Tag: Julie Myers

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.

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

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.”