IF AT FIRST YOU DON’T SUCCEED
I have a sign on my office door from Cass Art that quotes Matisse.
It just gave me some strength as I’ve been awake since 4am worrying.
What have I got to worry about?
Ideas. Art. Money. Community. Connections. Making them.
And I was devastated as my biggest and boldest idea ever was almost in tatters thanks to a one line email from the Health and Safety consultant I’d hired less than 24 hours previously.
But by 6am I had another idea. Wanna hear it?
3 MONTHS ago
As all STEAM Co.’s school bookings and newly sprouting speaker work dried up, one organisation I was due to give a keynote speech for about ‘Art for All’ stood by me, and funded an idea we called the ‘Community Lock-In’.
The visionary, collaborative and creative CEO of a charitable trust called LGfL, that provides technology, creative tools and people for our schools had accepted a proposal for a ‘Content Creation and Community Collaboration Hub’, which sounds fancy but was really just a green screen internet TV studio with an 8 channel vision mixer, lighting, 12 channel audio mixing desk and 6 laptops on a table that I had picked up from across the interweb in record time before lockdown came down.
‘Just’ I hear you say? You did didn’t you, as plugging this together and going through the learning curve of live streaming to the web, finding and closing feedback loops and directing, presenting and tech supporting what is essentially a one man live TV show, albeit pretty amateurish one, has not been for the feint-hearted .
And I’ve been pretty feint-hearted, being that rabbit in the head lights on more than one occasion.
YOU DID WHAT?
Having said that, in the last 3 months, with the additional support of an Emergency Covid-19 Arts Council England and National Lottery grant, we’ve live streamed over 250 hours of content across four key channels including:
A Pretend Parliament launch event for a #UKArtTakeover with over 30 speakers, including the Lord Mayor of Westminster
A one day #HeyKidsBookFest featuring one of the biggest names in children’s literature and other literacy experts
Virtual pop-ups in cities as far away as Belfast, Bradford, Cardiff and Cowes
Launched the #RocketKidsClub - a safe online place for kids who aim higher than high, where they and creative carers can be inspired, create and share (you have to see the film where we launched a dynamite rocket from the studio window sill and it landed before the very eyes of two young lads in their back yard on an estate in Leeds
A conference on ‘Decolonising the Music Curriculum’ with a music teacher in Bradford who was short listed for the $1m Global Teacher prize the other year
A three day #ARTofCOMMUNITY20 Festival live streamed from Eden Project in Cornwall featuring a range of inspiring talks. uplifting performances, creative workshops and community engagement including the Little Big Lunch where we encouraged people to have their lunch at the front of their house where they’d clapped for carers on Thursdays.
You have to see the film of the half size pyramid stage we built from cardboard and code on a school playing field just down the road from Glastonbury for #YourGlasto - a three day festival with a punk theme that saw Glen Matlock, co-founder of the Sex Pistols play a headline set and A-List brothers Martin and Gary Kemp talk about how a 10p drama club had literally changed their lives.
But the highlight of the three months came yesterday when we saw one of the stars from #YourGlasto appear live on BBC Breakfast.
We’d been introduced to a lad from Leeds called Lennie via a tweet from Chris Dyson, a head teacher on one of the most socially challenged, but proud estates in the North of England.
Lennie is 8 and has Cerebral Palsy and Hydrocephalus which stops him being able to hold a pencil, but nothing stops his hands on the ivories. He loves, maybe lives, to play piano.
We gave him the headline spot on the Friday of #YourGlasto and managed to secure him and his mum a slot on BBC Sheffield. As you can hear here, she did a better job of telling every one about #YourGlasto than we could have, while I was driving the studio on the first of three 18 hour sessions!
From there he appeared on the ITV National news at 6pm and BBC Breakfast. Do watch the film and read of his adventure here.
LAST WEEK
So with all that under our belt, what might we do for the weekend we had earmarked to celebrate the 10 years since our first visit to Camp Bestival inspired us to start STEAM Co. by going back to my son’s Primary School in Paddingto and run mini creativity festivals called STEAM Co. Days.
