Hut 136 is all set up to become the Beach Art Hut for six days 23rd -28th May. During which time I will be inviting people to participate in my Urban Beach project, thinking about our stretch of coastline and what it means to them, the environmental impact of beach and marine litter on wildlife and engaging them to participate in art at the same time by decorating a Plaster of Paris ‘Pebble’ and making art from beach-combed litter.

A few friends joined me on Sunday for a private preview and we created some art in memory of our late friend Poppy whilst enjoying the calming influence of the shoreline.
To find out more about Karen’s project go to www.shoreisaloadofrubbish.com

“Have you ever been disinterested in – even repulsed by – a product then, after time, changed your mind? Maybe a style of shoe you think is hideous until you see it on every third pair of feet you pass. And suddenly ‘Those are ugly’ becomes ‘I have to have those – now’… Those are your mirror neurons at work”
Martin Lindstrom – Buyology.

Last week, I was in Cardiff recording a radio play I’ve written for Radio 4, also on the subject of empathy.

WATCH ME is a love story, told as a scientific drama documentary. Anja, an advertising creative, and Rhys, a single father meet after a focus group presentation, for Anja’s campaign for a new type of baby food.

Mirror neurons, only discovered in 1992, help us imitate people and feel empathy. They’re what helped transfer early skills such as how to make fire, what make us wince when we see someone suck a lemon – and feel a sense of warmth when we watch the John Lewis Christmas ads. WATCH ME looks at their role both in the world of advertising, and human relationships.

WATCH ME will be on Radio 4 on August 12^th 2013 at 2.15pm, with Sarah Smart as Anja and Alun Raglan as Rhys. Directed by James Robinson.

Wednesday 24th April, 2013

“Once I link the sight of someone grasping a bottle of ice cold drink on a hot day, the condensation against their fingers, as they bring the bottle to their lips with doing the same thing myself, then I begin to understand the world. This feat of our brain, our connection with each other is, to a large extent, what makes us human”. Professor Christian Keysers.

In March I went to Amsterdam, where I started my commission on EMPATHY by spending the day with Professor Christian Keysers. Christian is a neuroscientist whose work on mirror neurons – and how the brain allows us to share the inner states of other people – has been seminal for the scientific study of empathy. He and his wife Valeria Gazzola lead The Social Brain Lab at the Netherlands Institute for neuroscience.

Having read his book THE EMPATHIC BRAIN, I interviewed Christian for THE EMPATHY ROADSHOW, my one woman performance which will be touring community groups in and around Canterbury from June of this year.

“When I began thinking about how we understand the social world around us, I envisioned a problem in which I am in here… and you are all out there, in the world, beyond my reach. How can I make sense of you? My vision of humanity was typically western – that of a solipsistic individual. Our Western societies are built around the individual and their right to pursue personal fulfilment”. Professor Christian Keysers.

Christian Keysers being interviewed for
The Empathy Roadshow

This idea of how societies are built and how that can affect everything, including how we understand the way we think and feel, struck me as I walked through central Amsterdam, with its tall, narrow houses. Most of this area was built in the city’s ‘Golden Age’, when you were taxed according to how much street-frontage your house took up – paying more the wider your house was. This, I realised, is why this beautiful architecture exists – to avoid severe taxes. In many properties, the staircases are so narrow that it’s impossible to take furniture up and down them. Hence the hooks at the top of each house, to winch goods up and pass them through the windows.

In their book ON KINDNESS, published in 2009, psychoanalyst Adam Phillips and historian Barbara Taylor explore the way that a culture of competitive individualism and the pursuance of self-interest have challenged the value and meaning of kindness.

“Kindness was steadily downgraded from a universal imperative to the prerogative of specific social constituencies: romantic poets, clergymen, charity-workers and above all women, whose presumed tender-heartedness survived the egoist onslaught. By the end of the Victorian period, kindness had been largely feminized, ghetto-ised into a womanly sphere of feeling and behaviour where it has remained, with some notable exceptions, ever since”.

My interview with Christian gives me the structural and ideological ‘spine’ of my piece. My next task is to interview three people who feel that empathy plays a big part in their lives, and their work: a hairdresser, a dentist and a sweet shop owner.

I studied photography at the Nottingham Trent University (BA) and the London College of Communication (MA), after originally training and working in the theatre. Since then I have created work which has been exhibited widely, both nationally and internationally, gaining recognition for producing well-researched, high-quality and thought-provoking work that reflects upon issues concerning contemporary life, our social environment and conditions of living.

Penny Klepuszewska (self-portrait)
In Seclusion

Intrinsic to my work are the details and scenes, the small fragilities and brutalities of contemporary human existence. The underlying themes of separation, solitude, isolation and exclusion persist concurrently with an exploration of the spaces we inhabit and the objects with which we surround ourselves. From an intimate, engaged and often playful process of collection and collaboration, I create both accounts of the real world and self-contained fictions, developing work that often combines installation, photography, text and sound.

