THE CAFEmimaCentral SquareMiddlesbrough TS1 2AZ

Issue 1.Spring 2016

This is a project to collaboratively and publicly build an artwork installation of a community caf.

Beginning this Spring (like all things natural and organic) well be taking over the existing space - like a socially conscious gastronomic cuckoo, and serve throughout the atrium and garden.

The Cafe slow food restaurant by artist Luke Harding and the team at The Waiting Room is part of a new direction for mima to grow as a vibrant public and creative space, where food is as much an art as painting, potting or protomodern pre-ironic accelerationism.

As well as some of the best food in the land, well be making The Cafe itself through diy furniture making and open workshops; creating a warm, organic social space.

THE CAFE

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www.thecafe.spaceTel. 01642 245679

THE CAFE is a new restaurant and ongoing

art event for Middlesbrough Institute of

Modern Art by the people behind the

award winning Waiting Room

THE CAFE

NAMING THE CAFE

The tradition of art gallery cafs is to supply some nutrients to tired and cultured legs, or even, some might say, to lure innocents into the cloistered world of art with a frozen Panini in the hope of converting them to evangelical Gallery Goer.

But why have the caf as mere supplement to the Great Art when food itself is the oldest manifestation of culture known to mankind. At mima we consider art to be a process that takes many forms and can be found in ordinary life as much as the museum. Why not have the caf as an artist project? Why not have the caf as much a part of our programme as the exhibitions? Or perhaps the caf, as an artwork, could be part of our collection. This is why we were eager to commission Lukes Hardings proposals for a cafe artwork. After all there is a very extensive history of art as food and food as art, if we dont tell this story we are missing a trick.

As we drive towards a new chapter of mima as a Useful Museum, everything we do should be creative, of use, have effect and contribute to social change, even in the smallest ways. So lets begin this conversation, this work, like all good things, round the table.

Our initial response to the pre-existing cafe space within mima was to address asocial elements built in through its architecture. The space was hard, cold, and echoey - making it an uncomfortable place for people to sit and talk, (or to hear each other). Furthermore the existing caf had then been further disrupted with a highly designed aesthetic structure by Gijs Bakker, which offered optical beauty/fascination, but which cut through the room, creating an L shaped corridor, at the expense of any sense of communal dining and in fact at the expense of a real kitchen to cook in.

We are very lucky to be working with a group of visionary behind the scenes staff at mima and Teesside University, who have been alive to greater possibilities, and we thank them for being open to our ideas and extremely supportive in working with us to create the circumstances for something special.

THE CAFE AS AN ARTWORK

A word from oursponsor:Alistair Hudson, Director of mima

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*1 read on *2 please see competition on back page *3 more info to follow (this autumn)

BUILDINGTHE CAFEWORKSHOPS AND TALKSHOPS

CREATING A SOCIAL SPACE

In making a new social space at the heart of mima we are creating an intimate, warm and organic environment where caring sharing human exchanges will flourish. We are also making a slightly tongue in cheek, response to the idea of a community caf and community art; introducing a corny notion of community craft materials and aesthetics (abundant cork, papier mch, cardboard tubes and hessian; cheap, discarded, distressed and recycled stuff) and fostering participatory and facilitative approaches to realising the cafe as a social space and artwork.

The Cafe is presented as an artwork within the gallerys curatorial programme, and works in relation to mimas new purposeful social direction as the UK centre for Arte til (Useful Art). It will be a space for active doing, self organising, making and debating, and not just a passive environment for watching, absorbing, consuming and digesting.

Customers are invited to regard the life and function of the cafe through an ongoing series of happenings, workshops and events.

In creating a nuanced, intelligent space, whilst engendering and celebrating people-led, family-friendly/inexpert and inexperienced artists and aesthetics, we are facilitating a genuine ongoing critique of socially engaged arts practices, applied and functional art, community development, self sufficiency and Arte til itself.