With Camp Bestival cancelled due to the virus, we could just do another three-day live streamed event but to be honest I was getting cabin fever like everyone else, and anyway lockdown was lifting.
It was clear that our next event needed to be a hybrid event - taking the studio out to a real physical location, ideally with an audience camping and live streaming from there but with contributions from across the UK as before.
All safe and socially distanced. Easy!
I went down to Dorset, Devon and Cornwall in search of inspiration and was told of the possibility of being able to do something at a campsite in a beautiful cliff top location.
Funnily enough that part of the world was the last area I visited for school sessions just before lockdown after the boss of a local firm of electricians I’d met at Camp Bestival last summer paid for us to visit his grandchildren’s primary schools in Beer and Seaton.
Take a look at the the film here - it takes a whole village to raise a child.
A SEED OF AN IDEA
On return to London we found that the owner of that campsite, already a busy farmer, was even busier implementing Covid regulations and couldn’t open up another field. But via a lady in Devon who had a hundred bell tents and beds ready to rent us, we connected with three landowners and jumped back in the car and drove back to the Devon/Dorset borders
We fell in love with the first site, a couple of massive fields on a country estate with beautiful woods that would be perfect for the night trail we had in mind. They had no water or electricity and no usable phone line based broad band but blisteringly fast 4G mobile data (60mb/45Mb which is faster than BT broadband in central London!)
We didn’t sign then and there and it was a good job as the second site had everything - all services, fast mobile internet, a range of fascinating buildings, a great space with a large field for camping and another for the event area with lovely owners who are as passionate about art and creativity in schools, work and lives as we are.
A highlight of the space was a green house with a cabbage patch at one end and an art studio/gallery at the other, which would be a perfect place to do an installation inspired by the incredible closing event you can see in the film here from Waltham Forest London Borough of Culture 19 produced by Bock 18 of Glastonbury fame.
We didn’t have time to go and see the third location, which promised as much, had an equally lovely and passionate artist owner, but simply didn’t have the space we thought we needed at this stage.
So the planning started. 200 people camping in pre-pitched Bell Tents in clearing mown like crop circles into a meadow of grass, wild flowers and buzzing bees, renting in showers, toilet, big screen and food trucks and then the task of applying for a licence from the local council. We’d missed the deadline by a day but could apply for a late notice licence but that came with no right of appeal. Despite the fact we were proposing a sedate affair, with wireless headphones for the audience and no loud music the nail biting started.
We were introduced to a heavy weight event specialist and health/safety expert who approved our provisional licence application, which went in and I started work on a space plan.
THE BOMB SHELL
Then the worrying started. With less than 2 weeks to go, would people come? Would they pay £100 per adult and £50 for a child for a ticket and another £250 for the weekend for a pre-pitched bell tent with beds and furnishing (which is what they’d cost us to rent/pitch).
Chris Dyson said he would but only if his flights and holiday set for that weekend in Portugal was cancelled and we’d had 12 responses to an enquiry form we’d pushed out last week, six of those people had said they’d not only pay, but 4 would rent a tent too!
I did a budget with the fee for our new Stealth and Hasty Officer and other items she said we’d need and suddenly it wasn’t adding up financially. I bounced the worries and a few ideas around with Mulumba on WhatsApp and we found a few themes that might inform a successful outcome.
We had a major Camp Bestival and Art World relevant headliner lined up and few ideas and options, and anyway budget beyond that was tight as most of our Arts Council grant had been spent. This had to pay for itself.
Then an A-Level art teacher/examiner and fellow Camp Bestival fan connected with as much enthusiasm as one can imagine to offer to bring her family and as many friends as she could muster from Bristol and run a film making workshop and for her elderly mother to come out of shielding to run an activity too! And then she too sobered up and realised her plan wasn’t going to happen.
And then rain symbols appeared on a previously sunny long range weather forecast.
I went to bed with a feeling of dread and sure enough woke at 4am with my head spinning.
As always, I listened under the duvet to the BBC Radio 4 Podcast, which I find inspiring at these times and heard a wonderful story about a Theatre Company in Leeds that sees its mission as being to take art into communities, mindful that many of their audience can’t afford food they need to both live and enjoy the art, and also run a food bank service. Humbling. Inspirational.
