Creative Spaces

Artists’ Plans for Sustainability – June 5th at Warwick Arts Centre

June 1, 2013Announcements, ConferencesAbstract Space, Arts And Social Sciences, Cardiff University, City Visitors, Creative Spaces, Dr Jonathan, Dunkley, Henri Lefebvre, Iatl, Mead Gallery, Minute Presentations, N55, Performance Studies, Phd Candidate, Rosalyn Deutsche, Sustainable Cities, Sustainable City, Urban Societies, Warwick Arts Centre, Whybrow

Wednesday 5th June 2-4.30pm

One of the Creative Spaces’ research focuses has been the role of the arts and artists in developing sustainable cities. Following our curiosity, we would like to take the opportunity of Mead Gallery’sexhibition “Artists’ Plans for Sustainability” to invite three artists to give 15-minute presentations of their work. This will be followed by a roundtable discussion with Warwick academics, addressing the question of:

â€˜The Role of Art in Developing the Sustainable Cityâ€™

Visitors attending the roundtable will have the opportunity to comment or ask questions.

The event is free but places are limited, so please reserve a place in advance by phoning Warwick Arts Centre box office: 024 76524524.

Artists:

Nils Norman, Ion SÃ¸rvin (N55) and Carolyn Deby (sirenscrossing)

Academics:

Dr Nicolas Whybrow (chair, Theatre and Performance Studies)
Dr Cath Lambert (Sociology)
Dr Jonathan Vickery (Cultural Policy Studies)
Dr Ria Dunkley (IATL and Cardiff University Sustainable Places Institute)
Dr Susan Haedicke (Theatre and Performance Studies)
Nese Tosun (PhD candidate, Theatre and Performance Studies)

Creative Spaces is a network member of the AHRC-funded ‘Making Sense of
Sustainability’ arts and social sciences collaboration based at Cardiff
University.

Creative Spaces Research at the moment focuses on two main areas:

The Role of the Arts in Developing Sustainable Cities

For Rosalyn Deutsche urban space is not only socially-produced but agonistic. Thus, the practices of urban societies â€“ that which its various constituencies do or are allowed to do â€“ defines or creates the space of the city, and such space is dependent for its very condition of existence on that which is produced by ‘conflicting interests’. As Henri Lefebvre puts it with regard to the abstract space of modernism and capital: ‘Inasmuch as [such space] tends towards homogeneity, towards the elimination of existing differences or peculiarities, a new space cannot be born (produced) unless it accentuates differences’ (1991: 52).

Venice and Sustainability

The city of Venice conveys an impression of sinking. It is known to be doing so literally â€“ some twenty-three centimetres in the last century â€“ with the fabric and foundations of buildings gradually dissolving and the seasonal floods of the acqua alta on the increase, whilst figuratively the sheer weight of tourists â€“ estimated at 16.5 million annually â€“ can be said to be forcing the city down and its citizens to â€˜jump shipâ€™ in a desperate bid to save their futures.

Minutes of the previous meetings are available here:

24.10.2012

30.01.2013

Curating in a read/write culture

April 29, 2009news, RSA Arts & EcologyAmateurs, Art Institutions, Art World, Audiences, Creative Spaces, Facebook, Fad, Flickr, Jim Richardson, Lawrence Lessig, Lip Service, Marketing Tool, Member Communities, Nielsen, Perceptions, Second Generation, Share Content, Social Engagement, Social Networks, Twitter

Jim Richardson, writing in The Art Newspaper, warns galleries and museums of the change that is inevitably coming to the art world. In and editorial â€œFacebook is more than a fadâ€ he writes:

Social networks and blogs are the fastest growing online activities, according to a report published in March by research firm Nielsen Online. Almost 10% of all time spent on the internet is spent on these types of sites, which Nielsen describes as â€œmember communitiesâ€, and they are visited by more than two-thirds of the worldâ€™s online users.

This has not gone unnoticed by museums and galleries, with many creating some kind of presence on sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Flickr. But because this has primarily been done as a marketing tool, institutions are missing a far greater opportunity. By treading gently into the second generation of web development and design, known as Web 2.0, museums risk achieving little, and are effectively paying mere lip service to online social engagement. If they were to make a proper commitment to the enterprise, they could transform their relationship with audiences, change peopleâ€™s perceptions of them and vastly expand the reach of their collections.

The Nielsen research shows that a major factor in the success of social networks is that they allow people to select and share content.

How will what Clay Shirkey called â€œmass amateurizationâ€ penetrate the art world? Lawrence Lessig writes of the change from a Read Only culture to a Read/Write culture. Now, with intitiatives like Creative Spaces, amateurs are not Read Only any more. They can curate too. How are art institutions going to handle the idea that their authority is no longer a given?

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Turning archives into social media spaces

March 7, 2009news, RSA Arts & EcologyAmy Franceschini, Creative Spaces, Imperial War Museum, National Portrait Gallery, Social Media, social media project

Just spent a little while takingÂ a brief but enjoyable gambol inÂ this new gallery/museum-based social media project, Creative Spaces. Itâ€™s a beta version, but already creates a great model of how to make collections more accessible, and how to let the public use material that might otherwise be gathering dust.Â I should get out more, I know, but I do like the idea of not having to travel to museums.

Creative Spaces is based on the idea of creating groups and notebooks around subject areas. They have access to the digital archivesÂ ofÂ nine major galleries and museums, including the Tate, the Imperial War Museum, the V&A, the Natural History Museum and the National Portrait Gallery. The photo on the right is from a notebookÂ created by one user titled My Dream Green Home, which uses the collections to find inspiraton for modern green living. It shows a wartime community garden in Worcestershire in 1943, courtesy of the Imperial War Museum. The original caption reads:

The English village is a closely knit community, its inhabitants good neighbours who share their labours and their surplus produce. It is thus good ground on which to organise wartime Food Production Clubs to produce more food and save shipping space and transport. Clubs are run by villagers, with help from County Authorities. At Rowney Green, Worcester, a club helps villagers to cultivate more land, keep pigs, poultry and bees. Seeds and fertilizers are bought wholesale through the club, advice comes from the County Authority through Mr S T Buckley assistant instructor in horticulture.

It was a similar photograph taken in the US that inspired artist Amy Franceschini to start the Victory Gardens project in 2007. Amy was one of the artists I met in California last week; more of that soon.

Anyway, Creative Spaces is a really excellent project. Theyâ€™re looking for people to get stuck in and beta test it, so go along and try it out. Myself? Iâ€™d like to see an advanced search facility, but Iâ€™m sure there are plenty of other tweaks that you could suggestâ€¦

Go to RSA Arts & Ecology Blog