We have planned three stages for establishing The Cafe, which serve as further invitations to regard its life and function in the community and its home in the art gallery:

1.) Building The Cafe*1

2.) Staging The Cafe*2

3.) Mockumenting The Cafe*3

Fluxus, Kaprows hep 60s Happenings, The Futurist Cookbook, Ruskins Migratory Cheese School, the Hull House Settlement ~ along with the modernist re-blurring of ordinary life and art,,, (as well as the recent artisanification of food) provide good art historical reference points for this experience. This is art that is interactive and collaborative, with many authors (where we are all simultaneously Flaneurs, performers and activists).

The Cafe is also a forum for political ideas however, and many of the events and activities we facilitate will assume a critical intercourse with politically loaded subjects; whether local, national or global. LH

Were publicly building The Cafe over the next few months, and inviting others to get involved in our process of diy, self sufficiency, and collaborative working. Weve planned a series of workshops for the spring and summer to build the structure and character of The Cafe; from its furniture, to the food that we serve, to our menus and graphics... as well as the cafes social life: activities, events and social exchange.

Were even holding sessions to find a new name for The Cafe; working with poets, artists and the community to explore ideas surrounding ethos and identity. And then! were hosting workshops by Wakefields (mobile) Neon Workshops) to make a neon sign bearing our new name...

Hand crafted, homemade foodand furniture

THE CAFEOur new restaurant for mima will serve beautiful, wholesome food, based on our successful recipe for The Waiting Room vegetarian restaurant in Eaglescliffe.

Unlike The Waiting Room The Cafe will also serve organic free-range meats and responsible fish!

Were also bringing street food and outdoor events to mimas garden ~ Well be pitching our Glastonbury Hook a Duck Stall, a Woodburning Pizza Oven and Mobile Cocktail Lounge to create a punk cabaret festival vibe throughout the summer.

(Were trialling all of this on the Mayday bank holiday weekend - allez Tour de Yorkshire.

FESTIVAL FOOD

* Read more about Slow Foodvia www.thecafe.space

FOLLOW OUR PROGRESS ON INSTAGRAM at THISCAFEISART

ABOUT THE WAITING ROOM

Weve created hundreds of dishes over the past 30 years at The Waiting Room, using abundant fresh vegetables, wholefoods, and organic dairy; and using homely cooking methods, taking time to allow our flavours and textures to develop.

The Waiting Room is regularly commended locally and nationally. It has been included in The Observer top 40 UK restaurants on at least 5 occasions (inc: 2012, 2013 and 2014) Weve been recipient of The Best Restaurant in The UK award from The Vegetarian Society, and have been commended for excellence by the International Slow Food movement.

www.thewaitingroom.uk

HONEST TO GOODNESS GOOD CLEAN FUN natural, rustic and wholesome

LOOK OUT FOR WORKSHOPS AND MORE INFORMATION BY:

The Waiting Room Suma wholefood (co-op) Acorn Organic Dairy Vinceremos Organic Wines Skinningrove Fruit Wines Schoolhouse Brewery Sam Smiths Organic Beers Olivias Organic Bakery Tree Top Cordials Durham Gin Larchfield Community Farm Annas Happy Trotters (York) Alan Hodgson Fish (Hpool) Batleys Cash & Carry!

- more about FOOD in Issue 2.

DOING OUR OWN THINGWere creating an independent restaurant, serving gallery goers and townsfolk through the day and working to establish a fantastic restaurant and real-life event space when the gallery is otherwise closed.

Well be staging regular dinners and happenings; thoughtful and creative food events, and artful, social dining experiences. Throughout all of this well be developing beautiful slow food menus and original recipes.

Slow Food describes a holistic attitude

to growing, cooking and eating food,

that values food's social importance at every stage. *

Work is beginning in May to create a fantastic new theatre kitchen, bringing warmth, spectacle and great smells to the heart of the building.

OFFICIAL LAUNCH JULY 3RD 2016

The Cafe will also feature freshly made dishes from the Waiting Rooms vegetarian kitchen, and wonderful homemade Waiting Room bread.