I bookmarked for our Leeds event on the Seacroft Estate in September with Chris Dyson.
The bomb shell came when I opened an email from the Stealth and Hasty officer saying we simply could’t safely deliver what I proposed in the space plan.
The event space wasn’t big enough. We’d be better spinning everything round so that people stay in their Bell Tent Bubble to watch the show.
But my worries about whether 200 would come at such short notice and the tightness of the budgets forced a rethink. A reset.
REMEMBER. RETHINK. RESET
I went back to first principles. What were we aiming to do?
To celebrate art, what is it, why it’s important and why everyone should have access to it
Produce and live stream a weekend of content in place of our regular Camp Bestival presence and the general vibe there
Have a physical event of some sort, ideally with some camping
Celebrate and inspire creativity in the local community in Dorset, Devon and the South West
Make it work financially, by charging a bit and finding sponsors to match fund our grant for the next three months
So here’s a plan:
Take the camping headache away - whether people will pay, the space it takes and reutilise the meadow as an art space
Mow a pathway into the meadow and install an art trail that people can walk through in about an hour day and dusk, night even?
Visitors would access channels of audio for the tour
They’d take the art trail through the event field, through the green house, the yurt and the blue house and round the main house with artists at each
These installations might be performers, young up coming artists, video screens, sculptures, etc. with themes of the role of art, creativity, tools/technology and family/community at this time and exploration of life post lockdown as much a festival like Camp Bestival itself.
Run a nationwide competition to encourage people to submit their art to both share online but also to include in the art trail under the categories of:
Castles - echoing Camp Bestival at Lulworth Castle
Cats - who doesn’t like photographing, drawing or painting cats
Black and white - inspired by the two tone music movement and current binary thinking, politics and world we live in
Lockdown - art inspired by or created during
Loo Rolls - art created with one of the commodities most associated with lock down
Set up the Community Lock-In studio on the veranda of the pavilion and project onto a screen on the veranda balcony
Place a cluster of ten bell tents in the event field for ten paying families who themselves become an exhibit in the #ARTCAMP20 art trail
Promote the #RocketKidsClub and recruit our first 100 test pilots to use the online platform and win a £500 robot and rocket launch at their school. Position it as an Out of School Art Club for the summer for kids across the country.
Friday evening - screen and live stream Fire Pit Chat/ interview with our A-lister and a film of their life and the role of art and education in it. They’re now a fairly quirky artist themselves and their art could be included in the art trail.
Saturday evening - live performances and even a communal dance lesson/activity/talk by someone we know and a party live streamed as a silent disco on site for the campers
Sunday afternoon - Little Big Lunch and a co-drum circle rhythm workshop with 1,000 people on Zoom with Rockstar Activator Tom Morley and a drawing workshop with Chris Riddell
We’d announce and promote the event and its location particularly for a local audience, confident now it wouldn’t be subject to unwanted attention being an art event.
We’d charge £10/£5 per visit with some free tickets for Lottery Players to say #ThanksToYou. Everyone would get to design and print their own #ILOVEART t-shirt in that price to help them go away and start the #CreativityRevolution the CEO of Arts Council England called for in Sunderland 4 years ago after the Brexit vote.
The result? An accessible art event that delivers on all our objectives and that people can visit casually, confidently and safely without having to camp and much reduced expense.
The big questions - might this be a future of art exhibitions and experiences. If we build it, will they come?
Would you?
Do please tell us what you think by taking a couple of moments to fill the form in here
We’ll start selling those ten places and pre booked day/night tickets in the next day or so when we announce our A-lister and other artists involved.
IT MIGHT NOT WORK
And that itself is the great aspect of this art work, the biggest lesson, not to fear failure. To be brave as Seth Godin says in the film below where we launched our #Collaborate20 Year, inspired by the Culture Minister, a musician and a former head teacher who turned a failing school around by making every day feel like being at Disneyland.
CREATIVITY?
As for that sign from Cass Art that’s on my office door?
Yes, it gave me some courage.
Are you with us?