Penny Klepuszewska (new work-in-progress)
‘Peripheral Sites Used for Sleeping’
from the series ‘I don’t live there any more’

My personal philosophy, existing work processes, artistic practice, themes and objectives seem to have a subtle alignment to the philosophy behind People United and to some of the points reflected upon in their Arts and Kindness paper. In my own small way, I too am committed to finding ways through the development and presentation of my work that can help ‘to strengthen our capacity for empathy, compassion, friendship, social connection and concern for others.’

Penny Klepuszewska (previous project)
Living Arrangements

My particular interest is in people, their circumstances, their situations, and how these personal fragments can be explored and connected to a more universal experience of life. I am interested in creating projects that involve people who may not usually have the possibility to tell their stories, often working with those who may be at risk of social exclusion or social isolation due to varied personal circumstances. My work comes into existence from interaction, engagement and collaboration with the people whose stories I tell.

Penny Klepuszewska (previous project)
Living Arrangements

I am interested in creating work that, as Batson suggests with situational empathy, allows us, the viewer, to adopt the perspective of the person in need, to imagine ourselves in their situation and how they arrived there, and to open up wider possibilities for us to understand and empathise.

Penny Klepuszewska (previous project) End Part

I am looking forward to further developing these dialogues within in my commission work.

With an overall working title of KINDNESS, it is my intention to explore each section of the commission, EMPATHY BELONGING VALUES LEARNING, creatively responding to each through the use of constructed photographic images, text….and possibly sound. The work will be completed by September, with an exhibition in October.

After a period of blankness, I can see a flickering in the distance. It’s my starting point…

EMPATHY

I’d like to use the idea of the empathy test and develop work around it.
I was remembering Ridley Scott’s 1992 film Blade Runner, (from Philip K. Dick’s story Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?) in which the Voight-Kampff test is used to differentiate between humans and androids, referred to as replicants, by measuring the degree of empathic response to a number of specific questions. Here is an example:

“You’re in a desert, walking along in the sand, when all of a sudden you look down…
What one?
What?
What desert?
It doesn’t make any difference what desert, it’s completely hypothetical.
But, how come I’d be there?
Maybe you’re fed up. Maybe you want to be by yourself. Who knows? You look down and see a tortoise. It’s crawling toward you…
Tortoise? What’s that?
You know what a turtle is?
Of course!
Same thing.
I’ve never seen a turtle… but I understand what you mean.
You reach down and you flip the tortoise over on its back. The tortoise lies on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can’t. Not without your help. But you’re not helping.
What do you mean, I’m not helping?
I mean: you’re not helping! Why is that?
(The interviewee has become visibly shaken)
They’re just questions. They’re written down for me. It’s a test, designed to provoke an emotional response…Shall we continue?”

Excerpt from http://www.devo.com/bladerunner/sector/2/interrogation.html

I like the idea of using ‘They’re just questions. They’re written down for me. It’s a test, designed to provoke an emotional response…Shall we continue?’ as the working title of this section of work.

I’ve also been looking at a set set of sixty statements, known as the Empathy Quotient (EQ), a test designed by Simon Baron-Cohen and Sally Wheelwright in 2004, which Wikipedia describes as ‘intended to be a measure of a person’s strength of interest in empathy (defined as the drive to identify a person’s thoughts and feelings and to respond to these with an appropriate emotion).’ Here are a few examples of the statements:

1.    I can easily tell if someone else wants to enter a conversation.
Strongly agree / slightly agree / slightly disagree / strongly disagree
2.    I prefer animals to humans.
Strongly agree / slightly agree / slightly disagree / strongly disagree
3.    I try to keep up with the current trends and fashions.
Strongly agree / slightly agree / slightly disagree / strongly disagree
4.    I find it difficult to explain to others things that I understand easily, when they don’t understand it first time.
Strongly agree / slightly agree / slightly disagree / strongly disagree
5.    I dream most nights.
Strongly agree / slightly agree / slightly disagree / strongly disagree

From: http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/table/0,,937442,00.html

I’m not sure how I would score (looking at no. 2)…I remember my Nan giving me a right telling off when I was 9 years old after mentioning to her that I thought I preferred animals to humans!

BELONGING
Exploring first thoughts…
I have started thinking, tentatively, about a possible link between belonging, postcards and the sentiments we write on them to send home…

Work-in-progress ideas for belonging

Work-in-progress ideas for belonging

Work-in-progress ideas for belonging

Next post…
Developing ideas/work on EMPATHY and BELONGING….