Our suppliers include some brilliant local cottage industries, specialist producers and workers cooperatives. Many of them will be running workshops with us this summer, as part of our project to Build The Cafe...

GREAT BREAKFASTS FROM 8.30AM

BUILDING THE CAFE2.6.16 5.30-7.30pm FREECNC KRAFTWERK & OPEN SOURCE DISCUSSIONAdam Clark and Luke Harding 4.6.16 11-3pm FREEGLAZE PAINTINGNew Linthorpe Pottery

5.6.16 11am-4pm 2*

SCRABBLE DRIVE OVERDRIVE tournament, club, tips and coaching with the reign-ing World Scrabble Champion; Middlesbroughs very own Craig Beevers.

14.6.16 TUESDAY SOCIAL I* FREE FOOD *

Hungry? Interested? Inaugural event 6pm

18.6.16BUILD SHELVESwith Team Cafe

19.6.16 10-3pmMAKE CHUTNEYS 10with The Waiting Room crew

19.6.16 10-3pm 10*

MAKE BREADwith The Waiting Room crew

3.7.16 2pm-4pm 10*MAKE GIN with Durham Gin

20.6.16 9am-6pm 50MAKE CRAFT BEERComplete day course with Schoolhouse Brewery

21.6.16 TUESDAY SOCIAL II* BORO SOUP SPECIAL *

9.7.16 - 30* (Usual price 75)NEON WORKSHOP - with The Mobile Neon Workshop2 hour intro session. Learn the basics of this beautiful illuminating art. (14+)

10.7.16 30**MAKE OUR NEON SIGNHelp us to design and create a Neon sign for The Cafe window - learn mad skills - (6 people) (must also attend Saturdays neon Workshop)

23.4.16 12-4.30pm 7*MAKE CAFE SALT & PEPPER POTS with New Linthorpe Pottery 1.5.16 & 2.5.16 ALL DAY

(TOUR DE YORKSHIRE)Bicycle circus + high performance street food

5.5.16 5pm-7pm FREE MAKE A PIZZA OVEN Our first design and planning session to build a woodburning pizza oven - using Linthorpe Clay.

12.5.16 5.30-8.30pm 3*BUILD A CAFE TABLEwith Boosbeck Industries

15.5.16 1.30-3.30pm 5*MALFORM & SLIPGLAZE A TEAPOTNew Linthorpe Pottery

19.5.16 6-8.30pm FREENAMING THE CAFE 1.APPLIED POETRY EVENT

21.5.16 10-12.30pm FREEUNMAKING READYMADESTurning manufactured objects into craft objects. Luke Harding

23.5.16 GIG Adv Tickets 8THE BURNING HELL + Dressed Like Wolves

23.5.16 Pint of Science I 524.5.16 Pint of Science II25.5.16 Pint of Science IIIBoffin Cafe Talks from 6pm

26.5.16 - Spoken Word 4Electric Cool Aid Cabaretwith comperes Bob Beagrie & Andy Willowby a wild lineup & open mic.

WORKSHOPS & EVENTS

The process to Build The Cafe puts the existing space into a particular state of flux for 3 months from April 2016 through to the end of June. During this time we will be altering the space, making furniture, creating a theatre kitchen, helping to establish a community kitchen garden, stocking our shelves with homemade chutneys and pickles, and planning future activities and events. We will host events to discuss our manifesto and even rename the cafe, (and then make a neon sign). Well be serving a tasty makeshift menu throughout this time.

Through building The Cafe were exploring entwined themes of social making, community craft, manufacture and unmaking; recycling, reappropriation, and collaboration - and creating a warm, organic atmosphere for our space, with a busy buzz.

The Cafe is an independent enterprise organising an independent programme of events and activities. We will often collaborate with mimas wider programme and are pleased to be part of mimas exciting vision for an active building with diverse community usership.

Come and share the joy of twee at a special twee coffee morning. Bring your twee activity; hobby crafts, and mindful twoddle... knitting, nattering, cutting

out, sticking, darning - do your thing twee brigade!

Drink from shabby vintage china.Meet others and plan future activities.

