Category: Lift the Lid – The Great Light & Dark Show – Totland

Lift the Lid - Back & Forth - East Cowes, Lift the Lid - The Great Light & Dark Show - Totland, Lift the Lid - The Ventnor Giant - Ventnor, Lift the Lid - We that Breathe - Newport, Lift the Lid Project

LtL Artists Notebooks

Sarah Girling

Take a look inside the Artists’ Digital Notebooks and Lift the Lid on Island Culture

Whilst many people are still in lockdown and children off school, now is the perfect time to ‘take a look inside’ the fabulous Lift the Lid Digital Notebooks

From the comfort of your home you can explore not only pieces created by the artists around the four corners of the Isle of Wight, but also an explosion of creativity from Islanders in response to the commissioned artists.

The Artists’ Digital Notebooks are the lasting legacy of the successful Lift the Lid on Island Culture project. They showcase artworks, films, storytelling, poetry and more, including pieces that can’t be seen elsewhere.

The project worked closely with the commissioned artists* to create their individual Digital Notebooks. Each was styled by the artists, who also curated what was in them, telling the story of their own projects and sharing the fantastic outcomes.

Take a look inside 

Many Islanders who took part in the project through schools, community groups or organisations will get the chance to see if they can spot themselves in any of the photos or films.

If you head over to the Lift the Lid Digital Notebooks you can listen to children from primary schools tell the stories they created – with the help of Isle of Wight storyteller, Sue Bailey – in response to Phlegm’s glorious Ventnor Giant. 

The much-loved three-storey mural can be seen at the entrance to Ventnor’s town centre and has sparked the imagination of all ages. You can also discover the photos of paintings and clay sculptures created by young Islanders inspired by Phelgm’s work.

Dmitri Galitzine’s documentary work explored the relationship between the people of East Cowes and the ferry company. Titled Back and Forth, Dmitri’s documentary triggered some incredible responses from young Islanders when they worked with Isle of Wight Artists Ian Whitmore and Chris Jenkins exploring heritage, culture and the theme of ‘The Future’. As well as Dmitiri’s full length film, you can watch never-seen before outtakes and flick through his great observational photos from his time spent in East Cowes.

Light and Dark is the title of Julie Myers’ project. With a sharp focus on collaboration with local communities, Julie delved into the West Wight community, working with eight different groups and organisations, as well as with primary school children and local artists. Check out the fun that was had making enlargergrams, light paintings and photograms, and listen to original music created by the young people. Julie ended her project with a film charting her artistic process and the public event.

BearFace Theatre CIC were the fourth commission and worked in Newport with a school, a women’s centre and the Hospice. Using playful theatrical tasks, puppetry, art, poetry and music, We That Breathe found common threads of interest from which inspiring stories were created. Read the poem that was created by the vibrant group at Mountbatten and flick through photos of the workshops and performances.

What is Lift the Lid on Island Culture?

With the ambition to reignite a sense of pride and passion in our cultural heritage, this two-year Arts Council-funded project focused on four new public art commissions on the Island.

The project was led by the Isle of Wight Cultural Education Partnership and involved schools, artists, community groups, arts and heritage organisations, with local community workshops and school sessions.

Positive impact on Island communities

Jacqui Cusack, Arts Manager at Quay Arts, lead partner of the Cultural Education Partnership who commissioned the art said

“Lift the Lid on Island Culture has been about exploring the cultural heritage of the Island through art commissions in unexpected places and we’re so pleased with the result.”

Project manager, Sarah Girling, said,

“It’s been great to be involved with (delivering) this project, to see such creativity from Islanders, but also the positive impact that the artists have had in the communities that they have worked with around the Isle of Wight.”

The Lift the Lid Digital Notebooks were available to view at Quay Arts as part of the Great Leap Forward Exhibition, which due to the Coronavirus lockdown had to close its doors in March. The Quay has taken a huge drop in income, but you can show your support by making a donation via their Website

Lift the Lid Digital Notebooks can be found online at https://liftthelidnotebooks.com/

* All artists except Phlegm were involved with the design of their notebooks

With thanks to ‘On the Wight’ for their website development skills.

Lift the Lid - Back & Forth - East Cowes, Lift the Lid - The Great Light & Dark Show - Totland, Lift the Lid - The Ventnor Giant - Ventnor, Lift the Lid - We that Breathe - Newport, Lift the Lid Project

The Great Leap Forward

Sarah Girling

LIFT THE LID ON ISLAND CULTURE CELEBRATORY EXHIBITION

Quay Arts, West Gallery

Saturday 8 February – Saturday 18 April 2020

Opening Event: Sat 8 Feb, 12 – 2 pm

The Great Leap Day: Sat 29 Feb, 10 am – 2 pm

Free, all welcome!

A group exhibition of work created by local school children from across the Island reflecting upon the heritage of the Isle of Wight and theme of ‘The Future’, drawing inspiration from, and celebrating the Lift the Lid project and commissions.