Okay, okay, so I know I get to do lots of exciting things at People United but flying to the moon with a talking bird isn’t quite manageable – yet (who knows, we’re an ambitious organisation!) Anyway, I had actually entered a world which had been created by the practitioners from the Imagining Autism project and was attending an open evening at the Helen Allison School for Autism to hear all about it.

Imagining Autism is a project based at the University of Kent, drawing from the disciplines of drama and psychology that seeks to remediate the struggles that autistic children have with communication, social interaction and imagination (known as the ‘triad of impairments’)1. Using puppetry, physical performance, lighting, sound, and other digital technologies and set within a participatory performance framework, the practitioners build interactive immersive environments (‘the pod’) that the children can enter, engage with and react to.

At the open evening we heard from Jill, the mother of Kieran, a little boy of 11. Jill told us how, prior to his interaction with the project, Kieran had limited language skills, able to ask for things like ‘cup’ and ‘biscuit’ but little else.  As he spent more time in the pod experiencing the immersive environment (created through lots of testing and evaluating by the practitioners), his mother noticed a tangible difference in his speech and use of language.  Hannah Newman, a practitioner on the project explains:

“Week on week we saw the children becoming more and more confident in themselves, and more trusting in us. They could see that we would play with them and follow their cues. We allowed them the freedom to be creative, and contrary to people’s beliefs about autism, some of the children were very creative with good imaginations.”

The project has now ended at the school but the impact on Kieran is evident. His confidence and language skills have grown enormously, and his imagination seems to have been set free somehow, now creating his own worlds to become the author of his own stories.

There is real sensitivity and compassion to this project and huge amounts of commitment from all members of the team. Dr Nicola Shaughnessy and Dr Melissa Trimmingham (who have autistic children themselves), have been encouraged by the results shown so far (although all the data collected by psychologists from University of Kent will be analysed over the next 6 months). Showing evidence of peer interaction and empathy, it goes some way to demonstrate how the arts have the power to elicit emotional responses, and play a role in developing relationships and building connections.

“If we can prove scientifically that a drama (creative) intervention can benefit children with autism (and others)”, Hannah explains “we open a lot of doors and are able to access groups of people that we may not have been able to before, based on the scientific proof.”

At People United, the tensions between the art and the science, the intuition and the rigour, the order and the chaos, are often talked about.  It seems imperative that we try to evidence what many of us feel we instinctively know about the arts and how it can effect positive change, and it’s good to find other projects testing out their work in similar ways.
Finally, I always ask organisations and practitioners if they have any top tips for arts participation and here are those from the Imagining Autism team:

TOP TIPS
•    Be polite to everyone and don’t think you have all the answers.
•    Let the work talk for you. We can show all the footage in the world, we can have all   scientific research but one of the key points is real life testimonies. The most effective proof is arguably to hear how someone’s life was impacted directly by your work e.g. Kieran’s mother.
•    With the children, first and foremost meet them where they are at. Don’t try and push the results you want to see on them. Find out what level they are at and then try and develop with them, baby steps if needed. It wasn’t until the final few weeks that we saw some major differences in some children. They had needed that period of time and that many interventions in order to develop.
•    Follow their cues. Give them some authorship over the work.
•    Don’t think each child is the same and will respond in the same way to things.
•    Find a common ground. The easiest way perhaps is through laughter. If you are both able to laugh at something you are able to share something. This can easily lead to a moment of eye contact.
•    Be present. The children knew the shark was a cardboard cut-out but it was the element of “rough and ready” that allowed their imaginations to be ignited. We as performers had to be present. We couldn’t fake that. We had to be in the moment, with the children and pick up on cues that were sometimes ever so slight. They could sense if our minds were elsewhere, as could the other people you were working with.
•    Have fun and make a fool of yourself!

1 For more information see: http://www.autism.org.uk/working-with/education/educational-professionals-in-schools/breaking-down-barriers-to-learning/asperger-syndrome-the-triad-of-impairments.aspx

To find out more about the project, visit http://www.imaginingautism.org/

Usefulness & Delight

So I rock up to the BBC feeling like a total don.
I’ve tweeted the hell out of this one.
“Just heading over to the BBC for a podcast workshop #standard”
I am so excited, never mind the fact that I’m going to a useful, informative and FREE workshop in making podcasts with a bunch of arts professionals. I’m at the BBC and that means one thing: celeb spotting. If I don’t get to snog Miranda Hart, play chess with John Humphreys and possibly spit on Jeremy Clarkson I will be sorely disappointed.

“Hi is this the podcast workshop?”
“No this is Crimewatch.”

A bit of a false start but I found the right building and bunch of people, a great mix of artists and representatives from larger arts organisations; writers, theatre and visual arts were all in the room and most of us were fairly new to the subject. The workshop stemmed from Arts Council England and the BBC Academy’s partnership building digital capacity for the arts.

