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. 

 - Every fucking day, in the words of the unofficial Brummie Laureate, 'Big' Brendan.  Birmingham has been branded as a shopping mecca and, not wanting to buck current trends, we at Friction decided to embrace the capitalist nightmare that is the City Centre and become retailers.  Sort of.

We set up the Curio City Shop, in Five Ways Shopping Centre at the end of 2005, not as grand as it sounds, the centre is a horrible sixties concrete nightmare, with only about half a dozen businesses still operating out of around 25.  Five Ways itself is a bit odd, a border area, with the neighbouring low-income estates of Five Ways, Leebank and Ladywood, next to the Broad Street 'Cultural Zone' and the office blocks around Five Ways, posher neighbourhoods in Edgbaston and spitting distance from the coty centre itself.

So, why a shop?  Well, we were looking for an outlet for art, that wasn't a gallery, as we wanted to get new audiences for ours and other artists work.  Everyone (bar the odd agoraphobic) uses shops and is comfortable going in and out of them, few people are comfortable in an art gallery (I know I'm not and I'm an artist!), but we're all used to getting the things we want from a shop.  Why not a shop that sells nothing, except the opportunity to view and engage with art?  Why not indeed, and so the shop was born....

What IS it?

It's important to create a context for what you do, for 'how you choose to waste your time', as the wonderful artist Tsing Tzhe once said to us.  For us at Friction what we do, how we do it, who we do it with and why we do it are all equally important.  We are utterly committed to making the kind of work we do, in the world and with people, and convinced of it's relevance in everyone's lives.

Miss-Stories
'Community Arts' as a label is rather misleading.  It lends one to think of workshops, face-painting and, God forbid, murals.  This is not what the Test Bed artists, or Friction for that matter, are about, we aim to challenge our audience/participants.  For example, we might be asked to deliver some DJ workshops for young people.  We would normally refuse and, rather suggest some music composition workshops or performance poetry or any number of more creative options.  In my humble opinion we need fewer DJs and more perfomance poets...

 For too long art made with people has had a reputation as not being 'proper' art.  Proper art is what you find in a gallery or a museum, not on a housing estate or in a shopping centre.  We see galleries and the like as 'zoos' for art and are concerned with freeing it, so it can be experienced properly, instead of merely being examined by a minority of 'enthusiasts'.  Indeed we talk about 'trainspotter' art, i.e. art that is only enjoyed by a small group of initiate hobbyists, these are the people that inhabit 'private' views.  An interesting use of language in itself that is inherently exclusive - only an initiate can go to a private view, no mere member of the public would be welcome, for sure.

So, we often use the term 'participatory' when describing our work.  People are always involved in our work, beyond the ego of the artist, perhaps in the making or performing of the work, perhaps there is an interactive element to the fininshed piece, whatever, they are rarely passive observers.  Perhaps a better term might be that we make 'active' art.
This is the kind of work we are intending to promote via the Test Bed project.

Hello
Welcome to the Test Bed Blog. Test Bed is a new art project, set up by Friction Arts in Birmingham UK. My name is Lee Griffiths, I'm an artist, director of Friction and artistic director of Test Bed. I'll be using this blog to document the trials and tribulations of putting together a large art project, involving over 20 artists, plus production crew over three months.

Background
I first had the idea for Test Bed around eighteen months ago. I'd noticed a large amount of training and support for new or emerging artists, in fact we at Friction have been involved in some of the best of the crop ( in our humble opinion - see www.creativealliance.org.uk), but what about the rest of us?  There didn't seem to be any support for 'submerging' artists, those of us who have been around for a while and maybe don't get the support or recognition we perhaps deserve.  I'm also very concerned with the role of art in society.  Friction Arts make what we call 'art where you live', that is artworks and projects that live outside the 'normal' places where we expect to encounter art, and that involves people as participants as well as audience. I put these two ideas together, and so Test Bed was born.

I spent a lot of the next six months or so cajoling, pleading and brow-beating various people until I had enough finance to make the project happen.  (In Friction we talk about finance, rather than funding, we're just trying to be good capitalists and keep our options open...) So thanks to ACE West Midlands, Business Link and Creative Alliance for helping me to make my idea a reality.

I knew what I wanted, i.e., a project raising the profile of 'submerging artists' that also served to do the same for participatory art, but now I needed to work out who.  I looked for artists who had been active in the region, but who maybe didn't have the profile as practitioners they deserved.  I was also looking for artists who would make a quality artwork and who had the confidence and experience to involve people in the production or performance of that artwork.
I didn't have to look far.  I've worked as a practisingg artist in the West Midlands for fifteen years and so have a fairly good overview on who is out there, making the kind of work that I'm interested in.  Some of it, literally on my doorstep.  So, eschewing all normal concerns regarding equal opportunities, I made my selection.

The Artists
These are the artists I decided to invite on the project, the descriptions of them and their work are my own, I'm sure they would come up with much better statements of their practise than I ever could.  I suppose I'm trying to explain my reasoning for selecting them for the project.  Gratifyingly, nobody I invited onto the project refused the opportunity.  Why would they;-) 

Harry Palmer - defying all attempts at categorisation, Harry is an artist, publisher, radio journalist, video experi-mentalist and avid collector of eccentrics (check out www.eccentriccity.co.uk for the world's first eccentric newspaper and www.knex3.org for some of his eccentric radio.
George Saxon - recently relocated back in West Brom, we first met George at Harry's mill in Hull back, very much, in the day and have never quite managed to work with him since.  George's video works have been shown across the planet, including his paper house in Japan.  He's also produced work like 'Housewatch', working with other artists to transform a row of houses into a video installation - groundbreakingly projection-tastic work. 
Darryl Georgiou - although well established outside the region, Darryl remains largely ignored in Birmingham. Their loss, he's fab.  His dad used to run a chip shop near the site of the project, so his inclusion in the project was inevitable. 
Pauline Bailey - Pauline has been working around the fringes of the city's arts happenings for ages, producing installations and participatory projects including working on the 'Intervention' project.  Pauline's son, Adika, is an unofficial and unwitting mentor for the artists on the project.
Julie O'Neill - Julie makes installations which often have a performance element, which description does her no justice at all.  Though she might not be quite the veteran the other artists are,  there's not many people making more interesting work around.
Sandra Hall - Sandra is co-director of Friction. all nepotism aside, her ability to engage with people is second to none.  Test Bed will give her the time and space to flex her artistic muscles, initially developed by working with the likes of Augusto Boal, Guillermo Gomez Pena, Philippe Gaulier and some British people as well.
Nelson Douglas - Photographer and lecturer at Kingston University (not the one in Jamaica - the commute's too long), Nelson makes photography-based participatory projects.  He seems particularly keen on letting the community get their hands on his medium formats...
Mark Storor - another artist involved in the reverse exodus back to the centre of the world - Brumtastic.  Mark has worked on some amazing participatory projects including literally giving people angel's wings, an ice cream van swapping songs for ices and an archaelogical excavation of his Granny's tea table.  Mark is a proper artist.