Friday Sessions are informal talks and presentations hosted by public works on Friday evenings. Visit www.publicworksgroup.net for more information.

Art and Regeneration.
A half day symposium from 14.00 10 18.00
followed by a public round table discussion at 18.30
Friday 12th September 2008

Georges House,
8 the Old High Street,
Folkestone,
Kent CT20 1RL, UK
T: 44 (0) 1303 244533

The event is an initiative by public works as part of the Folkestone Triennial and in association with Folkestone based Strange Cargo, Club Shepway, The Creative Foundation and the Research Network Forum.

The half day symposium brings together a number of practitioners and organisations from Folkestone and the South East Coast, who are involved in cultural programmes that are linked to regeneration issues.

Art and Regeneration are two terms frequently used to describe current changes in Folkestone. The event wants to provide a platform to look at actual cultural programmes and initiatives, and to discuss overlaps and differences in existing and projected ideas and strategies for Folkestone.

Programme

13.30 Registration
14.00 Welcome by Strange Cargo and public works
14.10 Introduction by public works
14.40 Presentation by Brigitte Orasinski from Strange Cargo followed
15.10 Presentation by Nick Ewbank Creative Foundation followed by questions
15.40 Coffeebreak
16.00 Presentation by Andrea Schlieker from Folkestone Triennial followed by questions
16.30 Presentation by Laura Mansfield and Matt Rowe from Club Shepway followed by questions
17.00 Break out Session
17.45 Plenum and feedback from the 2 Sessions
18.00 Break and Refreshments

18.30 – 20.00
Public panel discussion with

Andrea Schlieker (Folkestone Triennial)
Nick Ewbank (Creative Foundation)
Paul Rennie (Folkestone Research Network Forum)
Laura Mansfield (Club Shepway)
Brigitte Orasinski (Strange Cargo)

Chaired by Kathrin Böhm (public works)

The event is free, but seats are limited.
For more information and bookings please contact Kathrin@publicworksgroup.net

About the partners organising the event
(all texts are taken from the organisation’s websites)

public works is a London based artist and architects collective involved in this year’s Folkestone Triennial. public works develops physical and non physical models to allow for a participatory and cross-hierarchical reflection and shaping of public spaces. Their contribution to the triennial is a mobile mapping station called “Folkestonomy” (www.folkestonomy.net) which traces everyday cultural spaces within the town and compiles individual mappings in a growing on line map.
www.publicworksgroup.net

Strange Cargo
Over its eleven year lifespan, Strange Cargo has established a reputation for high profile quality public art, and has delivered award-winning projects, including Like the Back of my Hand, an extensive installation at Folkestone Central station which recently won the Rouse Kent Public Art Award. In its public art involvement, Strange Cargo seeks to create works of context, leaving communities with lasting meaningful landmarks and a sense of participation in their surrounding environment.
www.strangecargo.org.uk/

Club Shepway
Club Shepway is a group of emerging artists and writers based in Folkestone. Playing with local histories, hidden memories and current affairs Club Shepway is concerned with the social and commercial development occurring in the area. Through events, exhibitions and interventions Club Shepway aims to develop an active arena of cultural debate within the current process of regeneration.
www.clubshepway.com

Creative Foundation
How do you regenerate a once-fashionable but now faded seaside town?
The regeneration question matters across Britain, and for the Folkestone-based Creative Foundation it demands an innovative answer: we want to revitalise the town by attracting and harnessing the energies of creative people and businesses.
www.creativefoundation.org.uk

Folkestone Triennial
One of the of the most ambitious public art projects to be presented in the UK, the Triennial is a three-yearly exhibition of works which will be specially commissioned for public spaces throughout Folkestone. The selected artists have responded to the invitation with proposals for artworks that engage with the Kent coastal town’s history, population, culture and built environment to create a cutting-edge contemporary art exhibition.
The Triennial is conceived and curated by curator Andrea Schlieker, co-curator of the British Art Show 2005/06, and aims to examine changing notions of art in the public realm. The inaugural Folkestone Triennial will include both temporary works, which will remain in situ for the three months of the show, and a number of permanent works. This pattern will be repeated in subsequent Triennials so that, over time, Folkestone will become a centre for contemporary art of the highest calibre.
www.folkestonetriennial.org.uk

Regeneration Network Forum
The Research Network Forum (RNF) is organised by Dr Paul Rennie of Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, London. It is hosted by University Centre Folkestone and is supported by the Creative Foundation.
The RNF will take place over three separate days over the summer of 2008. The RNF coincides with the Folkestone Triennial – an international festival of contemporary public sculpture.
The town of Folkestone is a historic seaside resort on the south coast of Britain (located at the English end of the Channel Tunnel). Like many seaside towns, it has suffered from a variety of economic and social problems that devolve from the perception of economic marginalisation and collapse of the traditional English seaside holiday.
Those problems are now being actively addressed through cultural regeneration. The Creative Foundation is engaged in promoting this regeneration through a variety of initiatives, not least the 2008, 2011 and 2014 Folkestone Triennials. In addition, the arrival of HS1 rail services to-and-from London will place Folkestone at one end of a development corridor stretching from King’s Cross to East Kent, via the Olympic sites of East London.
Accordingly, Folkestone is a uniquely qualified environment in which to investigate the effectiveness of these regeneration strategies and to elaborate the interdisciplinary and collaborative methodologies that will support the proper analysis of regeneration economics.
www.rennart.co.uk/rnf.html

This Is Not A Gateway (TINAG)will be hosting another salon at public works studio, this time about “The Medical City”.

