I'm back and Test Bed is up and running.  We had a great launch party on Thursday, with over 300 people attending, including many local people who had been involved in the process.  The build for the show was pretty full on.  Due to my experience in building complicated shows, I estimated that I would need two days to complete rigging, if everything ran to plan.  I used the age-old producing formula and doubled this and gave myself four days - which turned out to be exactly right!  As usual, there were problems with suppliers not delivering, or delivering the wrong stuff, we didn't really have the resources or personnel to complete the job and, without the commitment, dedication and sheer hard work by the artists, I don't think it would have happened.  All the artists mucked in, particularly on show day, some of the artists had been resident in the square for the whole week, not only working on their own pieces, but also lending a hand to assist their colleagues in completing their work.

The results were stunning.  The Curio City Shop stood transformed into a beautiful, contemporary art gallery, with incredibly strong work, the space complementing the quality of the work with quality presentation.  Mark and Darryl's offsite pieces funneled attention to the shop, Mark's starkly beautiful images of the men who came to the shop to make a bed with him punctuating the spaces in the gorgeous onld butchers shop.  Pillows hanging from meathooks and photographs next to tiled pictures of food animals, all surrounding a clean, white bed create a tangible atmosphere at the same time tranquil and charged.  On opening night the slab in the window became a nest of feathers for artist Gary Jones, whose sleeping form beneath the lovely photograph was wonderfully framed - he said he'd never been called beautiful so many times in his life.
Darryl's piece directly across the square contrasted nicely.  His little shop contained his homage to pre-post-modern classic Brummie crime drama 'Gangsters'.  A frame by frame re-creation of the title sequence in 3D animation plays on a large LCD screen in the window, with audio provided by 'whispering glass' type speakers fixed to the window.  The animation is followed by a series of filmed 'incidents' involving the artist, dressed as the evil WC Fields-esque 'White Devil' character from the series, in the square and at various locations nearby, familiar to 'Gangsters' fans. The shop's sign was replaced with a replica of the Nirvana restaurant and prints of drawings taken from stills from the series were placed on the walls.

More about Test Bed soon - the show continues at Five Ways shopping centre in Brum, until the 28th, 1pm until 6pm, see you there.

Hello people,
Yet again I have been neglectful in my posting.  Things are moving apace now, with many demands on my time, it's quite literally 24/7 at the moment.  I'm running the project whilst in my sleep right now, having wonderful psychedelic dreams.  The project's taking shape, most of the artists are well on the way to producing the work and some of the early results have been wonderful.  Harry in particular has made some really moving work with one of the local shop owners about the handover of his lease and the consequences to his life, which would bring a tear to the eye of all but the most hard-hearted.  George's 'passages' work is looking bleakly beautiful and Darryl's nostaligic and playful work is developing into something magical (not sure if he'd thank me for that description, but it's how it makes me feel).  Sandra has been workiing with photographer John McQueen on making, rather than taking, photographs and there's a palpable excitement when they talk about the work.  I was conned into being a model for them last weekend, resulting on me standing on a freezing beach fighting gale force winds whilst John fiddled with light meters and his beloved 'Blad.  The things we do in the name of art...

Well, discounting those that use the generic term to describe their stuff, musicians, writers, actors, and focussing on those in the 'fine' arts, I think I came up with a pretty good definition in the 'second studio' (i.e. The Anchor public house)last night. Here goes - 'an artist is someone who makes cultural projects with no measurable value'. Not bad, eh? I think what inspired me to think about it this way is the fact that, more and more, we are required to define our work by the 'benefits' it brings which are measured through what are referred to as 'outputs' - a frankly insulting term which serves to dehumanise the audience into some kind of number-crunching exercise. What happened to 'art for arts sake'? What happened to the value of art being it's cultural value alone? My theory is that 'unmeasurable' part. Arts administrators and funders have to justify their work through these number crunching exercises, especially if they are using public money, which is absolutely as it should be (it's the public's money after all). However, the responsibility is then passed on to artists to collect the evidence they need, this also means that artists are forced to make their work with these 'outputs' (I so hate that word) in mind, which affects the way the have to work and inteferes with the spirit of the artwork they are creating. One of the most brilliant aspects of 'Test Bed' is that we have been able to make the project without these outputs in mind as the site (Curio City Shop), and the setting (the Five Ways 'border zone' allows us to work with the kinds of people that everyone wants to access, as well as the fact that the artists involved are gaining significant professional development through working on the project as a whole. A big shout out goes to ACE for allowing us to get on with what we do best - making stuff happen that has no measurable value...

