Solar Associates

Solar Associates say: Whoah! (which we mean as a combination of "Wow!" and "whew!" - do bear with us, we're pretty bushwhacked....) At last we can come clean about one of the big projects we've been keeping under wraps this year. Since the spring, when we were asked - and eagerly agreed - to produce the artistic programme for Lift at the Shoreditch Festival 2008,  we've been supporting Shoreditch Futures, a mysterious 'adventure agency' as they developed the climactic commission for the final day of the 9-day programme.

And what a ball was had by all, on Hackney Handover Day - when the Olympic torch passed from Beijing to London. The footage above shows a fragment of BigBallBingo, a 'future Olympic sport for young and old', that the SF team, embedded in Shoreditch's sports halls and bingo groups over several weeks, developed in collaboration with local people. The sun came out exactly on time, the games designs met with popular roars of approval all afternoon, and apparently the players - who took to the field in all shapes and sizes - averted a catastrophe in Shoreditch's future by generating the right numbers in The Lift's bingo hall. Or something.

What made us, and many other people, most happy was the genuine inclusiveness of the thing, with local people mixing with one-day Festival visitors, and young and old having fun side by side, and getting to know each other. That's the kind of social dynamic it can take years of struggle to achieve in participatory art projects, and Shoreditch Futures managed it, apparently, in the wink of an eye. Are vast inflatable spheres the social adhesive we're lacking in our urban spaces? Seriously though, our heartfelt thanks to them - and to Lift, its staff and venue crew and volunteers - for their inspiration, hard work and attention to detail.  One participant summed it up with:

"What a wonderful, exhausting, difficult and rewarding thing that was. I never thought I'd hear Hackney's children screaming for small acts of kindness that would save us all. Rave on!"

We have a set of images from the Shoreditch Ball Park in our picture galleries area if you'd like to see more. Soon, we'll have details of our work producing the massively popular programme for Lift at Shoreditch 2008 - which, besides the Ball Park, included some cracking comedy, wireless headset partying in the Silent Disco style, live music and a lot more.....do check back and have a look!

burntprogress have been busy over recent weeks. Their CDR project has been surfacing at several summer UK music festivals – Rise, The Big Chill and Lewisham People's Day - that we booked them into. A healthy mix of music makers and fans gathered at each, demonstrating their ongoing support for this unique platform for emerging and existing talent – and their appreciation for the airing of great new tracks-in-the-making.

Rise provided CDR with a chance to support some young MCs.  At Lewisham, burntprogress shared stage time with Red Snapper and Ty, and offered an 'OpenCDR' opportunity to local artists who could hear their work through a festival-scale sound system. At the Big Chill, Solar Associates heard from members of CDR's evolving East Midlands network - for which we fundraised awhile back. The 3-day OpenCDR special at the Big Chill finished  to applause, and with mix requests from the Festival and from marketing agency Beatwax. We bumped into Alan James (a.k.a. AJ), former ACE Head of Contemporary Music and current producer for The Imagined Village and the Bays + the Heritage Orchestra, who was pleased to hear the burntprogress/Solar collaboration is ongoing. Check out the CDR segment of the Guardian's Big Chill podcast here.

Respect to the burntprogress team for their fine work, and thanks to each of these Festivals for hosting the project. (Image of Tony Nwachukwu/CDR taken during a session at The Big Chill House, London.)

As part of its work for the West London Story, Solar Associates has begun working with the Festivals Forum based in west London's Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Earlier this week, we convened a capacity building workshop session for this group of festival producers. A rich range of experiences were in the space, including representatives from Chelsea Festival, Earl's Court Festival, Notting Hill Carnival, Portobello Film Festival and Portobello Music Festival.

We had an animated afternoon - among the aspects we explored were how the Forum might present a collective face to the world that transcends the sum of its (already impressive) parts, and what the producers might want on the shelves of their shared 'festivals cupboard' (real or virtual). There's clear fundraising leverage and resource efficiency to be gained, and perhaps gains that will enhance artistic outputs as well.

 

The Forum provides an excellent (and all too rare) opportunity to explore what ongoing collaboration between these very different festivals might look and feel like, before they find themselves locked into a future partnership. It's a under-discussed common experience within the UK arts scene for all too many 'partnerships' to amount to little more than project-based agreements over how a shared money-pot will work, with scant consideration of, and preliminary discussion about, the natural compatibilities and flashpoints between partners, and how different organisational cultures will intersect.

 

It's great to input into something different, and potentially positive. Our personal highlight from the session was hearing about this summer's new collaboration between Notting Hill Carnival and the Ramadan Festival - right now in the UK, there's a clear need to support and invest in inter-cultural initiatives, and accessible ways to create creative platforms that allow different communities to exchange, communicate and understand each other. Oh, and the 'psychogeography' T-shirt worn by Jonathan Barnett (Director of Portobello Film Festival) was great too - showing the range of locations this much-respected Festival has reached into over its long history, and the impressive connections it's established with innovative film-makers and artists (Photo credit: Colin Gregory Palmer).

 

Last week, with our fundraising visors on, we helped to lead some presentations and practical exercises during a 2-day workshop convened by PRADSA. 20 delegates, each with an interest in Technology and Social Action projects,  assembled at Anglia Ruskin University to explore how to engage with, and influence, the fundraising opportunities and funding systems that relate to their ambitions. 

We offered some insights into where the money is and where it's going; how to apply research tools and filters; and, crucially, how to think - and talk – with the emphasis placed strongly on funders' objectives, and the needs that each project aims to address. It can be tough to translate the complex concepts around collaborative technologies and grass-roots social development into confident, accessibly worded, resource-raising propositions. But we made some good progress, and not without a good laugh en route. By the afternoon of day 2, image theatre techniques were in the mix, and - in recognition of strong pitching skills – Solar Associates donated a tenner to the World Film Collective - we look forward to our credit ;).

Through this lens, there's an intriguing degree of crossover between the tech + social action world, and the arts and cultural sector. We've long felt that the UK's arts sector needs to 'get viral' to replenish itself and - with many new ways of raising resources and achieving sustainability being hothoused and championed over the past few years - it's an exciting moment for us to be in the thick of these conversations, looking for links.

PRADSA aims to develop and extend the capability of social action organisations to creatively design new practices, by appropriating and adapting ICTs. Visit its website here.