Hyndburn Borough Council Parks Department & Blaze
Artist collaborator wanted for Oak hill Park, Accrington
Hyndburn Borough Council
The parks department are currently submitting bids to develop a number of parks in the borough. In total there are eleven key parks four of which, have green flag status. As part of the funding, an element contributes to sustainability and in this case the council would like to use the monies to engage the local community and in particular young people in positive activities to help develop a sense of continued ownership of the park spaces. In particular working with young people who use the park during the holidays, evenings and weekends. They have been a number of incidents of vandalism in the parks and ‘tagging’ in a number of places and on property in the parks. This is both random tags and also some elements of experiments in graffiti pieces. In order to maintain a balance with the whole community and park users, the council would like to look at specific areas for graffiti to encourage young people to be free to create positive arts works and leave other areas of the parks for all to enjoy. There has been a history of projects over the last 10 years but there is a new crop of young artists keen to be directed and given the opportunity to work in contained areas.
The council currently have a successful and well supported green spaces forum which would like to develop a young persons perspective and it is hoped these projects will encourage more involvement in future developments of the local green spaces.
Blaze
Hyndburn Borough Council will be working in partnership with Blaze to develop cultural and arts activity in the area. Blaze is an ambitious youth-led culture and sport programme for Lancashire, Blackpool and the Fylde Coast that is part of WE PLAY, the North West cultural legacy programme for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
Young people from Clayton-le-Moors youth centre recently worked with Blaze to create a festival of Urban Culture that took place in Accrington skate park this summer. The event included grafitti art, MCing, DJing and break dancing as well as a BMX and skater competition. Blaze also worked with young people from the Civic Arts Centre in Oswaldtwistle to create an outdoor performance that lead people on a journey through the town.
Following on from the success of these events the young people are interested in continuing to create, commission and deliver more cultural arts activity in Hyndburn and will be involved in the selection of the artist for this brief. For more information on Blaze please visit the website below:
http://www.blazeonline.org.uk/
Artist Brief:
We are looking for an artist or arts organisation to deliver a series of workshops to develop and deliver a new graffiti wall in Oak Hill park, Accrington. The wall is in the tennis court area, which will shortly be redeveloped into a Multi use games area (MUGA). The wall will run along side the new development. We are currently looking at potential support through partnerships with local community groups and young peoples service, but currently any engagement may need to be delivered in isolation. Please see attached images.
Initial aims for the project are to:
· To engage with young people who use the park and are both creating negative graffiti and those who are budding graffiti artists.
· To deliver a series of graffiti art works along the wall leaving space to allow future work to take place as a focus and contained area for the young people’s artwork.
· To provide the opportunity for more young people to get involved in Blaze cultural and arts activities in Hyndburn
· To encourage interested young people to become more involved in activities linked to the green spaces forum as young producers.
Duration and Requirements:
The project budget is £2000 in total
The project needs to be delivered during the October Half term, but workshops and engagement could start before leading to the work being delivered during the school break.
The successful creative practitioner will be involved in planning, delivery and reflection with council, Blaze team. You will need to work within the council and Blaze ethos, building positive relationships with partners, and young people. You will also need to have a current CRB certificate (min 2 years) and public liability insurance.
We would hope to agree a project fee to include materials, travel and planning/contact time at the start of the project. This would be paid in 2 instalments – at the completion of planning and at the end of the project.
To apply:
Please provide an A4 (max 2 sides) outline, which may be bullet pointed, of the following:
o An outline of your experience, skills and attributes.
o A brief insight as to how you might approach this project.
o Any reference to websites, visual materials or practice that you would like us to see in order to exemplify your work.
o Names of two referees
o Deadline for application 5 PM Monday 27th September 2010
If selected you may be asked to attend an interview during that week 2010
Please send expressions of interest to:
Shirley Parkinson – Green Spaces Officer, Hyndburn Borough Council
Paul Hartley – Creative Agent, Blaze Team
Tel: 07967 671156