It’s at this point I should say that for a while I didn’t think I should blog about the workshop. On the surface it may be difficult to find a connection between my learning commission and a day on making podcasts. Consequently I held off for a while but there were a couple of nuggets I thought were pretty neat and I want to share them with you regardless of their connection (or lack thereof) to the theories of pro-social behaviour, participation, community or learning.

Here are some things I either learnt or for the first time had a proper think about.

The idea comes first, technology second. It sounds pretty basic but time and time again whether it be arts, science, academia anything really. We get excited by a platform or the carriage we’ll be presenting with and so can forget about the initial intention. It’s even possible to not have an idea at all in the first place. Of course I’m thinking podcasting as an example but we can apply it to anything. Have you ever been to the theatre and thought “It’s good but it would make a better radio play” or read a blog and thought “Sure, I get the idea but I want to see it in action can you put something on YouTube?” We constantly hear that we live in an age where for the first time we are bombarded with content, more ebooks, blogs, vlogs, tweets, pictures of cats, live webcasts, podcasts than anyone could possibly stomach let alone digest in a life time. This is not a bad thing, it can be an overwhelming or even daunting thing but its ace. What’s more, we now have a plethora of platforms in which to engage with content. Take an idea or story and it can be presented to an audience through a multitude of different routes. Of course certain things (currently) translate better on certain platforms than others. The Royal Ballet is going to struggle using podcasts because well frankly, if I go online to check out what’s going on with the super-buff-dance-people I’m going to want to see lots of men, big ones, with their tops off, jumping up and down and so I head to Youtube. But the lines are blurring, podcasts are a great way not just to present final products but also to talk about process, take the National Theatre’s podcast where we can hear interviews with playwrights and performers talking about their work.

We had the opportunity to watch the BBC’s College of Production podcast being recorded and the topic that day couldn’t have been more perfect; digital storytelling. I urge you to give it a listen it’s really interesting stuff. Throughout the day then as we asked questions about audience, editing, software and RSS feeds what we kept going back to time and time again was how we can use podcasts to present the kinds of ideas and stories we are working with as artists, producers or larger arts organisations. Content; we kept going back to content. How are we going to make our content work on this platform? Interestingly someone asked the question “Can a podcast be considered an art form in itself?” and we were told no, it’s simply a means for distribution….

Now I don’t know about you but the minute someone tells me something is not or cannot be art, I tell them to jog on… mostly in my head because that would be really rude but you get the idea.

But I don’t have a clear answer on this one, I just get annoyed when someone puts limitations on a thing, I don’t think it’s healthy. Yes, right now podcasting may well be just a platform, but herein lies the challenge for artists to take this gaggle of code by the scruff of the neck, shake it around, do a little dance and produce something interesting with it. At the least we can think of it as a form and apply a dramaturgy to it. Performer, director and disco ball Scottee has a weekly podcast After The Tone. It’s a simple premise, people call his mobile and leave messages for him beginning with “Hi Scottee” In the podcast he responds to each lunatic in his own unique, irreverent and at times almost touching way. The exciting thing about this is the participatory nature of it, call and response. The artist delivers a structure but the content is coming from his audience of fruit loops. Most of us won’t get up to London to watch Scottee smashing plates at the Vauxhall Tavern but we can enjoy his work through subscribing to his podcast, reading his blog and following him on Twitter (yeah I’m a bit of a fan-girl). That’s another great thing about podcasts and one of its most significant differences to radio; choice. We directly choose to subscribe to podcasts whether it be a couple of Americans talking about stuff you should know,  storytelling slams, or something altogether different we are taking back a certain amount of control when it comes to our content consumption.

Can you tell I’m struggling with this a bit? But it’s ok, I’m learning, I don’t have to bring you a set of answers, just a bunch of ideas I’m currently chewing. I have this feeling that the gaming world probably have some really interesting approaches to podcasting… does anyone have any suggestions? During the workshop something really helpful was put forward;
                                                                     usefulness and delight

Your blog, YouTube video or website should either be useful to an audience, delightful or ideally both. Again it’s not deep but I think this is really helpful to keep in mind as we go about developing all that lovely content and shoving it on the internet…

During my time at the BBC Academy my views on the possibilities of how to reach people, get them to engage and hopefully participate have changed… I didn’t spot any celebs but the Crimewatch thing really did happen so job done, it was a good day.

Monday 4th March, 2013

Quite honestly, sat in that bright conference room in the Innovation Centre at the beginning of this project I felt like I had blagged my way into one of those private members clubs. Except this wasn’t a stuffy old man affair; this club was different; people were really nice and there was homemade cake and everyone was smiling but not in a creepy way. I still felt like I was going to be found out at any minute – someone would come up to try and do a secret handshake or ask me a question involving the words ‘arts’, ‘public’ and maybe even ‘policy’ and I wouldn’t know the password.

