belper well dressings 2013

yet again there were many magnificent wells on display in the river gardens.  it was noted that the exceptional heat had effected some of the wells, however this did not stop the enjoyment of viewing those wells on show.







here is a selection of my favourites

#belperarttrail at the 2013 food festival

what a magnificent day it was.

we knew from previous festivals that being present in the crowds is a great way to meet and chat with people, both who already knew about the trail and those that didn't.





our stall was on king street just opposite the council building and it proved to be a good location for all day shade.

postcard by jo kirk

as the festival opened there was very early sales for the crisp stall next door and much humour generated by the names of the beers on the other side. on  a personal note i spent the first two hours preferring that our stall was in an area that had other stalls offering information and opportunity.  

as the day progressed the ill feeling eased as i saw a pattern emerge of a steady increase in interest in the art trail.

the other pattern i definitely noticed were the groups of people taking a map. year on year i saw alot more groups of four taking a map and leaving the stall in full on discussion about the trail and the whereabouts of the venues.

mid way through the day we were joined by artist jo kirk who headed up the activity to "make a postcard from belper". we had lots of children and several adults who took some time out to create their very own postcard. we all enjoyed the smiles from the children at their creations and the deliberation that were started when asked "who are you going to send this to?"

postcard by andrew martyn sugars

throughout the day we received much feedback and i'm happy to report that it was almost unanimously positive.  here's a small selection of the comments that i can remember:

"a lady from the walking group told me about the art trail"

"i'm from matlock and i go to wirksworth quite a bit"

"can you go round this in the week? there's too much to do"

"there's an art trail as well"

"it''s really inventive"

"what a great idea"

"fantastic"

postcard by jo kirk

shortly before 2pm the current mayor of belper came over and said hello.  i can't remember talking so easily to a person in public office. she had many praising and encouraging words and has offered a photo opportunity with any of the works in the trail for the artists and venues.  i asked her about the track day fund raiser for the drop inn. her photo came out of her bag and we chatted at length about the endeavour.

so looking back on the day as a whole, i did start off being a little disappointed at the low level of interest in the trail. i accept now that actually the day was a food festival after all and those early visitors were looking to buy quality food.

as the day progressed there was a steady flow of interested people and overall there was an increase year on year in interested people.

just before we packed up for the day we spoke to one of the exhibiting venues. they reported that they were pleased to have opened (normally they did not open on a sunday) and had seen a lot of visitors and had made sales "it was a good day"

as i said yesterday to so many people, the trail is on today and the works are on show until next sunday.

postcard by jo kirk

[edit] we also spoke to a gentleman who was the quality control manager of the north mill. we spoke at length about the mill and what he did and personally i really enjoyed listening and talking with him.[edit]

feedback from in bloom judge

today belper has hosted the regional judges for this years in bloom competition.


i was lucky enough to be invited to the lunchtime reception at the town council offices where we listened to a couple of speeches from john nelson and one of the judging panel.


after the speeches one of the judges came up to me with big smiles and sat and chatted about the two works on the trail in the outdoor spaces.


the lady judge was complimentary about the trail and i thanked her for her feedback.


i believe that the lettuces in the memorial gardens are now ready to eat ....



( note : i feel this above many others demonstrates my dsylexic tendancy to bounce quickly from one subject to another)

greetings from ........ belper

is a participatory activity that we're running at the belper food festival this sunday.

it's come about as a result of the june peer to peer meeting at which we met artist jo kirk. 





at the meeting she brought to the table an idea of a postcard based participatory activity to do at the food festival.


between us we've developed the proposition of making a postcard to send to a friend.

on the stall at the food festival between noon and 2pm will be jo with postcards, stencils, a rubber stamp, pencils and felt tips.  in fact all the components to make a "greetings from belper" postcard that you'll be able to take away and send to a friend. the activity is both for children and adults.

we think that making a postcard is a perfect accompaniment to our journey of favourites themed art trail.

on the stall on sunday we are also going to be handing out trail maps and the strutt's north mill entry discount vouchers.

we look forward to seeing you on sunday :)

the trail is there to be discovered.

after 9 days of installation, 3 months of deliberations and 5 months of the call out period we've reached the beginning of the journey of favourites.



i can now say i enjoyed the installation period as it is complete.  




needless to say there were countless conversations and sharing of ideas and all sorts of other things and the one thing i can't talk about is something that margaret rose was involved with yesterday in cardiff.  

this is because margaret is under contract with a tv production company and they have  insisted that nothing is said about what margaret was doing and in no way should there be any pre publicity of the thing that i remember i can't mention.

you can find margaret's work in a window on bridge street.

the evening before meet the artist

 

and i returned from an evening walk thinking i'd like to write down some stuff about the trail. 

sitting with my laptop to write i became aware of the achy limbs and overall fatigue from today's heat. i recalled the times back in january when i wrote about the snow.

it has been a long journey to get the trail to this point and i thank all those involved in getting it ready for their effort and patience for staying with the process.  

for me right now i'm too close to be reflective about the journey, in fact after my walk i'm tired and would really like a cup of tea.

the website description has been tweaked for new visitors and all that is left to do is ... well nothing really. there's  the odd tweak here and there to satisfy process end.