The number one cause of death amongst children in the developing world is not famine or war, but respiratory illness due to urban pollution. In a rapidly increasing urbanised world there is an urgency to address the complexities between cities and public health. Should the medical fraternity be the future builders of cities? 
 


What can urbanists learn from medicine? Could the medical knowledge, lexicon and methodologies be adopted and applied to cities? How can the 
knowledge from building hospitals be extended 
to cities? What knowledge does a paramedic who navigates a city’s streets and treats its citizens have that might be vital? What can be learned about public health from a land contamination officer? How can public health be put at the
forefront in city planning?

This Is Not A Gateway have brought together three compelling urbanists to consider the historic relationship between urban planning and public health, to explore how medical knowledge can be adapted by city planners,and to discuss how public health can become an integral part of urban planning:

• ELIZABETH FONSECA, Environmental Quality Manager, Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham
• PHIL GUSACK, Architect and 
Director of gusack.com
• CHRIS SHARP, Urban Software Designer, Holistic City 


Salons are informal, free and open to all. There are always beer and beigals. To register, please email: salons@thisisnotagateway.net

Friday Session No29 hosted by EXYZT on Southwark’s brand new Lido
7pm, Friday July 4th
Southwark Lido
100 Union Street, SE1
Click here to view map for directions

With an increasing number of temporary and/or mobile projects popping up and roaming around our cities, Friday Session 29 will offer a platform of exchange to explore what these project contribute to the city. Where do they succeed and what will remain after they have moved on.

The evening will bring together practitioners with experience in temporary or mobile architecture or architectural interventions. Short presentations will be followed by a discussion.

Speakers include AOC, EXYZT and Indy Johar /OO ARCHITECTS,
Hosted by public works with Celine Condorelli

Friday Session_28, Friday 16th May
19.00 – 21.00 at public works studio/London
A joint event by public works and taking place.

The idea of the session is to see, hear and discuss how feminism is practiced and thought within current cultural practice.
The participating individuals and groups have different approaches and interests towards feminism as a cultural, political and theoretical tradition. Some of the presentations will focus on a more practice related approach of addressing gender issues.
The session will be strcutured around short presentations of ideas or case studies where a feminist agenda becomes clear, to be followed by an informal discussion with all guests.

Presenters include:
Liza Fior from muf
Doina Petrescu from aaa, Paris and Sheffield
Fenke Snelting from De Geuzen and constant, Brussels
Emily Pethick, The Showroom, London
Celine Condorelli, support structure, London
Jos Boys, Julia Dwyer, Katie Lloyd Thomas, Brigid McLeer, Sue Ridge and Helen Stratford from taking place, taking place collective, London and Cambridge

A fanzine will be produced on the day.

Friday the 25th of April 2008, 19.00 at public works
With Contributions by: Ana Méndez de Andés, Optimistic Productions, Games Monitor and others

Initiated by Ana Méndez de Andés this Friday Session will bring together a number of practitioners and activist that have an interest in the Olympic development currently underway in Stratford. The evening of presentations will be a departing point for the articulation of a possible ‘action’ that addesses the Olympic site and its surroundings.

Ana Méndez de Andés will present the video I love the M30 by the Madrid-based collectives areaciega and basurama as well as a brief introduction of the conflicts and resistances in Madrid as analysed by the Observatorio Metropolitano in the book Madrid ¿la suma de todos? I love the M30 documents an action that took place in November 2006 involving an open top tourist bus, 35 activists, the biggest and most expensive construction site in Madrid, a jazz band and a very devoted driver.

In 2007 Hilary Powell and Dan Edelstyn from Optimistic Productions made the film ‘The Games’ staging an alternative Olympics within the sites now enclosed by the blue hoardings. Carrying on their engagement with the Olympic zone they will present their work with ‘Olympic Spirits and Foodstuffs Ltd’ providing an introduction to the company’s product range and ethos.

Hilary together with George Unsworth from Space Studios will also talk about the Olympic Artists Forum, an information and events platform for artists and creative practitioners engaging with the Olympics and the changing cultural landscape of London.

Games Monitor is a network of people raising awareness about issues within the London Olympic development processes. Highlighting the local, London and international implications of the Olympic industry. Games Monitor seeks to deconstruct the ‘fantastic’ hype of Olympic boosterism and the eager complicity of the ‘urban elites’ in politics, business, the media, sport, academia and local institutional ‘community stakeholders’. The work of this network is mostly articulated and accessible through their web site: www.gamesmonitor.org.uk For this Friday Session Martin Slavin as well as other participants of gamesmonitor will be present.