But all of this was in my head.

I was at first intimidated by a group of artists and partners I had a) heard of and respected and b) were totally un-affected whilst managing to have conversations about the theory behind altruism, ‘bigger-than-self-thinking’ and their practice. What did I have to offer? Blogs about donkeys and a Twitter habit to rival The Beliebers*? But I got over this and frankly I am really chuffed about this commission.

I’m Phoebe and I am Learning. No, literally Learning – this is my brief as part of People United’s Artist Commissions. Five artists each with a mediator stemming from the brilliant Arts and Kindness paper; Belonging, Kindness, Empathy, Values and Learning.

The Learning commission was aimed at an early career artist just starting out in this field. My background is varied; I make theatre mainly as a solo performer but sometimes with others. I write and do a bit of producing. Coming from Kent, I left at 18 because that’s what you do but I found on coming back to Canterbury that this region’s arts community has been really good to me so I’ve made the decision to stay.

I have been working on a project for a while called To Make You Happy where participants give me challenges or tasks to make them happy and I have a good go. It involves a lot of micro performance or one to one encounters. I blog and record audio and do a lot of research which inspired my Masters thesis Towards a Performance of Kindness. Here I looked at organisations and individuals who don’t consider themselves artists but were using theatrical tools and structures to action kindness in public sites.

Still with me? I even got a bit cognitive and looked at what might go through someone’s brain when they come across a piece of art which is essentially attempting to get them to engage with an act of pro-social behaviour. There is a lot more work to do on this but it was a really useful starting point and the commission couldn’t have come at a better time. Now I get to spend time learning from a group of artists who are directly exploring some of the questions I currently have about audience, place, encounter and really importantly exchange – I think that might be key.

So I will be learning about how they work as artists and how they are dealing with the questions posed by this commission. I will be researching and talking to people from different fields – academic, arts, social change, vegetable, mineral etc. And as I go along I will keep presenting my findings; sometimes practical early career artist related stuff, and also some thoughts about this mediator and how it fits into the wider realms of the commission and with the other mediators. I’ll connect this learning with my own practice of performance and writing and something will be made at the end of this project.

I’m working on a key research question as we speak, something which will draw focus and enable some slightly more strategic thinking about how I’m going to do this thing. I am also aware of how lucky I am to be part of this community of people working with a bunch of ideas that had already really excited me. This is something I think is important and not in a tea-bag-first-milk-last sort of way, but in a – we could do good work, we could help change things – sort of way.

This is where I’m at, and this was my first blog. Keep in touch.

*The Beliebers: The millions of young and old who follow the cult of Justin Beiber; approach with caution.

What does ‘belonging’ look like during an ice hockey training session?

Each player is represented by a puck.

28 February, 2013

London is often described as a cold, unfriendly place. I want to question this perception in an ever-changing public ice rink in Brixton. I will look at how a sense of connection in society can be encouraged and made visible. My residency will also explore how territorial and interactive relationships, under the lights of a frozen stage, can act as a metaphor for how we live our lives and how we find ways of belonging.

My projects attempt to challenge orthodox ideas about people, places and the status quo by igniting dynamic creative interventions. I hope this will be particularly poignant in Brixton. Like all my projects my aim will be to create work that poses questions about our moral relationship to our surroundings. My art starts from the premise that our phenomenological perspective and the world around us changes in time and according to our sociological context.

I’m interested in Socratic approaches of learning together to enable creative risks to emerge, where we can understand and visualise different ways in which we belong and how value can be found in unexpected places and in unexpected ways.

I’ve been thinking about why we leave marks, trails, tracks. Does our evolution require us to leave traces so we can find our way back to where we belong? Hansel and Gretel laid a trail of white pebbles and waited for the moon to rise so they could follow the pebbles back home. Even though they were abandoned, they wanted to return to where they felt they belonged.

I’d like to digitally and physically visualise the marks left by the public on Brixton Ice Rink. I’m currently researching digital mapping technology and photo-luminescent products that can leave a glowing trace of the ice skaters movements.

The brief for my commission says:

“We are looking for an artist who is open to working in an exploratory practice, and who is willing to take risks. We are excited by artists whose practice pushes the concept of theatre making. This might involve cross-art form working, and will definitely involve experimentation and a willingness to share their practice with others.”

My current experiment is trying to convert a saline drip bag into a mechanism that will leave a trail of photo-luminescent sand or paint from an ice skate….

The week before last
I received my invitation to Curiosity: Art and the Pleasures of Knowing. This is all the information I have so far about the show. By choice, I might add. I like the image: Misfit by Thomas Grünfeld, 2005.