Just in case anyone is in the Five Ways area this Wednesday we are having the final 'slaminar' - (thanks Rachel, like it, yes) -
from 6pm until 8pm at the Curio City Shop  .  It's another double bill - George Saxon vs Darryl Georgeiou, should be an interesting bout, both of the combatants have a long history of international projects and a history with the city, so it should be well mardy.  See you there...

We were talking last night about starting in the 'art biz', looking back to our first forays into bringing culture to the masses. Nostalgia ain't what it used to be, but it was something to look back, most of the time we're plunging into the future, whilst keeping a firm eye on the present and don't have the space to look behind us. 
The seeds of Friction were sown over 15 years ago now, don't it just whizz past?  Looking back, it was clear at the time, with wonderful naievety (which we have retained, to some extent, I am pleased to say), we just went for it, without thinking of the consequences (or the massive workload) and got on with attempting to create what we had seen in our imaginations.  We ended up with a touring arts venue, which we literally built from the ground up, a crew of up to 50 people on each gig, all working for tea and cake and just had the time of our lives (we still are!).  Everyone told us we were crazy at the time, which is as maybe, but having that scale of ambition to make things happen despite the odds is an approach we take to this day.  The main difference being we get paid, instead of just fed, and we take a lot more responsibility for the people we work with.
I suppose my point is that, in order to make this stuff happen, we need that commitment and a kind of blindness to the 'realities', so we can bring our vision into the world. I don't know how many times we've been told something we are attempting is impossible, but thankfully we have selective deafness and just get on and do it, despite the odds against us. Attempt the impossible - or at least try the extremely difficult - you don't get nuffink for nuffink!

One month to go until the show - it will soon be upon us...  This week we have the final seminar in the Test Bed programme.  The seminars have definitely added value to the programme as a whole, both for the 'audience' and the artists (better not put THAT in inverted commas!).  Getting a chance to talk with apeople about their work and approach is something we don't do often, other than informal chats in the pub, etc.  It's really important, I'm sure that everyone who has attended has come away with some new ideas, methodologies as a result of the very diverse range of chats the artists have presented.  We've had 'non-seminars', 'high teas', installations and conversations, so they've not been the boring 'being talked at' meetings that seminars can sometimes seem, perhaps we need to call them something else?  Any suggestions?
I intend to continue this aspect of the project after the exhibition, and possibly move them to the new venue we are opening in early Summer, I'll post dates on our website, www.livearts.co.uk, which, by the way, has been updated to include the test bed project (www.livearts.co.uk/testbed).
Keep talking...