Art work created by a student at St Saviours School

Artists Ian Whitmore and Chris Jenkins worked with Island schools; St Saviours, Queensgate, Nine Acres, St Catherine’s, The Island Free School and Barton Primary to create work for this exhibition exploring heritage, culture and the theme of ‘The Future’. Taking inspiration from the four Lift the Lid public art commissions created on the Island earlier last year, the artists and young people invite you the viewer to consider what cultural heritage means to you and what might be left in the future for others to discover.

Join us on Saturday 8th February from 12 – 2pm, as we open the exhibition to the public and on 

Saturday 29thFebruary from 10am – 2pm, for an interactive day of fun to celebrate the Leap Year.

At Quay Arts on Saturday 29 February from 10am – 2pm, Lift the Lid artists will be hosting workshops and performances to celebrate The Great Leap Forward exhibition, the end of the Lift the Lid on Island Cultureproject and to consider the future of cultural heritage on the Island through the eyes of young people.  We’d love everyone to get involved by either coming to the event on online through social media.

We will be stating: 

“This is IW Culture” and asking the question “Is this IW Culture?”

We’d like to explore this by presenting many types of what we might consider IW culture, e.g. glass blowing, sand art, poetry and fiction about the sea and the coastline, folk music, new art including the Ventnor Giant, etc.

We’ll be presenting a short film by Sassy Productions IW capturing what children and young people think IW Culture is.

This hashtag #LetsCreate has been used by the Arts Council England to share their new 10 year strategy. For The Great Leap Day we will use #LetsCreateIW (ACE SW have approved this use).

Lift the Lid social channels to follow/direct users to, before and on the day:

Community leaders can access a social media plan here and there’s a youth leader’s version.

Lift the Lid - Back & Forth - East Cowes, Lift the Lid - The Great Light & Dark Show - Totland, Lift the Lid - The Ventnor Giant - Ventnor, Lift the Lid - We that Breathe - Newport, Lift the Lid Project

Lid lifted on four new art commissions for the Isle of Wight

Sarah Girling

Around 60 guests were presented with 4 new art commissions created as part of the Lift the Lid project on Sunday 15 September 2019, 2pm at Quay Arts.

Lift the Lid: A Look Inside was an event especially for people who were involved in any of the art commissions and the audience represented a number of those including those from Totland Parish Council, East Cowes Town Council and Ventnor Exchange.

Sue Bailey retells a story about the Ventnor Giant

Guests were treated to a story inspired by Phlegm’s Ventnor Giant mural, presented by storyteller Sue Bailey and created by pupils from an Island school. The Great Light and Dark Show, an event in Totland by artist Julie Myers back in June 2019 was represented by a film documenting both the event and the people of Totland. BearFace Theatre CIC then performed ‘We that breathe’, a community theatre show inspired by folklore stories from The Sacred Isle’s Paul Wilson, workshops with residents at Mountbatten Hospice and those involved with WOW Women’s Centre in Newport, with help from a puppet workshop at Barton Primary. Finally the audience were shown a excerpt from Dmitri Galitzine’s film Back and Forth, featuring many of East Cowes residents. 

So what’s next for Lift the Lid? Jacqui Cusack, Arts Manager at Quay Arts, lead partner of the Cultural Education Partnership who commissioned the art said

“The past year has been about exploring the cultural heritage of the Island through art commissions in unexpected places and we’re so pleased with progress. Now we are focusing on helping teachers get to grips with OFSTEDs mandate to build cultural capital in children and young people, and so we have expanded our annual Cultural Expo event to a full blown conference featuring the well-known educationalist Professor Mick Waters. We’ll be at Oakfield CE Primary School in Ryde on Friday 11 October, and I’d like to invite all headteachers and arts coordinators, plus school governors with a focus on the arts, to join us for this inspiring day.”

Lift the Lid - The Great Light & Dark Show - Totland, Lift the Lid Project

St Saviour’s Primary School & the Isle of Wight Music Hub create ‘space’ for music…

Sarah Girling

A Case Study from the Isle of Wight Music Hub

Pupils explore creating music with iPads

This term the Isle of Wight Music Hub were delighted to work with St Saviours Catholic Primary School in Totland on a very special music project composing music for The Great Light and Dark Show one of four art commissions for Lift the Lid, led by artist Julie Myers.

The Music Hub challenged Pupils in Years 5 and 6 to compose some original music to underscore the event with themes of space and an exploration of ‘dark’ and ‘light’ within that. The Hub provided two curriculum specialist workshop leaders to run a day of activities composing music using iPads for this. In the morning session students used the iPad app Garage Band to create mysterious soundscapes depicting the infinite darkness of space before the ‘Big Bang’ took place. Students worked in groups using a mixture of iPads and real percussion instruments facilitated by workshop leaders. The music was then played live in groups and as a whole ensemble and recorded. In the afternoon session we continued to use the iPads with some additional music-making apps such as Launchpad to create the chaos and explosion of light that happened in space after the ‘Big Bang’. The recordings that were taken on the day were then passed on to be played at The Great Light and Dark Show on Saturday 22 June alongside some students from the school also performing their original compositions live.

