Solent UniversityShowcase Gallery

Showcase Gallery – 2017 Case Study 1 - Small Faces

Showcase Gallery Small Faces • Small faces – the gallery evolving into a participatory space

• No control of the outcome

• Open and accessible – nobody turned away

• Lots of advance outreach

• Lots of use of social media to engage a wider audience

• Employing local artists

• Visiting lots of local groups

Showcase Gallery Small Faces

Showcase Gallery Small Faces • 7,000 people submitted

• Personal stories

• All ages, all abilities, artists alongside toddlers

• Contemporary art installation – very important to still retain the look of a contemporary gallery space

• Whole gallery transformed from floor to ceiling, installation was about the whole, not just the individual

• Everybody welcome

Showcase Gallery Small Faces

Showcase Gallery - 2018Stand Together A collaborative community project with Kev Munday

Showcase Gallery - 2018One year on from Small Faces – what did we learn? What could we do next?

• Connected Communities - looking at Arts and Humanities Research Council programme - how we can build resilience through collaborative art practice. How do we use the arts as a means to increase community cohesion?

• Include – how do we link with new communities that we haven’t yet reached? Finding ways to invite new audiences into the space and make them feel welcome

• Support- How do we support local artists?

• Non-visual arts – How do we find ways to link art and non-arts practice to explore communities more deeply

• Experimental – ripping up the rulebook of how a gallery should function and working with new people and new mediums in the gallery space, how is it going to work?

• Voices heard– How do we ensure that people’s opinions are valued and heard?

Showcase Gallery - 2018Stand Together A collaborative community project with Kev Munday

• A participatory exhibition and artist residency that explores creative and co-operative connections across multiple communities in Southampton.

• Big Theme – Stand Together- covers many different issues, wide ranging

• Support – Artist-in-Residence with Hampshire based artist Kev Munday a site specific installation developed over 3 months. His work is based on diverse characters standing side by side on the canvas.

• Non-visual arts – inviting in experts in other disciplines to encourage greater debate across a wider audience. Gallery ‘takeovers’ that bring people into the gallery from all walks of life.

• Inclusion – off site projects, co-creation space to offer space for people to use, comment on and be heard on topics that matter to them. Schools and community workshops developing work that is then featured in the gallery within the artist’s work. As many groups as possible made to feel welcome and contribute

• Risk – accept not knowing how some of it will work and how some of it will look

“My goal is to make people think and smile at the same time and I hope that my work communicates as much to a seven-year-old kid as it does to a serious art collector.” Kev MundaySpace for local artist to develop and learn, an artist who incudes others into his work

Showcase Gallery - 2018Case Study 1 – Stand Together a collaborative community project with Kev Munday

• Connected Communities

• We all belong to communities - at home, in our neighbourhoods, at work, at school, through voluntary work, through online networks, and so on. Communities are vital to our lives and wellbeing. But their importance means we need to understand their changing place in our lives, their role in encouraging health, economic prosperity and creativity, their history and their future.

• The AHRC is leading on Connected Communities, a cross-Council programme designed to help us understand the changing nature of communities in their historical and cultural contexts and the role of communities in sustaining and enhancing our quality of life.

• The programme seeks not only to connect research on communities, but to connect communities with research, bringing together community-engaged research across a number of core themes, including community health and wellbeing, community creativity, prosperity and regeneration, community values and participation, sustainable community environments, places and spaces, and community cultures, diversity, cohesion, exclusion, and conflict.

ACTIVITY 1: Artist in ResidenceArtist: Kev Munday

• 3 month residency – gallery was his studio space

ACTIVITY 2: Artists in Schools and Community Groups

• Working offsite with 11 schools/colleges and 21 community groupsto make work that explores the term “Stand Together,"

• Linking with PSHE Curriculum.

• Response work collected and brought back to the gallery where Kev Munday incorporated into bespoke artwork.

ACTIVITY 3: Stand Together projects in the City

• Public artwork in non-traditional spaces

• 2 billboards. Schools worked with an artist to respond to Munday’swork which was incorporated into 2 billboards.

• 10 bins. ‘Go! Southampton’ funded Munday to design and decorate bins around the city involving contributions from visitors to the gallery and a ‘Bin It In The Bin Trail’ around the city. Research will be undertaken in collaboration with Keep Britain Tidy to evaluate the impact of the project (Bin Beautification and Gamification) on litter management in the city.

ACTIVITY 4: Cross-Disciplinary Artist led Research/Gallery Takeovers

• Dance/ Music/ Health & Wellbeing/ Storytelling/ Embroidery/ BAME/ LGBTQI+

• ‘week takeovers’ by guest curators and experts in their field

• series of interdisciplinary workshops, seminars and events, researching the theme of Stand Together

• Gallery becomes a hub for these varied activities, giving wall space for visitors to contribute and explore the theme.

• Very diverse audiences

Nazneen Ahmed – Storytelling/Embroidery

• A contemporary Sandali was created based on Afghan tradition. Other quilts from the community in display

Visitors invited to embroider or decorate cloth in response to words on Co-creation wall about What Does Stand Together Mean to You?

Open events based on sharing and learning from others experiences

Junior Jones – Dance and Choreography

• Research- led dance based on themes of racism and Brexit

• In response to rise in racist crime

• Audience invited to contribute and comment

Soco – MusicCommunity singing groups and choirs based in gallery, open to join

Asten Holmes-Elliott – LGBTQI+

International Women’s Week

ACTIVITY 5: Co-Creation Wall

• Artists and Student Artists design activities/workshops

• Co Creation Wall in the gallery for the duration of exhibition aimed at all ages.

• Visitors can produce work on the wall in response to weekly questions around the theme of “Stand Together” encouraging participants to visit more than once.

Facts and Figures

• STATS – to date

• Additional public events & workshops organised during exhibition 40

• Number of young people engaged through workshops 400

• Of those young people, number who will receive a Discover Arts Award 300

• Schools and Colleges worked with 11

• Community groups engaged with 21

• Number of people engaged so far 2000+

• Example groups:

Society of St James Pathfinder Group / Afghani Women’s Association / Black Heritage Group / Breakout Youth LGBTQI+ / SEEDS Home Education Group / Point Community Choir / No Limits / TUVAA / Newtown Youth Group / Northam Youth Group / Mencap / Perlins Community Project

Stand Together for Health 9 – 13th April

• Southampton Healthwatch

• Final Takeover week to explore how health and wellbeing affects our local communities. Participatory space to express your views, activities, discussion and debate.

• 12th April – special events

• 1pm Knit One Change One knitting circle (non-knitters welcome) discussion about creativity,

health and wellbeing, plus try a spinning wheel.

• 4pm Gather Together short talks on health and community

• 5pm Finding your Voice with Maggie O'Connor – explore how singing can help you feel good

The role of a Gallery – a change of practice

• There is a distinct shift between gallery and audience

• The Director of the Tate,

“The museum will become a place for mental and even bodily exercise, exploring performance as public sphere. The audience will be invited to become a contributor to and a participant of the art on view. The displays of art from across the globe, regardless of geography, will allow new connections to be made, so we understand better our own place in the world.

As art is one of the most dynamic and engaged forms of human behaviour, the gallery/museum has to develop completely new types of exhibitions. As such, the museum will become less a restrained container, and more of an exuberant companion. When people step into the gallery, they don’t want to step out of their life. They want to get closer to it. The future gallery will be not empty, but full with new ideas, activities and people.”