[artinfo] 9PIN - Call for Proposals

[Helen Sloan]

9PIN
Call for Proposals
Deadline for submissions: August 8 2003


Contents

1. Background to SCAN
2. 9PIN the project and how to apply
3. Related Activities
4. Background on SCAN consortium organisations
5. URLs

9PIN is funded by Arts Council England, South East
  1. Background - SCAN

SCAN is a network consortium of 10 organisations in the UK (mainly based in
the South of England) who are working together to promote emergent,
collaborative and experimental practice using new and emergent technologies.
SCAN is committed to identifying new models of production and distribution
of artworks and other cultural products.

SCAN aims to provide an expansive and fertile space for artists,
practitioners, writers, audiences and organisations to engage with its
projects and initiatives. This will be provided through the SCAN website and
through the physical spaces in its member organizations. It is a unique
collaboration and will be a major resource for the development of practice,
projects and ideas.

The organisation was set up in 2001 as a platform for collaboration and
sharing of resources between the consortium members. 2003 sees a new phase
of development within SCAN through the appointment of a Director in January
2003, and the launch of a website and other activities including 9PIN in
September 2003. 9PIN will be pivotal in the development of SCAN and in
defining its role in relation to the consortium members.

Whilst SCAN is driven mainly by new media, it welcomes innovative ideas and
practice that also involve other forms. SCAN provides a network for
practitioners, information and opportunities, training, exhibition and
equipment to support the production of new work and educational initiatives
involving digital arts and/or hybrid practice. It is intended to be a focal
point for a wide spectrum of activity such as critical debate, community and
education projects, on-line journals and communities, collaborative arts
production and project partnerships between the private and public sectors.

SCAN's current members are:
ArtSway, Sway
Aspex Visual Arts, Portsmouth
Lighthouse, Poole Arts Centre
Mount Pleasant Media Workshop, Southampton
Salisbury Arts Centre
New Greenham Arts, Newbury
Animation Station, Banbury
The Living Archive, Milton Keynes
Platform One, Newport, Isle of Wight
Quay Arts Centre, Newport, Isle of Wight.

Affiliated members and partners are:

University of Portsmouth
London College of Music and Media
University of Plymouth
Oxford Brookes University
Lighthouse Media Centre, Brighton
PVA, Bridport




  Please read these notes carefully and ensure that you address the contents
in your proposal.

2. The Project

9PIN (Nine Points of Investigation)
A SCAN consortium project 2003/4

SCAN is looking for artists, writers, creatives and practitioners from all
fields (who may also want to work collaboratively) to respond to and
investigate the environments, landscapes and demographics of the SCAN
network. The Nine Points of Investigation are based around the locations of
the 10 core Consortium Centres all of whom to date are Independent Arts
Organisations. The principle criterion for the 9PIN project is to commission
inventive engagements with the geography and communities of the consortium
locations. Proposals must consider the network as a whole, or in part (two
or more locations), for investigation; a collection of multiple sites to
cross between, travel through, engage with, rather than focusing on a single
location in isolation. Proposals may also want to look at how the SCAN
network operates in relation to other sites and locations globally both
currently and potentially.

The project will take the form of a residency period (between September 2003
and December 2004) to be negotiated with the consortium members and SCAN. It
could be a continuous period or a series of shorter periods. A wide range of
options and timescale have been allowed in order that people can respond to
seasonal change and activities taking place in the 9PIN locations. We expect
the nature of the 9PIN residency to be experimental with a view to
developing outputs at a later stage. This is largely because the consortium
venues are programmed at least two years in advance. However, if applicants
wish to make small interventions in the venues, work in public spaces,
produce publications or have a website presence this may be possible
(subject to discussion with venues).

Dependent on the budgets submitted in the proposals, it is anticipated that
3 - 5 individual or group projects will be selected for 9PIN. It is hoped
that at points these projects will overlap and that, where appropriate, a
dialogue might take place between the different project participants. All
selected projects will be asked send a representative to take part in the
Tactical Media Lab in Portsmouth (and a networked part of  Next Five Minutes
festival in Amsterdam) on 21 -23 September, 2003 either as a core
participant or through a presentation of their work (see information below).