 

Last week
I read the artists’ profiles for the Art and Kindness Commissions. (Go to each commission to see the artist’s profile). They made me laugh, think, and feel a real sense of belonging.

This week
I’m reading T.J. Clark’s The Sight of Death and am considering his approach during his time at the Getty Research Institute in 2000, returning to observe the same works and giving himself “over to the process of seeing again and again.”

Next week
I’ll be at the gallery during installation to begin looking at the objects in the exhibition. I’m expecting the unexpected, (and hoping there is a camera obscura.

Wednesday 3rd April 2013

My initial proposal
(but it may all well change… such is the nature of art making)

“I’m very interested in people, very curious about people’s psychology, whenever I am on a bus or the tube or in an airport, I’m always thinking who are these people? I look for subjects that say something about people’s values, about what makes people tick.”
Vanessa Engle, documentary maker (Walking with Dogs: A Wonderland Special, BBC2, 2012)

A Moment of Your Time
As a visual artist I am interested in the social relationship between people mediated by things: objects and places. I initiate and develop projects using language, dialogue and memory to explore this theme. Through a participatory practice I aim to create space for meaningful connections between people. The resulting art works, often print, audio or installation, are motivated by my aspiration to substantiate collective moments, experiences or situations.

The proposal I would like to make for the Values commission is based around investigating the role of the gallery as a meeting point. A gallery and the exhibitions it curates draw many different people yet little dialogue goes on between strangers when they are looking at works in a show. Often people occupy the space in a silent, private, disconnected way. Some common interest – values, curiosity or wonder has brought a disparate group into a public space, yet most often everyone leaves having no notion of what they may share with the people they have spent an hour or more with. I would like to develop a project, currently titled A Moment of Your Time, which demonstrates the commonalties between the people who visit CURIOSITY: Art and the Pleasures of Knowing.

Part 1
I would select one object from the exhibition that says something about my values and philosophy of living. I would then like to trace a large-scale outline of this object onto one wall somewhere inside Turner Contemporary, defining a space for visitors’ answer to the question: what does this object mean to you? They would be asked to answer the question in 140 characters (26 words) or less.
Part 2
I would spend time during the residency talking to participating visitors, and collecting information about each person – a portrait (photograph), their name and contact details. The portraits will later be printed, and visitors contacted to take part in an event.
Part 3
During the final weeks of the exhibition I would collate all the most commonly used words or phrases, which would then determine a series of headings organised on the walls of the Clore Learning Studio.
Event
The event would involve participants collecting their portraits, taken during Part 2 of the project and attaching them under the words relating to their responses during Part 1. I would also ask a second question: is there anything new you would like to add?

Through a discursive and accumulative process people will get the opportunity to engage in expressing and revealing their values, and I will visually demonstrate the ‘weight’ of the commonality between visitors through the words they use. This idea of a kind of ‘twitter without the technology’ is about using an object from CURIOSITY: Art and the Pleasures of Knowing to encourage staff and visitors (and myself) to review, reconsider, reject and/or reaffirm values and beliefs through collective participation.

I am also very interested in how A Moment of Your Time is a dynamic play on audience development and evaluative processes. Drawing the participants back to the gallery in this way has the potential to turn a moment of discreet communication and connection into a longer lasting relationship between individuals and Turner Contemporary and People United.

One other interesting pause for thought: A Moment of Your Time is an experiment but like any experiment there is an element of risk (which I embrace) – values as well as uniting people can provoke division.

I am optimistic about discovering a common language…

Wednesday 20th February 2013
I’ve also been thinking a lot about how/if art changes people/society and wondering if I could pinpoint a moment when an artwork changed my life/thinking…
Then I thought about the word influence rather than change and the concept – art effecting social change – seemed more manageable somehow. It gave me room to think about the change being subtle, incremental but no less effective.
And I have been thinking about how photography and moving image have enabled new world views, and then thought wouldn’t it be interesting if there was a camera obscura in the show (I’m waiting until the week of installation to find out – to keep my curiousty going) and how this object could get people thinking about things linked to values – family, history, power, representation, ethics, sharing, community, social responsibility, humanity, environment…
Then I went to see the Ansel Adams show at the National Maritime Museum.

Monday, 18th February 2013
I was invited by Carol Tulloch, Reader at TrAIN to do a seminar as part of the PhD student programme at the V&A on Monday. I revisited my Artquest/Parramatta Artist’s Studio residency, Sydney 2008 and the work I produced following it as Carol had asked me to talk about being an artist-in-residence.

Then I talked a bit about some ideas I am thinking about for this residency. I decided to do a little experiment and asked everyone to select an object from one of the museum galleries that ‘spoke’ to their values. Everyone went off for 45 minutes.