Hello, I realised I haven't been very consistent with writing stuff lately, and I think that's probably a good place to start.  Test Bed is cranking up, the show is just over a month away and complications obviously multiply whenever you're approaching something you have been planning for some time.  Add to this all the usual stuff you need to do to tick over successfully, plus an imminent studio relocation, setting up a new venue, organising a large-scale project for later on this year, etc, etc and you end up with a lot of late nights, seven-day working weeks and sadly neglected blogs.  That is my excuse, but it's in no way a moan.  I realise how priveliged I am to be able to make my living in this way, I save the compaints for where they are needed (In my humble opinion).
So, the mentee programme we are running alongside Test Bed for Creative Alliance has begun, we had our first 'play weekend' recently, and it exceeded our expectations. Sandra, Harry and myself ran a series of simple exercises aimed at getting the artists to collaborate successfully and to refine how they think about place and situation.  After a brief chat to outline our aims and objectives we sent them out for a walk, to take fifteen minutes in total.  They were to speak to nobody, just to observe, look for things that fitted together, things that jarred, things they liked or disliked.  After seven and a half minutes they had to open the envelope we had provided and follow the instructions enclosed.  These were to take whatever subject was foremost in their mind during their walk and to come up with a proposal for an artwork, based on that theme, with the caveat that it didn't matter how crap this was and to present it back to the group in a further 7 and a half minutes.  The exercise was much more effective than we had anticipated.  As artists, it is important that we have the seemingly opposite abilities of engagement with our environment and at the same time, detachment.  We need to be involved observers.  By asking the artists to refrain from speaking to anyone we had removed a level of potential engagment, and had forced them to take a more observational stance.  By giving them set and short time limits to the activitiy we had made them work and edit fast, not allowing them the luxury of hanging on to their ideas.  We discovered that this was a novel and exciting approach for them and took it further with the next exercise.
We adapted an exercise we learnt from working with Guillermo Gomez-Pena on a performance a couple of years back.  We brought a huge range of 'tat' from our studio - costumes, props, objects that were lying about, etc and arranged them on some tables whilst the group were out on their walk.  We then invited the whole group to collaborate silently with one another on arranging these objects into installations representing a theme we chose.  They were to move or rearrange any item if they felt it did not fit and were not to be precious about their own contributions, anything in the room could be added as they felt necessary.We repeated this three times, using the themes 'justice', 'space exploration' and 'wild love' and soon ended up with the most bizarre and fantastic installations containing people and sound elements as well as the objects we had provided.  We were attempting to show the group ways of collaborating without disussion, editing without ego and the power of working quickly and decisively, time will tell...
We then split the group into two, smaller groups and gave them a challenge.  They had to create an intervention based on a subject we gave them, at a place we assigned, the intervention had to change the environment in some way.  Group 1 ended up with 'Giants' at the Irish Centre, Group 2 'Other Worlds' at the Custard Factory (these were chosen as randomly as possible, honest).  These projects were to be considered collaborative micro projects and were to contain all the elements of a larger project, as appropriate.  We would meet group 1 at 12 noon the next day to see their piece and the see ther second intervention as soon as posssible thereafter. 
As we knew (but hadn't told the groups hehehehehe), it was pissing stair rods the next morning, but Harry Sandra and myself were there on time to see the first group's work. As we arrived at the appointed place we noticed some 'mountaineers', roped together and 'scaling' the other side of the street.  As they approached we could see they were carrying a banner saying 'Giant Issues'.  On a closer look we could see postcards attached to the rope with phrases spelling out things considered giant issues by the team.  As people passed by, intrigued by the spectacle, the mountaineers would ask them to write their giant issues on a card and then attach it to the rope.  If it hadn't been raining quite so hard I'm sure the rope would have been quickly covered by postcards.  After a while the group 'climbed' down the street and retunrned to the studio.  About five minutes later group two turned up to watch, but too late, learning a valuable lesson, hopefully, about timekeeping and deadlines!
Group two's intervention was to create a funereal atmosphere at the Custard Factory (made easier by it being a rainy Sunday morning), where the audience was gathered in the doorway and a cardboard 'coffin' draped with a black cloth was carried by pallbearers through the 'mourners'.  Each audience memeber was invited in turn to go and look inside the circular hole cut into one end of the box, a cloth would be draped over their head, hiding the contents from curious onlookers.  Inside the box they were treated to 'another world' where there were small toy elephants, burning incense, candles and bells and a taped soundtrack of a story, each audience member heard a different story.
After feedback and discussion we rounded off the day with each group making a response to each other's work.  It was a jam-packed weekend, with loads of stuff being made, unmade, discussed and dissected, with a lot of learning in the midst of the fun.  We're all looking forward to the next one...

