Call Out for Artists : Project eARTh , for projects September 2021 and onwards
High Peak Community Arts is looking for freelance artists to send in project ideas for Project eARTh, its programme for adults experiencing mental distress.
We encourage and welcome applications to broaden the diversity of our pool of freelance artists, to include artists from different cultural backgrounds, disabled artists, or those with lived experience of mental ill health. Please get in touch to discuss any adjustments which would help you carry out this work.
Project eARTh usually holds 2 groups per week, one in New Mills and one in Buxton. During the past year, we have instead used postal and home delivery arts kits, but are looking forward to face to face work in the near future. When this happens, we envisage still working in smaller groups (half of each group on alternate weeks) whilst covid restrictions necessitate.
The ethos of Project eARTh is based on participants’ collective working towards a common goal, to create artworks for the local community. We use many art forms and create public art works for indoor and outdoor spaces – railway stations, parks, woodland trails, GP surgeries, care homes, church halls, art centres etc. – or for publication/release. We have worked in ceramics, textiles, mixed media, occasionally steel (with extra funding); willow, glass, music, animation, photography….and are happy to embrace all artforms. We aim to work mainly on nature – based themes, as we appreciate that the natural world is integral to our wellbeing. We usually hold a celebratory event once artworks are installed / launched (on hold due to covid!).
At present we are still planning for a hybrid approach – creating individual kits for each participant, so avoiding the need to share materials and equipment. Ideally whilst social distancing is needed, projects will work such that participants have one week face to face, followed by one week at home when they will be able to continue with their artwork, so in addition to running workshops, we need artists to create activity sheets with instructions for participants to follow when at home. This method of working means that participants create part of a whole to be ‘joined’ at the end of a project ( e.g. individual pieces of embroidery, weaving, felting sewn together for a wall hanging, or quilt etc) or individual pieces to display together ( e.g a series of framed mixed media pieces, or writing to create a book). It might be that the artist also makes some short ‘how to’ films for participants who have internet access to watch at home, but the project cannot rely on these as few participants have internet access.
During Covid, both groups have worked on the same project at any time, but usually, there is the option to devise a project for either or both groups.
We look forward to a time when we can meet with full groups face to face every week, so project ideas that only work in this way, can be considered and held back until such a time as this is possible. E.g. A group of participants working together on a willow sculpture; fused glass which would not be safe or easy to do at home; writing and recording a song together. (Or it might be possible to conduct such projects in tandem with a home based one for the alternate weeks). All project ideas will be read by participants in our Project eARTh steering group, who then interview artists whose ideas they would like to explore further.
What we need from you:
- A project idea to make a collective work of art for a community setting or public release
- An idea of what setting this is appropriate for – e.g GP surgery; local park etc; the more specific the better.
- An idea of how many sessions the project would take. Each face to face session is usually two and half hours; and projects run anything from 4 – 12 weeks
- An idea of how much work the artist needs to do to prepare, in the background, and to ‘complete’ the artwork
- Artists who can travel to work in either or both settings (New Mills SK22 4BH, Thursdays 10.30am – 1pm and Buxton SK17 6PT, Mondays 12.30pm – 3pm).
- A budget based on costs of:
- Materials and equipment (50 participants at present, in both groups together, so for when working with individual kits, this needs to have 55 of everything to allow for new referrals; but if for a later date when all restrictions are lifted, enough to ‘share’) and installation costs
- The number of face to face sessions needed @£105 per workshop
- The number of half days @£105 needed for all non – contact work
- Travel costs at 40p per mile to the venues or public transport costs, up to £30 per session.
How projects work with small groups meeting on alternate weeks:
For what would usually be a five week project with the whole group, but has to be split ( it works more fairly if the original project length is an odd numbers of weeks !):
Week 1: First week with Group A, face to face
Week 2: First week with Group B: face to face; group A at home
Week 3: Group A face to face; group B at home
Week 4: Group B face to face; group A at home
Week 5: Final week with Group A face to face; group B at home
Week 6: Final week with Group B face to face
Deadline for this round: May 9th 2021. Please email all Project Ideas to alison@highpeakarts.org. Please send your Project Idea on a separate sheet from any personal details (name, age, address etc). Please also complete the monitoring form and return it (not compulsory, but helpful for us to improve our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion). The steering group will only see the Project Idea and budget. Please email me if you have questions, or phone 0752 815 9283
Please also complete the monitoring form here – ‘Call out for artists’