The nature of the projects will be defined by the proposals submitted, but
we hope that some projects might have a component that engages with
communities and develops audiences. We also see this project as a way of
learning to cohere or distinguish the consortium organisations each of which
represent very diverse environments and demographics. Finding inventive ways
of mapping these places is likely to be central to the project. Mapping
could take place electronically, socially,  through the presence of a
particular material at the locations or a combination of these. These are
initial ideas - we welcome any developments or diversions from these that
might add an interesting approach to 9PIN. It is also hoped that project
representatives will be willing to take part in educational work related to
their projects. An educational component may also be integral to the project
proposal.

This project represents a very significant period of SCAN's development and
we look forward to receiving proposals of an experimental nature which will
set a precedent for SCAN's approach to its projects in the future. In the
sections below , there is information on each of the consortium members with
URLs which will give a better idea of the constituent member organisations.









Equipment Resources:

All SCAN member organisations have a G4 Mac and iMac computer with the
following software and peripherals:
Scanner, Digital Camera, Printer, Premier 6, Photoshop 6, In Design, After
Effects, Illustrator, Live Motion, Acrobat, Dreamweaver, Director, Flash
Most machines are still operating on OS9 but some have OS10 available
(Platform One, ArtSway, Aspex, Mount Pleasant Media Workshop)

Some organisations have specific facilities eg Platform One - sound studios
and media suite; Mount Pleasant Media Workshop - media suite and darkrooms;
New Greenham Arts - media suite and artists studios; ArtSway - media suite;
Animation Station - media suite and animation facilities; Lighthouse, Poole
- media suite and darkroom; Living Archive - recording facilities and media
suite

Each organisation offers a variety of spaces such as exhibition galleries,
theatres, cinemas, performance areas,  and education rooms. See URLs for a
detailed description of each venue and their programmes.

The SCAN website (available from late September) offers a database driven
web facility with opportunities for on-line forums, studio spaces and stand
alone projects.
This will provide a significant resource for the 9PIN project.
www.scansite.org

Details and How  to apply

Length and location: Projects to take place any time from Sept 2003 -
December 2004 for a period specified in the submitted proposal. Please
suggest a timescale and the venues you would like to be resident in, where
appropriate, and we will try to accommodate this. Whilst we realise that
some work can be done remotely or out of the organisations, it is hoped that
project participants will be resident at least for a part of their work at
the agreed locations.

Budget: Projects from £1000 - £6000 to include fees, expenses and
production.
Fees should be calculated on the basis of £150 per day and an allowance for
travel and accommodation should be included with the production budget to a
maximum total budget inclusive of fees of £6000.

Submission: Please submit a written project proposal, budget, and supporting
material (eg cvs, slides (6max), CD, DVD, details of urls and printed
material - please ensure that text is compatible with Office 2001 and
software is compatible with OS9.2 Macintosh computer). If you would like to
discuss any aspect of the brief, please contact Helen Sloan, Director, SCAN
01590 682824 or 07973 919210, helen at scansite.org or Andy Robinson, Project
Co-ordinator 9PIN 07739 667734 or andy3471 at hotmail.com
Submission deadline: Proposals with documentation of previous work to arrive
by 5.00pm  Friday 8th August 2003. We can accept e-mail applications but not
attachments. Please send supporting material by alternative means.
Please send to: 9PIN, SCAN, c/o ArtSway, Station Road, Sway, Hants SO41 6BA
Please include a SAE for return of submitted material (same value of stamp
as for sending)
SCAN will make every effort to respect material supplied for selection but
can take no responsibility for loss or damage.

Selection: Selection will take place on August 12th . The panel will be made
up of representatives of the consortium organisations, Helen Sloan, Andy
Robinson, Tessa Fitzjohn, New Media & Individual Artists Officer, Arts
Council England, South East (tbc) and an independent advisor (tbc).


