Over the summit...

DELEGATES AT THE BALTIC, DEEP IN CONVERSATION

This post follows a really brilliant (for me certainly, but I hope for others too) few days in the North East for the first Turning Point Network event.

This is also my first post using a new mobile application, so fingers crossed it works!

Incredibly 110 people cleared space in their diaries and, in many cases, made long journies up to BALTIC, in Gateshed. Generousity and a willingness to engage really created a positive atmosphere in which a wide range of discussions were held around 11 tables.

This first event was about starting conversations that will, I hope, now find their way back into the various regional groups. Put another way, there was nothing conclusive about the day - no answers were found. Rather, the key issues facing us were discussed and debated in an attempt to 'define the moment' we find ourselves in, together.

I've collected over 100 post-it notes, each home to an idea, thought, provocation or point of action raised on the day. My job over the next few days (half way through now) will be to distill these down into something coherent that can be shared with everyone.

Once we've gathered some feedback on that first piece of work, Julia Bell and I hope to commission some pieces of writing that will extend thinking in key areas.

Thanks to the Archive team at BALTIC we have some bits of video footage from the day, which I will be uploading soon.

If you would like to be notified when the videos are ready, the best thing to do it subscribe to my blog now... hint, hint.

Programme announced for the first national #turningpointnetwork event

The final programme has been announced for the first meeting of people from across the various visual arts strategy groups, that make up the Turning Point Network.

Hosted by BALTIC and Turning Point North East, this event will bring together over 100 leading figures from across the visual arts in England.

It will be a day of discussion and debate that attempts to 'define the moment', and explore how co-operation through the Turning Point Network might contribute to a stronger visual arts.

More information about the programme can be found here, on the roomman website.

For anyone not attending and who wants to follow the conversation online, I (and other attendees too, I hope) will be making regular posts to Twitter, using the #turningpointnetwork tag.

Thanks to support from the Archive team at BALTIC, we will be posting vox-pops collected throughout the day on the Turning Point North East website (currently in development).

A second national event is also now in planning. It will be hosted by Turning Point South East during Spring 2010, at a venue to be confirmed. This second event will invite into the conversation many people who, although not working through one of the visual arts groups, are critical to the full realisation of this emerging national network. 

If you have any questions about this event please do contact Simon Zimmerman via the contact page. 

For more information about the genesis of this first event, and to learn more about who was invited to attend, please click here now.

The first Turning Point Network Summit

MAKING CONNECTIONS | Image by Johnny Magee © 2007

A date has been set for the first national Turning Point Network event.

Hosted by BALTIC and Turning Point North East on 06 November 2009 this will be the first opportunity for the wide range of people involved in the various Turning Point groups to come together. It will be a day of provocation and debate, and of informal discussion and networking. It will also be a key opportunity to share learning across the groups, and to agree solutions to some practical issues like how we make the most of our resources to create the online tools the groups need.

For this first event we will bring together representatives of Steering Groups and Working Parties from all the groups, which include artists, independents and leaders of all types and scales of organisation. We anticipate around 8 people will attend from each group.

I’ve already been asked a few times why we are not extending this to include representatives from national agencies. It’s a good question, and indeed Turning Point South East are already planning an event for 2010 that will invite people from all national organisations, representative bodies and the other arts councils too. However, we (the other coordinators and I) feel that a chance to meet, for those who are leading the development of these groups now, is needed to consolidate what we have. Like any network, Turning Point needs to build capacity / bandwidth in stages. It will be stronger for all in the long-term as a result.

The archive team at BALTIC will be recording everything on the day, and as ever I’ll be posting links to the material once it’s live.

Smart Thinking

Yayoi Kusama at Hayward Gallery

Visitors to the current exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, Walking In My Mind, are invited to peer into and examine the territories of creative minds. Among other things, the exhibition asks visitors to consider how what starts in the connection of synapse, first forms and then externalises and is internalised once more by an other.

I mention the exhibition not only because I would recommend it, and especially to those who are tracing Charles Avery’s The Islanders, but also because the meeting held this afternoon next door in the South Bank Centre was absolutely about an opportunity to externalise some ideas, about the Turning Point Network.

Incredibly 30 extremely busy people (click here for a list of attendees) cleared an afternoon from their schedule, travelled from far corners of England, and contributed to the first of a series of conversations about how agencies with a national remit (VAGA; Crafts Council; a-n The Artist Information Company and AIR Artists Advisory Group; Axis; the National Federation of Artists’ Studio Providers; Engage; Hayward Touring Exhibitions; Contemporary Art Society; and Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, were all represented on the day) and the emerging Turning Point Network (representatives from six of the eleven existing groups were there too) can make the most of opportunities to work together and inform one and other: what, as Susan Jones asked, are the “smart ways of joining up”?

It’s very important to restate that this was the first of what will be a series of conversations: a small group for a focussed discussion, which will now inform a more open dialogue with anyone who wants to be involved.

The group shared a sense of opportunity, and agreed on the key challenges: openness, communication and sharing. The consensus was that a series of events bringing a wide range of people (essentially all national agencies and all regional groups and more artists too) together, to share thinking and gather knowledge, would be a sensible first step.

It was also agreed that in some instances, where there is a need to account in detail for ‘regional distinctiveness’ (around the issues facing artists’ studios, for example), focussed consultations between national organisations and individual groups will be needed.

So, the ideas are now out there. I’m sure there will be more as the conversation moves outward, and they will be very welcome!