Special guests, Q & A, and a nice cup of twee.

Friday May 27th 10am

BUILDING THE CAFETHE TUESDAY SOCIAL

Were rocking a social night every Tuesday from 6pm - exploring social eating and social action - through food, art and conversation. INCLUDING...

F R E E F O O DPAULO GOLDSTEINREPAIR IS BEAUTIFUL 4 day course - 100* 07.9.16-10.9.16 or 12.9.16-15.9.16

Were cooking up a FREE FOOD social eating event every other week.

ALL WELCOMEWere taking delivery of supermarket surplus and cooking up a three-course storm! every other Tuesday. Eat for free or pay what you can* and help us to consume some of the 340,000 tonnes of surplus UK food production (each year). BEGINNING 14.6.16

Paulo Goldstein designs and makes beautiful furniture through repair. Well be collecting broken, discarded chairs throughout the summer, and then work with Paulo to make new chairs for The Cafe using reappropriation, improvisation and wit! A joyful celebration of imagination, seeing the good in that which has been disregarded, caring and repairing. Instinctively inventive, Goldstein has also been employed as a kinetic sculptor on stop motion projects such as Wes Andersons Fantastic Mr. Fox, Tim Burtons Frankenweenie and Aardmans Shaun the Sheep 2. His work can be seen, and sat on in The Cafe from May.

More workshops and events to be arranged throughout the summer...e.g... DO KINTSUGI with Emma DO COLLAGE with Luke

...Were adding more workshops and events after going to print with this newsletter.

Were also booking more bands and artists with a strong creative diy ethic this Summer ~ just like:Josie Long, Thomas Truax and Jeffrey Lewis - see page 7.

Keep updated by checking our website... join our email list and

20.7.16 (Eve) 7pm-10pm 10MAKE FREE BEER Superflex Licence. Join us as we make Free Beer - as in Free Speech - taking forward the Superflex Project to make beer with an open licence in much the same way that free software is distributed, and as ideas are proliferated. Take beer home. Stock mimas shop.

TBC THIS SUMMER...

MAKE FRUIT WINE with Skinningrove Fruit Wines

MAKE SOURDOUGHwith Olivias Organic Bakery

MAKE BUTTER with Acorn Dairy

MAKE JAM with us

Boro Soup brings people together to discuss good ideas to benefit the community, and redistributes all money raised.

Get with the project!at www.thecafe.space

BORO SOUP SPECIALTuesday June 21st - From 6pm - The Cafe, mima

PAY 3, EAT SOUP, VOTE (or pitch a good idea, eat soup, get votes)

COMMUNITY KITCHEN GARDEN Calling all gardners, volunteers, groups, hoes and rakes. Work with mima to develop this outdoor community space, in the centre of town. Meeting every Tuesday evening, and throughout the week Contact mima, ask for Elinor

9.8.16 COMMUNITY GARDEN PARTY with Pizza Oven

Terms & ConditionsWorkshop details can be found at www.thecafe.space, together with tickets and our Ts & Cs. Well often offer a trade-off in exchange for you helping us to Build the Cafe (as well as a great experience)... such as a free lunch, or free art object, or your name in lights. The process to build The Cafe offers opportunities for collaboration, and a way of regarding the social life of the space inside the gallery.

5% of our profits (and 20% of our tips!*)go towards Cafe art activities and events.

Weve been really interested to consider Adam Clarks elegant Boosbeck furniture, which will also feature in The Cafe. Supported by mima, Adam is working to establish a furniture making social enterprise in Middlesbrough, referencing the original Boosbeck Industries; an attempt to establish a Bauhaus influenced furniture production industry, in East Cleveland in the 1930s.

Inspired by Adams ideas for utilising CNC routing as a craft maker process, we fancied exploring this technology creatively, to craft handmade individually designed tables with our chosen materials. Weve used CNC to cut into a finished shop bought product to reveal the manufactured construction of the readymade product, treating it as a raw material for a new object.

