does one make peace with their predicament?
When ones mother was born
In a land where education is not free
Treatment is not free, water is not free
But it is her sanctuary, her escape, her home.
She remembers the vibrancy of spices, colours, clothes
Of long pastel sunsets set upon red barren land, waiting for dusk to appear
To break her fast with the ones she loves.
The birth of a new species, I think.
A hybrid culture.
A hybrid race.
How does one make peace with their predicament?
When one is born into a welfare state
In a land where education is free
Treatment is free, water is free
Yet it is their uncanny ability to create dreams
And allow those with tenacity to chase them down
With a flurry of excitement, a pinch of hope, a slice o courage
That fosters love in my heart for my land
This is my home too.
I find myself tasked with the heavy burden
Of having to reconcile the two halves
That make up the whole of my universe.
The birth of a new species, I think.
A hybrid culture.
A hybrid race.
How does one make peace with their predicament?
I do not know. Do you?

Funded by Well London and Arts Council England, the project was supported in Hoe Street by Walthamstow School for Girls and Paul Fletcher, E17 Films.

#STRANGERNEIGHBOUR

#STRANGERNEIGHBOUR

#STRANGERNEIGHBOUR 

On Saturday 9th November 2013, 1.30 – 3pm, the drawing shed‘s Lloyd+Labern,#WOW festival micropoet @herbieherb and Jacob Sam-La Rose led a Twitter Performance, open to Arvon residency participants, community and ‘public’ in joining in; with the core group following a devised ‘SCORE’, we moved between exploring themes of home, stranger and neighbour, through discomfort of the unknown, and comfort of the known, and the merge of these two assumed places, ideas collided and tweets came together using the hashtag #StrangerNeighbour
It was an extraordinary event, where people came together at Winns Gallery Lloyd Park E17 to sit around the typing pool, whilst other typed and many tweeted amongst the noise of machine but no human voice, and in the silence that seemed to permeate the space despite, and the ether becoming a community space of the imagination.

STRANGER : NEIGHBOUR 2013-14

STRANGER : NEIGHBOUR 2013-14

STRANGER : NEIGHBOUR 2013-14

STRANGER : NEIGHBOUR– Artists Labern+Lloyd in Residence at Winns Gallery, a ‘scored’ live art writing Twitter Performance, a Typing Pool, two writers, a three day writing workshop at William Morris Gallery and an inter-generational and culturally-diverse group of 16 Waltham Forest residents! #WOW
In November 2013, visual Artists Bobby Lloyd and Sally Labern from the drawing shed, inspired by their ArtAngel Open100 project, Sky.l.Ark, set up an exhibition and project space in Winns Gallery E17 entitled: “Stranger: Neighbour & The Lost Print”. With an enthusiastically received public Typing Pool of fabulous old fashioned typewriters and showing a series of trade mark screened ‘Lost Prints’ on archive tissue alongside a build up of carbon copies, Labern+Lloyd made new work in the space around the theme of Stranger : Neighbour. This references the split second changes in the skylark’s song, unheard by human ear which delineates recognition of stranger and neighbour, of threat and territory, of warning and welcome.
Throughout October 2013, the artists and writers Jacob Sam-La Rose and Nichola Charalambou led public inter-generational writing workshops in LockUpNumber11, the drawing shed’s new project space on The Drive estate, London E17 (courtesy of Ascham Homes) and in The Mill community centre and Walthamstow School for Girls E17. With national literature partner ARVON, the artists and writers also led a three day intensive writing residency in early November where participants worked individually and in groups, using pen and the ubiquitous exercise book and moleskin!
On Saturday 9th November 2013, 1.30 – 3.00pm, the drawing shed‘s Lloyd+Labern, #WOW festival micropoet @herbieherb and Jacob Sam-La Rose, led a TWITTER PERFORMANCE using the hashtag #StrangerNeighbour. This was open to the writing residency participants, with the local community and ‘public’ joining in. With the core group following a devised ‘SCORE’, we moved between exploring themes of home, stranger and neighbour – through the discomfort of the unknown, the comfort of the known and the merging of these two assumed places. Ideas, memories and observations were shared and then collided, tweets at odds, even dissonant, then echoing one another and ending in a respectful, slowed down rhythm. It was an extraordinary event, where people came together at Winns Gallery Lloyd Park E17 to sit around the typing pool, whilst others typed and many tweeted amongst the noise of machine but no human voice. In the silence that seemed to permeate the space despite all the ‘sound’, the ether emerged into a community space of the imagination.
As an integral part of the project, the drawing shed also commissioned filmmaker Paul Fletcher from e17films and Walthamstow International Film Festival (WIFF) to make A SHORT FILM in response to ‘Stranger : Neighbour’ – which has led to a poetic response, using QWERTY from the typewriter keys and references to Hollis Frampton’s ‘Zom’s Lemma’ (1970).
Finally at Winns Gallery, the drawing shed introduced an ’emergency shelter’ as an intervention into the gallery space, a physical/ideological object they are using in all their project work, both on and off the housing estates, and in settings across London and beyond the UK.

TOP BOY BAKERS

TOP BOY BAKERS

BAKING PROJECT LAUNCHING JANUARY 2017!

Started by boys living on the estates, our fabulous baking & mentoring project, now for boys aged 12-16, will be supported by adult men who will train as mentors & encourage boys from the estates to develop their baking skills, learn to sell what they produce and share their culinary creations with families, friends, neighbours & the wider community.

The project was launched in January 2017 with baking workshops led by expert East London bakers at Today Bread bakery and café on Hoe Street. Men and Boys – this project is for you!

CLICK ON THE LINK BELOW TO SEE WHAT’S BEEN HAPPENING TO DATE:

https://topboybakers.herokuapp.com

tbb-mentors-poster-thedrawingshed_poster

tbb-seekingboys-poster

MENTOR TRAINER WANTED

top-boy-bakers-with-oven

Top Boy Bakers is an exciting and innovative baking and mentoring project for adult men and vulnerable boys aged 12-16, living in and around The Drive and Attlee Terrace estates in Walthamstow. The men and boys will participate in a programme of bread and pizza making workshops led by Alex Bettler – a talented local baker and founder of Today Bread in Walthamstow Central.  The men will also be trained as mentors and provide on-going support to the boys to ensure they make the most of their new baking skills.

We would like to hear from men aged 25+ who have some baking skills or an enthusiasm to learn, and who are interested in becoming positive role models to the boys. We are also seeking a professional male trainer to deliver a series of mentoring training sessions.

Please see the brief for the Mentoring Trainer below. If you or someone you know is interested in delivering the training or becoming a mentor, please get in touch with Clare Moloney, Community Development Coordinator, thedrawingshed.community@gmail.com 

top-boy-bakers_brief-for-mentoring-trainer