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

public works will be presenting some of their ideas on cultural regeneration and first reflections on the their FOLKESTONOMY project at the
Research Network Forum
Cultural Regeneration in Folkestone
15/08/2008
at the University Centre in Folkestone

Introduction

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.

The Offer

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.

First review for Plastic! (From Three Weeks)
All senses are arrested by this surreal, stylish, site-specific piece about sex-change operations and plastic surgery in Iran. Through the damp gloom of WWII bomb shelters, past jars of pickled onions and abandoned shoes we are beckoned by statuesque performers into the unruly desires and anxieties surrounding cosmetic surgery and the great gender divide. The audience are divided by gender for parts of the show and each group tellingly begins to wonder what the other experiences. Perplexing, sinister, darkly comic, and with a painterly handling of light, as well as teasing; their big tease, pickled onions and plastic surgery – both in the preservation business. Plastic is a clever human ’installation’, but cosmetic and sex change surgery are confusingly blurred.

Wednesday the 6th of August 2008
7PM - 9PM on the Green at Hackney Wick
Click to view a map.

public works together with Pudding Mill River have been invited by Space Studios to make a contribution to the Hackney Wick Festival which will take palace on the 27th of September on the green outside the church in Hackney Wick. Our contribution is called the Wick Curiosity Shop and brings together the weird and wonderful world hidden in Hackney Wick. To generate interest in the shop we will have a series of small scale, informal events leading up to the festival. First showing is this Wednesday the 6th of August. Come along if you would like to tell us about something that should be part of the shop or drop in for a drink of some locally harvested and produced elder-flower champagne kindly sponsored by Pudding Mill River.

project commissioned by SPACE

Directed by Mehrdad Seyf in collaboration with Virgule performing arts, public works, meika Dresenkamp, squint /opera/music, Leslie Travers, Guy Kornestski and Gemma Donohue

You’re a man and you want to become a woman? The Islamic Republic of Iran can help.

Plastic explores one man’s quest to enter the world of women in a dynamic and stylish piece that combines video, architecture, lighting, music and performance in an intimate surreal show.
public works has collaborated with 30 bird productions and has designed and developed the spatial concept for the performance. Few images of the show will follow soon.

Pleasance UnderGrand, Edinburgh
Booking information
In person:
Pleasance Courtyard, 60 The Pleasance
OR: Pleasance Dome Box Office, Potterow, 1 Bristo Square
By telephone: 0131 446 6550
Online: www.pleasance.co.uk/edinburgh
Ticket Prices: £9.50 (£8.00 concessions)

TODAY PUBLISHING
on the Mobile Porch
for one day
during PABD 2008

The Mobile Porch goes Arnold Circus and will join the fanzine making madness for one day, inviting everyone who has something to say on the day, to publish it there and then, on large sheets of paper using our all time favourite: duck tape.

All contributions will be published online afterwards.

Photo from last year’s PABD fair - showing Deepa Naik from TINAG.

Public works is invited to contribute to the Portavillion Symposium - ‘Parked Art’ at the Design Museum on Friday the 18th of July 2008 from 9.30 am to 4 pm.

Portavilion Symposium

Parked Art: Designing Art for Common Space
Friday 18 July, 2008 9.30 am - 4pm.
Design Museum, Shad Thames, London, SE1 2YD

This interdisciplinary event links two major cultural activities: UP Projects’ Portavilion, a public art initiative
that presents a series temporary artists’ structures in Central London’s Parks from June to October 2008 and The Art of Common Space, produced by Gunpowder Park, which aims to generate new thinking and
influence the development of our common spaces through creative exploration.

Agenda

09.30 – 10:00
Registration, tea & coffee

10.00 – 10.15
Introductions by Chair, Fred Manson

10.15 – 11.00
Emma Underhill with Amanda Smethurst, Arts Service Manager Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and Nick Biddle, Head of Regents Park

11.00 – 11.15
Jes Fernie, writer and curator on artist’s interventions in the public realm

11.15 – 11.30
publicworks, art and architecture practice

11.30 – 11.45
Break

11.45 – 12.00
Tony Beckwith, Creative Development Director for Gunpowder Park concludes the morning session

12.00 – 12.30
Open discussion with questions from the floor and full panel

12.30 – 2:00
Lunch, with a chance to see C-12 Dance Theatre for a free performance in and around Toby Paterson’s “Powder Blue Orthogonal Pavilion” in Potters Fields Park (next to City Hall).

2.00 – 2.10
Summary of the morning’s session by Fred Manson

2.10 – 2.20
Start with poem by Mark Gwynne Jones introduced by Eileen Woods, Artistic Director for Gunpowder Park

2.20 – 2.35
Louise Trodden, Head of Art in the Open, London’s advocacy body for art in the public realm

2.35 – 3.00
Tracey McNulty, Arts and Culture Development for Barking and Dagenham on Barking Riverside

3.00 – 4.00
Open discussion with questions from the floor and full panel

4.00
Close and a chance to view Design Museum’s exhibitions

51 32.0086, -000 02.670

Finally away from the office, no interrupting phone calls or doing things just quickly on the site. It takes a day off, away from it all to look at what we are doing and how we are doing it. Reassess and go forward - with champagne and cake in the park - highly recommended.

PS - Happy birthday Kathrin!!

After a lenghty holiday in a large barn in Cambridgeshire, the Mobile Porch is finally returning to London, with a number of public gigs to be rolled out.

Fri 27 to Sun 29 June at Canary Wharf:

Visit Polly at the Porch during London’s Festival of Architecture at Canary Wharf this weekend, to see the Porch out and about again, and to get involved in AvantGardening.

Co-curated by Peter Arlt, muf and public works and originally exhibited in Linz the show now opens at the ‘Haus der Architektur’ in Graz. Follow the link for some more information (German only)