Bulwell JSC Art Consultation

Irene Rogan
Thematic Concept
Spirit of Bulwell Consultation event  24th June 2008
Railway Club - Young Designers – consultation event 15th July

The Bulwell JSC has a lead artist, who has been commisioned to work with the residents of Bulwell to incorporate art in the Bulwell JSC. Irene Rogan will lead a project to work alongside members of the Friends Group, Young People and members of the Bulwell community, in creating art which represents the community and Bulwell.

As part of the thought provoking process Irene requires ideas or pictures of places, you may have visited to come up with ideas to work with.

Question:- What place have you ever visited that is the most memorable or affecting?

Why?

To send your response please Click Here

Irene Rogan
I was appointed as Lead Artist for the Bulwell Joint Services Centre in June 2008

•The arts programme has been introduced in order to enhance the experience of the new building  and  the spaces for the  local community, staff and visitors.

•One of the role of  the lead artist is to identify locations and types of artwork both inside the building and outside within the landscaping or building exterior.

•The lead artist and artist's will be commissioned to create integrated artworks for the site. This means art that can be part  of the fabric of the building or landscape or specially created paintings, photographs or  sculpture for the building

•There is a lot to cover as  the Bulwell Joint Service Centre (JSC) scheme will provide a play centre, a youth centre, community centre, a sports hall and a main library; GP services with a focus on GPs with special interests, community care nursing teams, allied health professionals and a pharmacy.

•Local groups have already been engaged in order to guide the Bulwell JSC LIFT Project prior to construction and to encourage a sense of community ownership. Engagement has been achieved using a programme of community based  presentations by the project team and by appointing a lead artist to encourage participation in the creative development of the arts programme

Themeatic concept

As lead artist I have found in previous experience that developing a theme  for a scheme provides a framework for all the artwork. It helps to unify the scheme and artists can respond to it in whatever way they choose. After research and consultation, I have developed a theme based on nature in particular  the River Leen. This can include; the history of site geography, river journey, qualities of water or scientific or environmental aspects. The aim is to create visual clues and special features which symbolically reflect meanings relevant to the site. The arts component of this landscape may be sculptural, site-integrated, site specific, interventions, interactive and/or educational and these are just a few of the ways artists can respond to the theme. The art should therefore express the town’s wider aspirations for a better environment and a growing awareness of issues of sustainability.

Spirit of Bulwell Consultation event  24th June 2008

The first consultation event ' Spirit of Bulwell' was used to introduce local Friends group to the arts programme and to begin a 'living archive' with photographs, polaroids and video to document these events. The idea came from  an extract from official records from 1872 regarding a peaceful protest  concerning the Bogs 'impeccably well behaved and peaceable to a man, indeed rather joyous of spirit'

This is a way of inrtroducing people to the design process so they become  involved in how a designer or artist would approach the site for an art commission or landscaping design. For example a group walkabout turns into a site assessment with documenting and commenting on thier findings, a celebratory element is introduced to mark the occasion. In the case of Spirit of Bulwell, people were asked to take a polaroid of the area around the proposed JSC building site focussing on nature and asked to  write a statement about Bulwell on the back of the polaroid.

The polaroids were attached to some helium balloons with the lead artist's email address and launched in hope of reaching the wider community. See photos

Railway Club - Young Designers – consultation event 15th July

A group of children from the Railway  Club - after school club,  were involved in a Young Designers event. They carried out a site assessment (which also seemed to involve finding out if they could all climb into a weeping willow tree* on the site). Becuase the thematic concept had been identified the children were asked to concentrate on the river and riverbank. Notebooks for  writing thier observations  were handed out and cardboard frames for looking through to help in composing a photographic image before taking a photograph on a digital SLR camera  which they were given helped to do.

Afterwards everyone gathered together to write a postcard to the landscape designer at FPCR with a drawing of thier impressions and a word that summed up thier idea of the river and the embankment. These were duly posted.