Some of the words that came up in our dialogue: chance, reframing, fragments, generosity, hospitality, harmony, family, appropriation, progress, exchange, memory, place, time, knowledge, beauty. Someone even chose a WunderKammer Cabinet of Curiousitis.

I chose Thomas Gainsborough’s ‘Show Box’ the closest I got to a camera obscura, which is an object I’ve been thinking about a lot.

A lovely project that we are currently working on is the development of a kindness badge aimed at all Brownies and Guides in order to promote the value of kindness.
We have been trialling our ideas with two brownie and guide groups in Kent: Hampton Guides and the 1st Shorncliffe Gurkha Brownies and Guides.

Here’s what Julie Larner, unit leader for 1st Shorncliffe Gurkha Brownies and Guides had to say about the girls taking part:
“1st Shorncliffe Gurkha Brownies and Guides completed the kindness badge over three meetings, with the girls also choosing to carry out some of their kindness challenges at home and at school in their own time.  The Guides organised a game for the Brownies based on themes of friendship and both groups chose to create a bake sale for each other.  They love cooking and eating! The Brownies brought in cookies and decorated gift bags to sell them in, and the Guides baked some spectacular looking cakes.  They sold the cookies and cakes to each other and their parents.

The money raised was donated to The British Red Cross after a unit vote.  The girls also collected second hand clothing and toys and asked us to donate these to the local Red Cross charity shop.  They also donated tinned foods which we delivered to the local Rainbow Centre for people who are homeless and socially excluded. 

To discover kindness more widely we played a game that involved guessing some famous kind people from a series of clues.  All of the famous people were suggested by the girls.  The leaders learned a few things too!  Lastly they created a collage of newspaper cuttings featuring stories of kindness from local and national newspapers, not such an easy task!

Overall the girls enjoyed the challenge and related well to themes of friendship, charity and love.  We also had some good conversations around kindness to animals and to the environment.”

I went to visit the girls in November and they were so positive about the challenge. They showed me the work they had done, and told me about how they had completed the badge and were at their most enthusiastic when talking about kind role models in the media.
Although we do still need to make some changes to improve how we communicate the ideas, we’re excited about taking it further. Our next step is to get the girls to help design the actual kindness badge itself!

If you know of any Girl Guide or Brownie units who would be interested in testing out the challenge, please email info@peopleunited.org.uk

Sarah Fox

“What’s jumping down?” greets Emmeth Young, master drummer and leader behind the project Drums Not Guns.

A wide easy smile, Emmeth’s demeanour is unhurried. His large hands calloused and hardened by years of playing and making drums. As he begins to play, the broad grin changes into a more serious but still friendly expression. His dreads weave through the air as he rolls his head. Watching him it’s as if the meandering rhythm has invoked a spirit only he can see.  The beat is the seat of his very being.

Born in Gales Point, Emmeth (pronounced Emm-et) was one half of the reason people from around the world travelled to an otherwise sleepy seaside village in the middle of Belize. The other reason is the galumphing manatees. The beautifully ugly sea-cows chomping on sea grass as they amble the shallows for all to see.

Sadly things soured for Emmeth and his family after he was attacked one evening walking home with his daughter and a tourist who was staying at the hostel he and his wife ran. They recently decided to relocate in the southern town of Punta Gorda where Emmeth continues his drumming school and is currently pursuing the Drums Not Guns project.

His drumming school in Gales Point had 40 kids at its height. An educational project aimed at training and encouraging kids it also had a positive economic impact. “Music is a means of income for many who don’t have an opportunity” explains Emmeth.  In a country with high unemployment and plenty of bored young men, an invitation by Emmeth to join him for one of his many performances was an experience not to be missed – and a way to make an easy buck or two.

Alongside drumming for the Queen and being asked to attend various cultural events, Emmeth’s passion is clearly investing in “the youths ‘dem.”

The idea of Drums Not Guns arose from a conversation that was had in the village. Within the space of a month six youths had been gunned down. Evening wakes followed funerals in the days where friends of gang members would shoot off their guns.

“I was sick in the stomach. Disturbed. Not a way to honour your friends. I decided to play the drum to target the youth.”

What else would a master drummer do? Emmeth’s recognition that the youth had no direction or focus was answered by the beat of the drum that could help “teach them discipline and give a sense of purpose.”

“Drums have an effect. It keeps you focused. Helps you concentrate.”

The project is all off Emmeth’s own back and good will. It is aims at those between 8 and 16. The idea to target this age range before gang life entices them.

“I got to go from what I know. In Belize, not a lot of tings to do. It’s all short-term.”

