Speech! Speech!

Here is an email I have sent out in search of people to give talks at the CAA. Please read, copy and forward.

...

The Common Academy of Art will be a temporary art school popping up in an empty shop in Shoreham-on-Sea this August. The timetable of the Academy will be composed of activities proposed and led by anyone with a great idea. Thanks to a bursary from American Express and other fund raising activity we are able to fund materials and equipment to facilitate all sorts of ideas. Mornings and afternoons will be mainly aimed at children, young people and families, whilst the evenings will be reserved for screenings, talks and more grown up classes. 

I am looking for anyone who would like to give a talk or presentation during one of the evening sessions. Talks can be as long or short as you like - 5 minutes? 2 hours? - and be on any subject. We will have projection equipment and WiFi available too. 

As the Common Academy of Art is an art school talks on visual art, literature, media, music and performing arts would be fantastic, though please don't feel limited to these areas. Local history, travel essays, arts education, the current issues faced by the arts, empty shops and regeneration, craft, gardening, the day you met 5 people called Gladys. Anything! If you have an idea for a talk that could interest, inspire, inform and/or entertain then I'd love to hear it. 

The Academy will take place over five days, from August 3rd to 7th. Although I can't offer payment for contributors I can pay for travel costs and hopefully an interesting and unusual evening.

If you would like further information about the project or want to propose an idea then please email me at TheCommonAcademy@gmail.com. You can also keep up to date with developments on our blog, commonacademy.blogspot.com and follow us on Twitter, @commonacademy

...

Come talk! I look forward to hearing from you.

New Logo

As you can see at the top of the page, the CAA now has a logo, carefully made with the help of some potatoes.

Some exciting ideas are being suggested and formulated for the Academy's timetable, and there will be a form available through which to submit your ideas very soon.

Some things to note:

• There is funding available to support any ideas you have.
• The content of the Academy is limited only by our imaginations! Talks, workshops, screenings, installations, tea parties, glow-in-the-dark owl assisted sugar sculpting...
• The Academy is not just for kids. Daytimes will be focused at families, children and young people, but the evenings will be reserved for the grown ups. Things can get a bit more intellectual, or naughty, or silly, in the night times.

Until the website and form goes live feel free to email me at thecommonacademy@gmail.com with any thoughts and ideas.

Full steam ahead!

It is decided.

The Common Academy of Art
3rd - 7th of August
Workshop 1a
1a New Road, Shoreham by Sea

Now that the space has been found and dates set it is time to fill the timetable of the CAA with many a wondrous thing. I am going to create a website that provide you with all the information you need to submit ideas for activities that could be held at the Academy.

Workshop 1a is very spacious, and has a large main area, double fronted shop windows, a smaller workroom upstairs and a lovely outdoor space. So get your thinking caps on and start thinking up ways of using this wonderful space.

Thanks to Amex and other fundraising activities we can provide funding for materials and other things you might need to turn your ideas into a reality.

How very, very exciting.

Beautiful People

I have finally got around to scanning in some of the wonderful 'face-to-face' portraits drawn at our fund raising event, Pen & Paper. With only a week to organise I was very pleased with the £140 that was raised, and all the contributors made the event truly special and unique. A big thank you to Anna, Nick, Luke, Ellie Harman, The Wolf Larsens and Cosmo Sheldrake.

And so!

The Brighton 'property mafia' (as I've heard it described during my investigations) are particularly elusive. I still walk around the city and see many sadly empty buildings, and the numbers seem to be increasing. However, an opportunity to hold the CAA in an empty shop outside of Brighton has arisen, and hopefully this is what will go down.

Workshop 1A is run by the Empty Shops Network, wonderful people spearheading the empty shops movement. Located just off Shoreham High Street, it was once an empty shop like many others.

But after much hard work and cleverness it has now become 'a temporary, flexible and informal space' available for use by the community.

(image from http://workshop1a.tumblr.com/post/2684238499/new-year-new-team-new-name-new-logo)

This is the kind of thing I really want to get involved in and perhaps have a hand in crating more of in the future. At the moment I feel like I don't quite have the experience to set up an empty shop project from scratch all by myself in Brighton, but hopefully if the CAA can find its first nesting space in Shoreham then it will be wonderful and there will be more wonderful things to follow.

Watch this space...

(Also take a look at Workshop 1a, artistsandmakers.com, Empty Shops Network and Meanwhile.)

'Look Out... Look In' - Moukhtar Kocache

"I imagine our sector rebuilding its alliances with social movements to regain its historic place at the forefront of ideological and social mobilisation."

"On a basic level, this means demystifying our arts institutions, rendering them more transparent and accessible; even, perhaps, re-imagining the use of our spaces and facilities." 

This morning I am reading an interesting essay written by Moukhtar Kocache for the Arts Council England in which he considers the relationship between the arts and government, society and policy. In 'Look Out... Look In', Kocache suggests that the priorities of the free market, 'efficiency, profit and growth', have come to shape and restrict the position the arts hold within our world.

Pen & Paper: Saturday 5th March

This coming Saturday I have organised a fund-raising event.

Pen & Paper,

Saturday 5th March, 5pm-11pm,

The Green Door Store,

Brighton.