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Making More Space

Photo by Oliver Rudkin
2016

Making More Space is a multi-disciplinary, multi form event, bringing together ideas around site based performance practice, the impacts of wild or outdoor spaces on human psychology and alternative educational models in arts contexts and collaborative practice. The event takes place at The Richmond Yacht Club, Eel Pie Island, London

The event responds to a three year artist-development programme run Nic Green and Artsadmin called Make Space (2013–2015), developed to offer young artists the opportunity to explore relational performance practices in sited contexts. The event will serve to expand of on some of the values and practices embedded in the project, and to further understand the relational potentials between them, for imagining the futures of alternative artist development and learning models. Making More Space has been curated through a collaborative process with Nic Green, Sam Trotman, Sarah Phillips and Joanne Matthews and past Make Space participants.

Key themes we look to address include:

  • Embodied learning/ Tacit knowledge
  • Sited Performance Practice
  • Outdoor education/ The effects of wild or outdoor spaces on Human Psychology/Ecopsychology
  • Collaborative performance practices between human and other-than-human living entities

The event will include contributions from leading practitioners and artists, performances, discussion, shared meals and Phil Collins Karaoke.

We called our opportunity Make Space as both a description and an instruction. Over the three years the Make Space project was based at Hackney City Farm, Richmond Yacht Club (Eel Pie Island) and Totteridge Cricket Ground consecutively, with each group spending a month exploring the collaborative potential between themselves, each other and their chosen site. The work was explored without expectation of outcome, and with the recognition that most participants were either in, or had just finished a course of higher education.

Make Space sought create an alternative artist development opportunity and learning space which challenged the merit-based and competitive paradigm of mainstream educational contexts, acknowledged the creative capabilities and perspectives of each individual (often outside of their applied skill base) and placed collaborative practice at the heart of the creation process. Exploring the potentials of ‘place’ and rejecting the pressures of ‘productivity,’ almost all activity took place in outdoor spaces, within London. Work was created in response to sites and their contexts.

Reaching the end of our three year experiment offers a unique opportunity to reflect and expand on the ideas and themes that have emerged and developed over the course of the project, and to further understand the relationships and potentials of alternative opportunities in arts education in the future.

Date Title Venue City
15–16 October 2016 Making More Space: A Gathering About Site Based Learning Eel Pie Island London
Photo by Oliver Rudkin
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