we still have some preparations to do for the stall at the food festival and that can wait till next week. my thoughts turn to tim as he prepares for tomorrow... the car packed and all things set to go.  we've has loads of really positive and complimentary feedback about the radio interview. i'll write about that...however not now as just maybe i should have something to drink and put my feet up.  after all ... all the hard work is done. 

radio interview

andrew, tim shore and ed stagg in the studio at bbc radio derby

sarah from strutt's north mill first came up with the suggestion that i should try to get onto the radio to chat about the trail. i chuckled and thought nothing more of it.

i bimbled away getting the things ready for the install and the more i thought about it the more i thought why not give it a go.  




in a very subtle manner i started communicating with andy potter of bbc radio derby and i have to say he was very cool about my subtle approaches.  the trump card of getting some interest came about after sarah was able to list tim shore's "meet the artist" event on the bbc things to do website.  i thought i could set sarah up with andy to talk about the event.

little did i expect that the response would came back that the programme would like to chat with tim and there to be someone there to talk about the trail too. i set about contacting tim and seeing if in his busy schedule he could find the time to commit to chatting on the radio.  i was really pleased after several phone calls that all was arranged and we were to go onto the afternoon show on wednesday.

day of the interview:

at a personal level i find it very difficult to fill the time before something starts to happen, so i was so relieved to see tim already at the studio when i arrived.  we caught up with things and happily chatted and i felt immediately at ease with him. our conversation transported me to another time and soon we were being called into the studio.

as we walked down the corridor i quickly negotiated with the producer for a photograph for the blog. ed was really happy to do this and i have to say we had quite  a fun time jogging around the studio to find a good spot in which to stand.

i was very nervous and this photo opportunity and subsequent banter helped me to ease some of the nerves.

we didn't really know how the interview was going to unfold and even though i felt this as it began i felt confident enough to engage with the opening question and the interview itself.  i know that my nerves are in part related to part of my dyslexia, that of processing information in real time. it's something that at times i find very difficult to do.

the interview is available on the iplayer until july 10th so rather than describe it all i'll leave you to listen to it http://www.bbc.co.uk/i/p01b1dnq/  scroll to about 2:12 into the programme, the music leads into the interview.



after the interview finished we both walked back to reception. i was certainly pleased that it seemed to go without a too many hitches. as i don't do this kind of interview very often i was a little short on reference points as to how well it had gone.  again in the moment of talking and thinking on my feet, i am aware that my dsylexia can at times grind me to a halt  when i have moments of processing hitches.  it was my biggest fear of doing the live interview that i would go completely blank and know not what to say.

that was yesterday.

today after the single installation meeting of the day, i have spent many hours really making the most of the opportunity to get the message out there about the trail. i did this for those artists showing so they can feel that their works are going to get as much publicity as possible. 

i did it for the businesses and venues talking part to demonstrate our commitment to attract an audience to the trail 

and

i did it for the audience as we don't yet know you yet and i wanted to show you enough of the trail to tickle your interest to come along 

and 

have a look 

and 

take some time 

to make you very own ...

journey of favourites.

setting up the trail day 4 ... .... .... questions, questions questions.

the recurring questions in today's installation endeavours were to do with has the teasing out the whose work is where got to a point of saturation?    the answers were as subjective as viewing the artworks themselves.  

we're working on the notion that until the trail goes live on july 8th the "who is where" is effectively unknown, except for downloading the trail guide in which you can read all about why the works are the artist's favourites.  i must also remember that we have that special preview event at the north mill on sunday when the artist will be available to chat about his work. i'll have more news about that tomorrow.

just tangettally for a moment our friends moon bullet are at the geogre and dragon on saturday. their style and delivery is a beautiful evolving thing. when we first saw them it was a punk ska thing. i see now that it's a funky punk thing. if you're free saturday night they are well worth a look. the beer is good at the pub too.

for lunch today i visited the river gardens. once again i had the joy of seeing the water level much lower than in previous visits. in some respect i prefer the look of the water course lower than higher.  what are your thoughts ?

today's discovery #belperarttrail

i had some time to wander before the last install of the day today.  i took some time to look at the things that ordinarily i perhaps wouldn't have the time to look at, like the station for instance.

as i walked to the venue to meet the artist and the staff of the shop i strolled along a street that i'd not ever had cause to walk along before.

to my amazement at the bottom of the narrow street complete with really old street furniture i came across the mural as shown in the accompanying picture.  i stood with it for a while and took in the magnificence of the image. i started to wonder who "gibsons" were and what all the products were in the window.

i took in the surrounding environment. the glow in the dark stars, the lady sitting in the window at a sowing machine and the small cctv cameras.

i returned to looking at the image. i started to wonder when it was made, who had made it and why was there a strip of wood near the base of the image.

happy with a discovery to accompany the other enjoyable memories of the day of introducing artists to business owners and being part of artistic fusions i happily (almost skipping ) strolled to the expectant shop.

in keeping with the slightly teasing nature of the blog as to who and where the trail combinations are in this year's trail i met the artist whose work is the only work this year to be situated on the first floor.  to discover where that is there's a trail guide available from the link on the right......

so there i am in the shop, chatting away about stuff and would you believe it .... the artist whose work we were about to install had been part of the mural creation. the coincidence was astounding.  we chatted about the mural and it's creation and i learnt a bit more about it.

still wanting to not be a spoiler... i'll leave it for the artist to tell the story of the mural for herself .... over to you ......