  3. Related Activities

Tactical Media Lab
What is local in a globalised society?
21st - 23rd September 2003
Aspex Gallery and University of Portsmouth

In September 2003 over three days, SCAN, Aspex and University of Portsmouth
will be hosting a Tactical Media Lab (TML) in Portsmouth which is one of a
series of events held as a complement to the Next Five Minutes www.n5m.org
festival based in Amsterdam. This TML is a particularly important one in
that it will be held a week after the fourth festival (Next Five Minutes,
Amsterdam 11 - 14 September, 2003) and will form part of a follow up to the
event. The Portsmouth TML will be held across Aspex Gallery (SCAN consortium
member), University of Portsmouth and on-line.

The purpose of this event is to provide three days of screenings,
presentations, interventions, workshops, networked activities and talks
looking at what defines community and the idea of the local in today's
culture. A core group of about 20 people will be involved in the whole event
whilst others will take part in presentations, screenings or debates. The
proceedings of the TML will be placed on the SCAN and the Next Five Minutes
websites. The event will provide a lab space for interested parties to
express their views and experiences about the subject area and to develop
ideas for future projects.

The programme is still being finalised and to date we have approached Mike
Stubbs, Julie Penfold and David Garcia as moderators. As other contributors,
we are approaching a number of people including Armin Medosch, Samar Martha,
Martin Reid, Lizzie Sykes, Brand Art, Mette Houlberg, Tina Sotiriadi, Sean
McAllister, and we hope that representatives from the 9PIN projects will at
least make a presentation at the TML if not be involved in a broader
capacity.

Representatives of the group will come from an older people's reminiscence
project based at ArtSway and facilitated by Mette Houlberg and Lizzie Sykes,
asylum seekers groups and other community groups as well as from the above
list of contributors and staff at University of Portsmouth.

SCAN Launch Event
24/25 September (date & venue to be confirmed)

An evening event to launch the newly created SCAN website (www.scansite.org
- there's not much to see at the moment but by September we will have
developed it in its first phase) and to introduce the activities of SCAN.
This will be an informal event of sound, music, performance, on-line
activities and refreshments to introduce the SCAN consortium members and the
work of the organisation. 9PIN will be introduced at this event.
  4. Background on Consortium Member Organisations:



1) ArtSway (SCAN office location), Sway.
A gallery and media suite offering an experimental approach to the
production and distribution of art work. ArtSway deals with all media but
recently has focused on video and new media and runs a programme of
residencies which allow artists to develop their process before exhibiting
their work at the gallery. The gallery has an extensive education programme
catering for wide audiences and interest groups.

ArtSway is situated in the New Forest in a tourist area as well as being
part of the commuter belt of London and Southampton. It is the only resource
of its type in the heart of the forest and offers real opportunities to
study rural surroundings and industries. As it is also near the coast, there
are opportunities to look at leisure and fishing industries. The diversity
of communities and income brackets in the area is very broad.


2) Aspex Visual Arts Trust, Portsmouth.
Aspex is a gallery and resource located close to the Eldon Building of
University of Portsmouth which houses the School of Art & Design. It has a
commitment to showing experimental and innovative contemporary visual arts
in all media and has a strong contextual programme with its gallery.
Emerging artists are to be further supported by the organisation through the
establishment of an Artists' Resource due to be launched in September 2003.
Its programme of solo, group and themed exhibitions concentrate on the work
of younger or emerging artists, while Access Aspex, the gallery's small
exhibition and project space, focuses on the work of artists based in
Portsmouth and the surrounding region.
Aspex Gallery's education activities include a programme of gallery talks,
together with participatory opportunities such as the Saturday Art Club for
8-12 year olds, and other workshops.

Portsmouth is a military town and port and in the current political climate
holds a lot of possibility for investigation into military policy and its
impact on local communities. It is also of course an urban environment with
all the characteristics of such an environment.


3) Mount Pleasant Media Workshop, Southampton
MPMW is a photography darkroom and media suite with open access based in
Mount Pleasant area of Southampton. The organisation works on projects with
community groups, runs courses and provides an equipment resource for the
general community. They mainly work with local people but have worked more
widely with communities in the Southern Region. They have expressed an
interest in working particularly on themes around asylum seekers (a
contentious issue in their area), and also have good links with the Afro
Caribbean Centre close by with whom they would like to develop their work.

