Open Collective page
Collaborators
- CAMP CIC
- Flock South West
- Visual Arts Plymouth
During the first round, POP members will be asked to advise you. What advice would be most helpful?
We would be interested in finding out different ways of publicising this opportunity to local artists and creatives, so we can reach as many people as possible. As well as places and people to send the publication to, so the news of Plymouth, Devon & Cornwall artists goes far and wide!
Briefly describe your project
Front Page/Back Page/Centrefold is a portable artwork and publication showcasing the amazing talents of local artists from Plymouth, Devon & Cornwall. We want to raise the profile of Plymouth as a city of creatives, and with the large touring exhibition the British Art Show (BAS) arriving in October, this is THE time to do it! The BAS receives a lot of attention and we want some of this attention on local artists! We are Plymouth, hear us roar! (artistically!).
Describe what you hope your Collective will achieve
We want to support and publicise local artists and get their work seen far and wide.
The British Art Show is a large touring art show, organised every five years, that celebrates the vitality of recent art made in Britain. This year it has toured to Aberdeen, Wolverhampton, Manchester and is coming to Plymouth in October 2022 to January 2023.
The British Art Show can provide an excellent opportunity for local artists to get their work seen by a large audience that will travel to the city to see the British Art Show. But how to do this in an effective and agile way? How can local artists infiltrate the arts organisations in the city that will be showing the British Art Show?
This is how!
Front page / Back page / Centrefold will be a high quality publication featuring work by artists from Plymouth, Devon and Cornwall. Artists will be invited to submit an image of an existing piece of work to be showcased in the book. There will also be three commissions for artists to create new work especially for the publication – one for the front page; one for the back page; and one for the centrefold. The artists will be paid a fee for each of these commissions.
The collective has far reaching networks across Devon and Cornwall and we will send the call out to artists far and wide across the two counties. Many artists who contribute to the cultural life of Plymouth live in wider Devon and Cornwall, which is why we would like to spread the net further. We would also invite members from other POP organisations to submit their work.
The resulting publication will be made available for people to pick up free at the British Art Show venues across the city (The Box, Arts Institute, MIRROR and KARST) as well as other cultural venues. We will also post the publication to arts organisations across the country, and work with the arts organisations in Plymouth to access their mailing lists and social media to further publicise the publication.
The money from the POP collectives fund will be used to pay for the design of the publication; fund the three artists’ new work commissions; print the publication; distribute the publication; and promote the publication.
All three partner organisations have strong track records of successful commissioning and publishing projects, and project management.
We need to work fast to get the publication produced for November/December 2022, but we are all passionate and committed arts workers who love Plymouth and want it to shine brightly creatively, as other British Art Show cities have done!
Describe how your Collective formed
CAMP is a grass roots artist-led support network for creatives living in Plymouth, Devon and Cornwall. Flock South West is an arts production collective made up of local freelance arts workers. Visual Arts Plymouth (VAP) is a group of independent artists and arts organisers in the city.
Members of CAMP and Flock recently visited the British Art Show in Manchester and were impressed by the way local artists were supported and made visible by arts organisations in the city. We then thought, hey, we want to make sure this happens in Plymouth too! So on the train back we got our heads together and came up with this proposal. We then invited Visual Art Plymouth (who organise the much missed and hopefully soon to return, Arts Weekender Plymouth ) to be the third partner in our collective.
A lot of the work done by the three organisations in this collective is done by voluntary labour. We all want great things for local artists, and by coming together in this way, we can support each other and be each other’s cheerleaders. As many of the organisations in POP will know, it’s hard to keep going when most of your work is done voluntarily. By working together collectively we hope to make more things happen than we could do on our own. We’re excited about our proposal and what it could bring to the city.
Which collaboration “shape” do you expect will best describe your project?
HUB AND SPOKE – Like a bike wheel, one organisation holds things together at the centre, while other organisations perform specific tasks
In which areas would you expect most of your grant to be spent on?
Core Funding / Time