St Saviours had not previously used technology in this way and were extremely impressed with the versatility of the iPads as a tool for music making.  Although the hub provided the iPads for this project the school had a number of their own and while in situ we were able to help teachers to download the apps we were using on the day and give them a little training on how to continue using them in this way for music-making in the future.  The pupils also found it particularly engaging to write music in this way and the outcomes and recordings from this session really were fantastically evocative of space.

Pupils perform live at the Great Light and Dark Show in Totland.

The Great Light and Dark Show in Totland was one of four art commissions for Lift the Lid and was presented as an afternoon of art, science, local history and fun with presentations by numerous island science, arts and community groups alongside ourselves and the school.  This was a great example of how partnership working can benefit schools by enhancing their music provision as well as linking them to their local community organisations.

Nia Collins IOW Music Hub Relationship Manager

“This was a wonderful project and a good example of how the hub likes to tailor our music provision to each school based on their specific needs.  Not only were the musical outcomes of such high quality but we were also able to build in some CPD for staff at the school helping to ensure legacy from this project”

Lift the Lid would like to thank both the Isle of Wight Music Hub and St Saviour’s Primary for their help in making The Great Light and Dark Show a success.

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Announcing the Lift the Lid art commissions

Sarah Girling

I can now tell you that the selection panel met on Thursday 1st November at the John Hansard Gallery, in Southampton, and chose the three remaining artists commissions for Lift the Lid, which will be completed in 2019.

Ventnor Giant Mural by the artist Phlegm
Photograph by Julian Winslow

A multi-channel film installation, a piece of community theatre and the launch of a community lecture series will all be created to celebrate the unique cultural heritage of three towns on the Island in 2019 as part of Lift the Lid. This follows the highly successful street art of The Ventnor Giant by Phlegm, commissioned in partnership with Ventnor Exchange and launched at the Ventnor Fringe in August 2018.

As part of a rigorous process, led by a selection panel of renowned curators; Jo Bushnell from Aspex Gallery, Portsmouth, Stephen Foster from John Hansard Gallery, Southampton, Georgia Newman from Quay Arts, Newport and Lucy Day from A Woman’s Place project, the following artists have been chosen:

A combination of Arts Council England, Artswork and Isle of Wight Council funding will enable these projects to go ahead, resulting in community art works that can be accessed by a wide range of people.

Artist, Julie Myers explains her proposal for Totland: “Live from The Parish Hall – Totland is a series of thematic performance events. Inspired by the format of the Victorian popular science lectures the series presents current social and environmental concerns through the stories and experiences of local people, including, a child’s fossil collection, a walk with an astronomer, a slide show about light pollution, a set of old postcards, pin hole cameras, forgotten songs, a cup of tea at the old lifeboat house. Hosted by local residents the talks combine video, photographs, personal artefacts, archive material, music and refreshments. The inaugural event: LIGHT AND DARK will be presented and broadcast live from the Parish Hall in May 2019.”

BearFace Theatre CIC will be developing a co-created piece of theatre with the communities of Pan that will focus on its layered heritage. BFT said:

“Using participatory arts based workshops to discover and co-develop narratives as well as make material for the performance, we will be delving into Pan’s past, its present and importantly its future and our part within it… with our new project ‘We that breathe…’. With a mix of playful interaction, puppetry, original soundtracking and live music and a Dragon thrown in for good measure, BearFace Theatre will bring the finished performance collaborated with all who we have met to a space near you in Pan in September 2019.”

Dmitri Galitzine will present a new multi-channel film installation, shown in an old shipyard in East Cowes, during Heritage Open Days 2019 (from 13 to 22 September 2019). The film will be based around the Red Funnel Ferry and East Cowes dockyard.

Working over several months, the artist will document all aspects of the ferry’s day to day crossings, the harbour, passengers and crew. And in doing so, he will attempt to unravel what the ferry means to the people of East Cowes and the symbiotic relationship between them.

The artist writes,

“The ferry has been the island’s gatekeeper for over a century. And it is part of the fabric of East Cowes, its history and heritage. The identity of any islander depends upon the body of water which engulfs them. And it’s the Red Funnel that can get them across it, in East Cowes. For some, every day back and forth. And back and forth again.”

 

LtL Project Manager, Sarah Girling said:

“The hope is that all of these new art works will excite and inspire the people of the Isle of Wight to find out more about their cultural heritage. There is opportunity for lots of local people to get involved through schools and community groups, let alone being audience members. 2019 is going to be a fantastic year for arts and culture on the Island.”