Mount Pleasant is in South East the of the city which like Portsmouth is
also a port. The activities of the town are less predicated on the military
and more on industry and import and export. Southampton is the largest urban
conurbation represented by the SCAN consortium.


4) New Greenham Arts, Newbury
New Greenham Arts is a young arts centre with a strong focus on creativity
and production. They seek to work at the edge of arts and technology,
encouraging cross art form working and learning across disciplines. With
eight resident visual artists, a resident dance company and drama company
the centre is a lively place to work. Currently they have a visiting
resident artists  Hywel Davies - who is creating a sound installation for
what was the control tower of the airbase, and Kevin Todd who is working
with a rapid prototyping company based in one of the business units at New
Greenham. Performing companies who have been in residence include Kaos,
Earthfall and Leikin Loppu.

Situated in the midst of a business park which was once one of the world's
most notorious cold war sites - the Greenham Common USAF nuclear missile
base. The landscape still contains signs of the past including missile silos
and buildings complete with bomb shelters and decontamination chambers. By
complete contrast the site is in the midst of Greenham Common (ancient
common land), which still has a group of commoners who retain their common
grazing rights. Also, the town of Newbury like many towns in Hants/Bucks
looks affluent but has problems with housing and poverty.



5) Animation Station, Banbury
The Animation Station is a local authority run media workshop dedicated to
the teaching and promotion of animation and multimedia in the South East
region, primarily with young people.  It achieves this though in-house
workshops, multimedia outreach projects and as a facilitator for local
schools, colleges and referral units.  It employs and supports artists,
animators and musicians to broaden their understanding of collaborative arts
and networking. They are currently part of the Oxford Inspires bid for City
of Culture 2008. It has six years of developing cutting edge 2D and 3D
animation and they hope to develop new opportunities for artists interested
in, or wishing to develop.

About 10 miles North of Oxford, Banbury is an expanding market and
industrial town experiencing growth as a direct benefit of its proximity to
the completed M40 motorway linking London to Birmingham via Oxford. It is
home to some major industries such as Alcan Booth Industries (aluminium
products), and Kraft Jacobs Suchard (coffee and custard).

6) The Living Archive, Milton Keynes
The Living Archive is a creative cultural and community development
organisation whose Documentary Arts work is inspired by people's memories.
They use primarily oral history (but also video and multi-media) to profile
individuals and communities mostly in the Milton Keynes area. Using these
local lives and events as their starting point they have produced
large-scale musical documentary plays, books of local reminiscence,
photographic and other exhibitions, CD-ROM's, radio and video documentaries,
sculpture events and community textile projects. One of the most interesting
uses of these techniques has been in the Archive's work on town planning
development and public consultation.

Milton Keynes is fifty miles north of London, and is the United Kingdom's
fastest growing new town. Change has been a way of life for more than 30
years. A rural population has watched its old landmarks disappear. Newcomers
have left their family and friendship support networks behind as they have
moved to brand-new housing estates.

7) Lighthouse, Poole Arts Centre
Lighthouse, Poole's Centre for the Arts (formerly Poole Arts Centre) is the
largest arts centre outside London, consisting of a 1500 seat concert hall,
670 seat theatre, 130 seat studio theatre, 100 seat cinema, gallery, media
suite and darkroom, cafe and bars. Now in it's 25th year, Lighthouse offers
a wide programme of music, theatre, literature, education, film and visual
arts activities and is home to the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra.  The
Exhibitions Programme at Lighthouse aims to highlight the importance of
photography and digital media through high quality exhibitions and a
complementary community and education programme.

Poole is also a port town this time with an emphasis on tourism. It boasts
upmarket holiday accommodation as well as ferries and import and export. It
is famous for its Poole pottery factory and has a dog track.

