Artist call out for High Peak Community Arts youth programme

 

 

 

Junction Arts and six other arts organisations from the East Midlands are embarking on an ambitious, regional project called 'Our Place'.  

 

'Our Place' will commission 7 artist residencies in 7 communities across the region to co-create new work that is representative of place. This new work will be filmed by a commissioned filmmaker in a showcase feature of between 3-10 mins duration per community/residency and edited together for a final web broadcast of between 45-60 minutes long. The broadcast will be curated to showcase a diversity of artforms, content and communities that make up our diverse East Midlands, featuring each of the 7 individual pieces linked together by the theme ‘this is our place’. This brief is to work with High Peak Community Arts on one of these 7 pieces, described below. 

 

The full work will be premiered on Thursday 26th August as well as through a series of celebration events delivered by partner organisations over summer 2021. 

 

The project is inspired by ‘Our World’, the first live, global TV broadcast in June 1967 that connected five continents by satellite. The broadcast was conceived by the BBC and invited international artists to perform and represent their respective countries, culminating in a 2-and-a-half-hour celebratory broadcast involving 19 nations. Today, Our World is most famous for the segment from the UK, starring the Beatles who were asked to write an uplifting song to close the broadcast. The Beatles performed ‘All You Need is Love’ for the first time; an incredible response to the anti-war movement and ‘Summer of Love’.  

 

We are about to launch the 8th year of Tall Tales - music and performing arts project - working with 20 to 30 young people from two economically deprived estates in the High Peak. The project has an established artist team bringing skills in music (instrumentals and vocals), visual arts, creative writing, filmmaking, drama and dance.   

 

We are inspired by the feature of High Peak towns, that you can climb the nearest hill and see across to the other side of town, which made us think of ancient look-outs and beacon signals to warn of danger. 

 

From this starting point we are looking at the evolution of communications and the ways that different communities have found to connect throughout the ages. Since beacon fires, communication has moved on – letters, telegrams, semaphore, telephone, the satellite broadcasts of the 1967 Our World, and now the internet age. In our Easter sessions we also talked about how the pandemic has made our social circles smaller, and how we have relied on the internet to connect with the outside world, with its benefits and dark side. 

 

This brief is for an artist to work with a small group and the existing artist team to interpret an element of participants’ ideas in a new artform, producing work which can be both presented live and filmed. We are open to any new artistic influence, but imagine we are looking for a visual result to combine with the other artforms already being used – are we looking for pyrotechnics? A light show? An installation? Something to combine with a soundscape? 

 

A High Peak consortium are applying to the Community Renewal Fund, so there is also the possibility this work could be expanded to travel to other towns after its appearance in Our Place. If successful, this would give an additional budget of around £20,000. 

 

We encourage applications to broaden the diversity of our team, including workers from different cultural backgrounds, living with disability or with lived experience of mental ill health. Please get in touch to discuss any adjustments or support which would help you carry out this work. 

 

• Your artform skills and experience in producing work for an audience. 

• An example of the type of work that could be produced, understanding that you will be responding to the young people’s material as it progresses. 

• Your experience of working with young people, and the ways they can engage with your artform directly. 

• How the work could potentially be scaled up to travel to other towns. 

• The broad costs associated with your artform (equipment, materials, time commitment). 

   

We will shortlist these proposals blind by separating them from the cover sheets, so please do not include any personal information in the proposal. Send your application to: sophie@highpeakarts.org. If shortlisted we will request a referee, who should be someone you have worked for in a paid or unpaid capacity. 

 

The successful artist will also need to show a DBS certificate dated within the last 3 years, or apply for one before starting work. On contracting we will supply our Safeguarding Policy & Guidelines; Equality, Diversity & Inclusion Policy and Code of Conduct for Workers. Please request these if you would like them before applying.

 

Location: Travel to High Peak, mainly Glossop & Buxton Artist residency: June-August 2021 

Fee: £3,000 (including VAT, travel, materials and equipment)

 

Deadline for applications:  Friday 4th June 

Notification of shortlisting: Thursday 10th June 

Interviews by Zoom:  Thursday 17th June, 7pm