Our cork tables are also designed to help create the idea of the cafe as a place for doing things (making, playing, conversing) as well as eating, and where tactility and intimacy are important.

OPEN SOURCE & OPEN ACCESS, FREE TABLES TO FREE BEER TO FREE YOUR MIND!

The cork tables shown here were designed and made by Luke Harding. The proposal for the cress table was made by Hannah Doucet. Customers are invited to suggest new designs and to find out more about CNC in our workshop sessions.

We have planned some collaborative events with New Boosbeck, to look at the idea of industry and manufacture, faced with new open source opportunities for self sufficiency and for makers to download and construct do-it-yourself objects, whilst considering social and political implications of social employment and social enterprise,(as well as manufacture and industrial production versus art and craft.)

Give us your designs while you have

your lunch - paper and pens available.

TABLES & CHAIRS

These themes are echoed as we set up a beer making course - and sessions to create Free Beer - under licence from the artist group Superflex, and seek to profit from their free recipes, ideas and supercool branding.

From the sublime to the ridiculous... often off-beat, occasionally on the one,

The Waiting Room brings you experi-

mental and leftfield performers and

extraordinary happenings...

(Our mantra since 2000) Weve put on hundreds of incredible artists at THE WAITING ROOM. From obscure and experimental inventors of sound, to folk heroes, comic book heroes and world slam cham-pion poets... Weve thrown nights with Peggy Seeger, Stewart Lee, Josie Long, Martin Carthy, Dave Swar-brick, Malcolm Middleton,Mistys Big Adventure,Simon Donald, Emily Barker, John Bishop,John Otway... and hun-dreds more incredible better and lesser known ORIGINAL artists. Well be bringing this experience and even more elaborate and ill-considered commotion to The Cafe and Atrium.

OPEN SOURCE & OPEN ACCESS, FREE TABLES TO FREE BEER TO FREE YOUR MIND!

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SCHOOLHOUSE BREWERY

WEVE SET UP SOME COURSES WITH GRAHAM GANNAWAY OF DARLINGTONS SCHOOLHOUSE BREWERY - MAKER OF OUR WAITING ROOM SPECIAL BREW, (BRIGHT AND Vegan SUITABLE - FILTERED THROUGH 7 LAYERS OF PAPER) LEARN THE ART OF MAKING CRAFT BEER FROM AN EXPERT

Performance Art

New Linthorpe Pottery celebrates the hand in hand-made, and the raw malleable potential of the clay from Middlesbroughs ground. Creating beautiful tactile objects with a distinct human imprint.

COMING UPAT THE CAFE... THE BURNING HELL MAY 23rd WITH DRESSED LIKE WOLVES

THOMAS TRUAX JULY 21st

JOSIE LONG AUG 7th

JEFFREY LEWIS iro AUG 24th tbc

Weve been putting on regular Sunday nightshebangs for over 15 years - but should give a special shout out here to our friend and alt-local radio personaility - The compere extraordinaire Bob Fischer - who has super charged Sunday evenings for the past year. As our promoter in residence hes been packing regular sell out nights, whilst fash-ioning unique/one-off shows with a particuar penchant for cult childrens TV entertainers such as Trevor and Simon, and Sandra Kerr of Bagpus.

STAGING THE CAFE

A NEW SLOW FOOD RESTAURANT ARRIVING THIS SUMMER

COMPETITION: Staging The Cafe SET DESIGN... Were holding a competition to design a stage set to frame The Cafe as it is viewed by people looking in through the gallery window. The installation will invite people to view The Cafe as an artwork.

The Waiting Roomvegetarian restaurant

Spring Menu now being beautiful

9 Station Road,Eaglescliffe

Tel 01642 780465

www.thewaitingroom.uk

More details about this competition, and entire project can be found at www.thecafe.space

Full daytime cafe service from July,regular evening dining from September

The Waiting Room presents:

THE BURN

ING HELL

: May 23

THOMAS T

RUAX: Ju

ly 21

JOSIE LONG: Au

gust 7

JEFFREY

LEWIS: A

ugust 24