—

Ana Méndez de Andés is member and founder of two interconnected militant-research collectives in Madrid: areaciega develops a collective research on mapping of public spaces focusing on the emergence of self-organised social processes and has been funded by arteleku, Center for Contemporary Creation in San Sebastian while the Observatorio Metropolitano was born in 2005 as a cluster of micro-investigations with the intention of giving an account of the big transformations of the contemporary metropolis under the light of globalization and the resistances against it. As landscape architect, she is currently working in London at Kathryn Gustafson´s office and has her own practice under the name of malashierbas

Hilary Powell is a Hackney based artist whose interdisciplinary practice combines rigorous urban research with event based practices and film. Her background in Fine Art and Scenography led her out into derelict sites across Europe (from empty swimming pools in London to Amsterdam Docklands and Berlin factories) creating site responsive theatrical installation events. She has a PhD in Cultural Studies from Goldsmith’s College, University of London and her research and practice consistently focuses on urban ‘junkspaces’ and sites of large-scale regeneration.

Hilary is partner in the film company Optimistic Productions with Dan Edelstyn fusing professionalism and creativity. Dan is an experienced Director / Producer and makes innovative documentaries for C4 and C5. Projects range from a feature film involving Ukrainian exile and alcohol to a series exploring the future of Britain through the predictions of ‘Seaside Seers’ but a key element of their work remains engaged with various urban practices documenting and creating a vision of the city as a site for playful intervention.

The next Friday Session will take place as part of
Torange Khonsari’s (public works)
Cross Country project for Wysing Arts Centre in Cambridgeshire.

The project concludes research and walks that were undertaken in the last year
in and around the village of Bourn and Wysing Arts Centre, and proposes new questions and structures towards public and communal spaces in a rural environment.
Torange has negotiated the temporary extension of a public path into privately owned land, and the Friday Session will be part of a series of events to take place on a specifically designed platform structure on site.
The speakers would be
Torange Khonsari - talking about the definition/condition of a rural public space and its immediate community
Wapke Feenstra - conducting a soil drilling on site and opening a discussion around who owns which layer of the land.

Programme:
Thurs 13 - Sat 15 March
Bourn Village
local walks
Thurs 10am – 2pm, led by Polly Brannan, William Bevan
Friday 10am – 2pm, led by Polly Brannan, William Bevan, Torange Khonsari
Saturday 10am – 2pm, led by Sarah Butler

Thurs 13 - Sat 15 March
Personal map-making workshops
Thurs 2 - 4pm, led by Polly Brannan, Torange Khonsari
Friday 2 - 4pm led by Polly Brannan, Torange Khonsari
Saturday 12 - 2pm led by Sarah Butler

Saturday 2 - 4pm
Friday Session_26
Discussion on the role of rural space and culture
Torange Khonsari, architect in public works
Wapke Feenstra, artist in myvillages.org

The URBAN ACT book launched during Friday Session_25 by atelier d’architecture autogeree will be available at the public works studio.
The book is distributed by the editors and through a network of voluntary agents, at the price of £ 20.00 per copy under the principle “one book sold / one book free” for the distributing agent.
The price has gone up because we had to include shipping costs to the UK, and the recent drop in value of the pound sterling.

Call public works studio on 020 70929100 or e mail info@publicworksgroup.net or
pick up your copies at a future Friday Session.

URBAN ACT

The presentation of a European wide network of practices who act within the urban field as a place for political change and architectural practice, introducing their different projects, tools and methods.

The compilation of practices results from numerous pan European workshops, and has recently been published in book form by atelier d’architecture atogérée.
The URBAN ACT book not only locates and maps the activities of numerous
practices, but is structured as a manual to allow insight into the methods of
interventionist urban practice, like a user guide to “do-it-yourself urbanism”.

For more information on the background and contributions visiisit the related research project website www.peprav.net

Practice contributors include:
aaa, Paris
AG Gleisdreieck, Berlin
Park Fiction, Hamburg
Constant, Brussels
Atsa, Quebec
public works, London
Blok, Zagreb
Laboratorio Urbano, Madrid
Metrozones, Berlin
etc.etc.etc

Instead of running a Friday Session at the public works studio, we ll be holding a number of public events as part of our current “Can you show me the space” project at the Stanley Picker Gallery in Kingston.

January events include:

Mapping Online - tools and concepts
Wed 23 Jan
12pm - 5pm Workshop
6 pm Presentation and Round Table discussion together with City Mine(d), Dorian Moore and Christian Nold

Making Space
Sat 26 Jan
2pm - 4pm
Round Table discussion with Anna Mansfield, Alex Warnock-Smith, Polly Brannan and other tbc.

Showing the Participatory Process
Tue 29 Jan
12pm - 6pm
A one day workshop session together with Peter Arlt.

For the full programme and more information visit www.stanleypickergallery.org