Tackling gang culture through drumming is just an entry point. What Emmeth’s clear sense of patience and building trust results in, is an intrinsic sense of value. Providing the materials for a student to build their own drum, they learn what it means to create but also the importance of valuing something.

The independence with which Emmeth approaches his work is reflected in his weariness of NGOs and charities ostensibly out to do good. “They talk, but don’t walk the walk.”

Drums are just the foundation. For Emmeth it’s a means by which to find out what kids are good at. “It’s about sustainability – I must find them work and help them to help they self to get on.” Over the years working with youths he’s had teachers and parents comment on how his drumming lessons have helped their children concentrate in school, do better at maths, communicate more.

“Everything you do revolves around rhythm. We walk, speak, even eat in rhythm.”

Drums Not Guns recognises “drumming as a communion”. As an approach to non-violence it speaks powerfully to an otherwise listless and culturally directionless youth. By building resilience and keeping a direct line to Creole history – the lineage and style of Emmeth’s drumming – and culture, roots are grown. “It (drumming) keeps you grounded. But what I do, for me it’s a movement.”

The the drum speaks. The locals of Punta Gorda are already beginning to see that Emmeth’s kindness is echoing on the wings of his powerful rhythms as he continues his work with the youth ‘dem.

To find out more visit the facebook page of the Maroon Creole Drum School.

One of the (many) benefits of working for People United is our Go and See scheme for staff, where we are encouraged to attend arts events as long as we promise to write about them afterwards. So, I took some time away from the office to do my first Go and Sees.

Collective Spirit is the name of the boat made from over a thousand pieces of wood donated by people across the southeast, as part of the cultural Olympiad. Like many people I love the sea, and what a boat symbolises – a sense of adventure, a journey, and a curiosity to see what is beyond the horizon. So at first sight the 30-foot boat looked incongruous in the middle of Kings College quad, completely landlocked by concrete buildings. But one of the other people on the tour told me that the river used to come almost up to the opening at the southern end of the quad, and I suddenly had a sense of this tiny shiny wooden boat drifting quietly along the Thames to anchor there in order to reveal its stories.

Gary, one of the directors of Lone Twin the art company responsible for creating Collective Spirit was our guide. He talked us through the story of the boat and its creation. The only proviso they had for accepting a donation was that there had to be a story attached to it. Each donated object had been painstakingly sectioned and melded into the hull of the boat.  Shapes such as a child’s wooden train set, a hobby horse head, an axe handle, walking sticks laid in rows with their curved ends like breaking waves, guitars, a carved wooden heart, and a wooden elephant showed up clearly against the bigger more uniform planks of wood. What was astonishing was that Gary knew all the stories. The Bedouin tent peg that had been discovered in the sand by a woman on a trip to the Sahara; the hairbrush which had come from the set of the ‘Carry On’ films, the piece of wood from the RMS Olympic, sister ship to the Titanic, the carved wooden walking stick from Ghana that had been used to finish off the ends of the hull, and, of course, a piece from our very own beach hut at Herne Bay. The makers ensured that all donations were recorded and honoured and could easily be found in the grid of numbers running along the edges of the hull.

John Ballatt and Penelope Campling in their excellent book Intelligent Kindness, talk about the origins of the word kind being rooted in the old English noun ‘cynd’, which means ‘nature’, ‘family’, ‘lineage’, ‘kin’. It indicates that we are all connected to each other by force of our common humanity, and these connections stretch across geographical distances and across time; Collective Spirit was a potent symbol of this ancient definition of ‘kind’.

 

My second Go and See was all about connections too, but more specifically our connection with the future. The question posed to the audience in the opening minutes of The Roadless Trip was ‘What will the world be like in 2030?’ Sarah Woods and Richard Gott curated, performed, and presented their quest to discover the answer in this mixed media show incorporating film, interviews with thinkers, scientists and philosophers, and a couple of very funny audience participation game shows, including the ‘build your own self-participating universe’ game. Their dry deadpan delivery and quirky humour delighted the audience whilst along the way they made moving and important points about the fundamental nature of our interconnectedness through issues such as global food production, energy use, and climate change. Their answer to what will the world be like is, – whatever we imagine or dream it will be like…. It emphasised the importance of telling stories of the future and imagining our desired world, so that ‘when fragments of what we dream come by we can grab them and make use of them’. Part of a day organised by the excellent Case for Optimism it underlined the role of the arts in helping to fire our imaginations and dream a different world.

International mediator and peace builder John Paul Lederach talks about ‘living in a 200 year old present’, as if we are holding hands at the same time with both the oldest person we know and the youngest person. The importance of understanding our connections with the past and each other, and how our actions in the present affect our shared future is a key theme in our paper, Arts and Kindness. Both these projects in their different ways beautifully and movingly, emphasised these ideas of interconnectedness and relationship across time and space.