On the other side of the table

Preston Street Union with Lucia Harley at Exeter Culture Launch - September 2018

I've just completed a two-month interim role as a Programme Delivery Consultant for Exeter Culture, an ACE-funded network of organisations that works to improve the resilience and ambition of the arts and cultural sector in my home city. Job sharing with fellow artist Paula Crutchlow, I helped to fill the gap between the departure of one director and the appointment of a new one. My particular focus was on producing day-to-day content for the organisation's website and social media.

I developed more practice- and practitioner-focused content for the website, advocated for a higher level of user-generated content and dialogue, revamped a volunteering guide, contributed to an ongoing discussion about artists' workspace, and co-authored a handover report for the organisation, which included recommendations on the future use of web and social media in achieving organisational goals.

As I usually earn my (non art) living as a writer for hire on short-term ad hoc communications projects for commercial businesses, this was an opportunity for me to work over a longer period with one organisation, doing something I feel personally invested in. But, more than that, it was a rare glimpse at what it's like to sit on the other side of the desk, as a stakeholder manager, a commissioner, an organiser, a strategist and an advocate. It was a steep learning curve and a privileged insight.

I'm also really chuffed that the role was opened up to two artists, even if only for a short period. We both have extensive project management experience but we are hardly your average arts administrators. You can't make much difference in just two months on part-time hours but I hope that, by championing the practitioner perspective, we might have left some sort of useful legacy.

www.exeterculture.com

Turn (the) leaves - now and then

Turn (the) leaves - Public participatory event and 8-channel sound installation.
Photo: Simon Tutty. Courtesy Thelma Hulbert Gallery

On 8 August 2018, Megan Calver and I brought together a group of people and trees at Woodbury Castle on the East Devon Way for shared reading and response. Working from a simple set of instructions, participants created a new work of art together by reading aloud.

Recordings made on that day were then re-assembled as a sound installation, with gallery plinths and sound equipment standing in for people and trees. These created an indoor copse through which gallery visitors were invited to wander.

The translation from live participatory work to gallery piece raised some interesting questions, with which I'm still wrestling: What does it mean to translate a public participatory event to the gallery? Who does the work ‘belong’ to? How do you give something meaningful back to participants (including the trees)? What difference does the work make?

Turn (the) leaves on 8 August was an attempt to create a space where dialogue with the nonhuman might happen. The readers and trees were not making our work but their work. The recordings enabled us to share some sense of it with a wider gallery audience, but we always saw this as a new and different iteration. Some visitors said they found the gallery installation 'austere' and 'unwelcoming' and 'not evocative of a woodland' but Megan and I were always clear about our wish to demarcate the public outdoor event from the indoor gallery work. It was the difference between something that happened on the site and in the moment -- and was simultaneously, privately and fleetingly experienced by individuals who took part -- and something mediated, reconstructed and repeatable that could be discussed and shared between different listeners experiencing it at different times.

Turn (the) leaves was commissioned as part of Art on the East Devon Way and shown at Thelma Hulbert Gallery, Honiton (2018). Sound Recordist: Tony Whitehead Technical Consultant: Tim King

Experiencing the Landscape - Art on the East Devon Way ran from 8 September 2018 to 27 October 2018 and included work by Gabrielle Hoad & Megan Calver, Jenny Mellings, Angus Rutherford and Anne-Marie Culhane.

Prospecting

Image: Davina Jelley, Somerset Art Works

I attended the Prospecting Symposium on 1 November at University Centre Somerset, thanks to a bursary from Visual Arts South West. Here's my report on the event.
https://www.a-n.co.uk/reviews/prospecting-symposium-review-by-gabrielle-hoad