We had the first Test Bed seminar last night. Harry Palmer went first, by not going.  That is, Harry presented his seminar though a third party,namely, technology.  He played a recorded interview between himself and Mike Johnstone, focussing on his practice, the early years and how he comes up with his ideas.  Alongside this he presented lovely old-fashioned slides and new-fangled video projections of work he's made, or is making.  It was very Harry and very enjoyable, with many random accidents, wonky slides and much digression during the interview.
Harry was followed by Nelson Douglas who talked about how he makes his work and the constant battle he has,navigating the labyrinth of being identified as a black artist.  There was a lot of resonance with Friction and the problems involved in making art with commissioners who are often more interested in what boxes your work ticks, rather than the quality of the art.  This will happen more and more over the years to come.  The argument has pretty much been won now, as to whether there are cultural and social benefits from participatory arts, artists have demonstrated their ability to reach people that public sector agencies can not.  We must be careful how we position ourselves in this case, so we don't become the acceptable face of public sector and retain our neutrality.  This neutrality is a vital aspect of working in the world.  Friction are always aware of their status in this case and it can be a very delicate balancing act to meet the needs of agencies that pay for our work, whilst retaining our integrity with the people we really work for - the public.
The Great Blondini would be proud...

I wanted to talk a bit about my role in the project, and maybe a bit more about what I'm wanting to achieve.  My 'official' title is Artistic Director.  If only it were that simple.  I suppose if I were to make a list it would go something like this - I'll attempt chronological order:   Initiator, researcher, fundraiser,  head of human resources,  planner, organiser,  head of marketing, designer,  webmaster,  shepherd, diplomat, ringmaster, technician, nervous wreck, documenter, and very probably cleaner... This is not uncommon.  Most artists these days have to take on a similar multitasking approach when making their ideas become real.  That in itself is what we constantly attempt, to make the ideas and concepts we make within our heads translate into reality.  This is, in fact, an impossible task, whatever the idea 'looked' like within the confines of our skulls, it will always look different when we are finally standing before it (whatever 'it' may be).  The task is actually to come as close to it as possible, to find some sort of cut-off point where you can say, 'well, I'm 80% there (or 99, 25 or whatever percentage we are happy with), and that's as close as I'm going to get - lets do it.
O f course ideas always mutate in the translation to the real world, often something that seemed fantastic in thought can prove impossible (or indeed, crap) in practice.  In fact, that initial idea is usually just that, something that initiates the real thing, a building block to take you towards something that is really incredible.  You can usually spot art that is completely based on that initial idea, and it's a trap that artists often fall into.  Concepts are like most things, they need to develop, to be nurtured to reach their full potential.  The most successful projects I've been involved in have been those that have taken the longest to mature.  This is not a hard and fast rule, sometimes things appear in the world fully formed and ready to go, but it is unusual...
I think that was a digression, but an important one, as artists our concepts, our ideas, are a currency, it's what we have to offer to the world and needs to be acknowledged.  Kettle's boiling - back in a bit.

I thought I'd write from the shop today. The young people's group are in this afternoon and, rather than the madness you might imagine, there's a real sense of calm down here.  I'm sure that will change later, but it is amazing how Dennis and the team have got the group to develop the discipline and concentration they have, whilst still having loads of fun. 
The shop has come on loads.  We were sat here last year, huddled round (probably technically illegal) calor gas stoves, freezing, but still making work.  It never stopped the young people from coming in either. But now we are warm and toasty (in fact it's too warm in the little office at the back from which I am writing).  Not only that, but, due to Sandra and myself spending much of last year desk-jockeying, funding has come with a big bump, allowing us to upgrade the shop at a perfect time, in the run up to Test Bed.
I walked in today and one of the parents dropping their child off turned out to be someone I had worked with over 15 years ago (when I was still only a part-time artist).  This kind of thing seems to happen around me and the shop, I previously met someone I'd known as a young child, dropping their child off.  This either demonstrates something mystical about fate or serendipity, or something else, that I believe makes Friction and the shop so unique.
This is the fact that the people we tend to work with regularly are drawn from the communities we engage with.  This allows us to have a closer relationship with the people we work with and consequently an empathic approach to understanding their needs, issues and the way they operate in the world.  We have not consciously set out to recruit people from a BME ( or BAME or MABCEE or whatever the PC jargon is in vogue this week), or to take artists who have not gone through the traditional Art School degree system, this is just something that has happened naturally.