8) Salisbury Arts Centre
Based in a beautiful listed church building, the Arts Centre runs a
programme of small scale touring theatre, dance, literature and music
(including rock and world music); a broad range of workshops; a programme of
exhibitions; and community arts projects focusing mainly but not exclusively
on young people and on users of the health and mental health services. The
Centre serves a community where there are issues of rural isolation as well
as pockets of urban deprivation. Youth remains one of the centre's key
target groups. They have also been running an arts in health project based
on creative writing in health care settings in the hospital and in the
community.

The Arts Centre is on the brink of a major refurbishment, during which it
will be running its transition programme 'Salisbury Arts Centre Inside Out'
using a number of alternative spaces in the community. This will include
developing new strands to its work including digital arts / new media,
through 9-Pin and other projects. The Centre is keen to include a community
engaged element within the 9-Pin project.

As part of its Commission Plan for the capital project, the Arts Centre will
also be seeking to commission an artist to create a piece of a digital
artwork capable of projection from or on to the building, as part of their
re-launch in Spring 2005.

With its proximity to Stonehenge, Salisbury itself is the target area of
many new-agers and there is an interesting relationship between those people
and the residents. A number of music festivals have taken place near there
notably The Big Chill at Larmer Tree Gardens.


9) Platform One, Newport, Isle of Wight
Platform One is a non-profit making organisation specialising in the
development and delivery of arts initiatives and training with an emphasis
on new technology.

Platform One's primary aim is to ensure that increasing numbers of young
people, and the wider community, are provided with the opportunity to be
involved in creative and innovative projects that mix traditional art forms
with cutting edge technology. They have recently moved into newly
refurbished premises with fully equipped Creative ICT Suite based around 12
iMacs. They have good facilities for working with sound and run formal
training initiatives and courses in media and music/music technology.

Platform One have strong links with the community including work with young
offenders, The Foyer project - housing young people who are at risk,
Carnival Island initiative, drug issues in Ventnor and the formal education
sector.

They have good links with the community broadcast stations in the area and
have plans to run projects with artists on a rolling basis. They are keen to
develop issue based work through new media and technology with an emphasis
on issues facing young people not just on the Island but further a field.
They have links with Ryde and are interested in exploring the homelessness
problem on the IoW in general, the growing problems with drugs in Ventnor,
and in advocating links with young people and older people in Newport and
the Island in general. In spite of these social issues it should be noted
that more than half of the Isle of Wight is recognised as an Area of
Outstanding Natural Beauty, while much of the coastline is designated
Heritage Coast.


10) Quay Arts Centre, Newport, Isle of Wight.
The Quay Arts Centre is the Isle of Wight's leading art gallery and venue
for live arts events. It is situated in a converted 19th Century brewery
warehouse complex located at the head of the River Medina in the centre of
Newport. Facilities at the complex include 3 galleries, a 134 capacity
theatre, a Crafts Council-listed gallery shop, a popular licensed arts café
and numerous workshop spaces and meeting rooms.

Quay is a good vehicle for distributing of work made on the Island and they
have good links with Platform One.

Note: The impressions of the towns and cities are simply observations made
from visits, or information appropriated from websites relating to those
locations. They are merely a taster of the sort of issues and activities
that might be of interest in those places, and not a definitive of the areas
that might be addressed.

Websites

ArtSway, Sway, New Forest
www.artsway.org.uk

Aspex Visual Arts Trust / Gallery, Portsmouth
www.aspex.org.uk

Animation Station, Banbury
www.animationstation.co.uk

Living Archive, Milton Keynes
www.livingarchive.org.uk

Mount Pleasant Media Workshop, Southampton
www.mpmw.co.uk

New Greenham Arts, Greenham Common, Newbury
www.greenham-common-trust.co.uk

Platform One, Newport Isle of Wight
www.platformone.org

Lighthouse, Poole Centre for the Arts, Poole
www.lighthousepoole.co.uk

Salisbury Arts Centre, Salisbury
www.salisburyartscentre.co.uk

Quay Arts Centre, Newport, Isle of Wight
www.quayarts.org

SCAN
www.scansite.org