Part D - Arts Apprenticeship

Part D: Leading an art project

Having used photography as my challenge for improving (part A) I have come up with a project that also uses photography but that also uses writing, the web and collaboration (with the other apprentices and friends) as this I am finding out is an interesting area of contemporary art these days.

My idea is to get people to take pictures of places around the city which are special to them, and give me reasons as to why. I’ll then pick out ones those that I feel are particularly good, editing the text and images, and find a way to bring them all together visually on a web map. Not the easiest idea in the world but it brings together instructions and decision making and working with people and Vicky said that was a nice idea I’d had.

Have been looking at ways we can plot these and the meaning people have attached to them on a map people can view online. I’ve been discussing ideas with Vicky, Ben and Kim. The ideal now is for me to put them all into a blog and a technical person will link them to a map (yay!) I loved that I got my idea to work in the end.

The idea came out of thinking up collaborative instructions people could follow after looking at similar assignments on www.learnigntoloveyoumore.com which was a huge creative project that anyone can produce an assignment for. One family I think did the whole 70 or so tasks it set!

I really enjoyed setting the instructions for this and emailing to family, friends and explaining it with other apprentices on my team at the gallery.

I would have to say that this part was maybe one of my favourite parts of the arts award and my experience at the gallery because it gave me an opportunity to explore a range of ideas and creativity with other people. Also, some of the reasons people have given me for the places they had chosen for the map were really nice to read, with some making me smile, and others making me laugh.

I really enjoyed finding out all the places they held dear to them, with all the memories they had attached to them, and it made me think about what it must be like if every place in the world were associated with personal memories and not just facts.

View my final project blog here: http://putitonamap.blogspot.com/