Peter Timms, Internship Experience 2008
December 10, 2008 by Giles Lane · Leave a Comment
Proboscis Internship Experience May-June 2008
I stumbled across the Proboscis website while searching for creative organisations that worked across disciplines and this is certainly something that sets Proboscis apart from other organisations. Other distinctive features are the close, small team they have within the work space whilst also putting collaboration with others, artists, researchers, academia and communities at the centre of their practice. These elements were some of the positive aspects of Proboscis and that remained distinctive throughout my Internship.
My internship involved working one or two days a week, lasting a period of a month or so. The experience was primarily engineered through my own desire to work with Proboscis in some capacity, whatever the nature of the work. On reflection this was perhaps a little misguided. In future I feel interns should be clear about the expectations of their work and interests and plan for a longer time with Proboscis than I had available to really feel the fruitions of the work.
I had an interest in Education as I was going to do a PGCE and thought that some time looking at creative technologies would enhance my understanding of education as situated beyond the classroom. In discussion with the team, my brief was to research into how we might develop some of the projects that had been completed in schools, such as Everyday Archaeology and Experiencing Democracy. I primarily looked at how Proboscis’s current work might link in with the ‘Personalisation’ agenda within education and proposed suggestions for developing the work. By the end of my short time with Proboscis I was able to produce a research document and for me personally, more importantly, an insight into the organisation and how creative organisations work. One thing I did not take the opportunity to do, which I urge all interns to do, is make time for conversations with the team and I think this is best achieved through applying to do intern work that is project and collaborative in nature, not individual research.
I did enjoy the freedom to co-construct my own brief with the team, and did feel supported however I do feel that if I had more time and was also involved in a more hands on project, rather than research I would have gained more from the experience. I would encourage prospective interns highlighting that Proboscis provide an alternative internship, a creative and reflective space and learning environment, where you are a genuine part of the team. This measure of flexibility and the engagement with cross-disciplinary practice provides interesting scope for further work in the arts, education and social policy.
Peter Timms
December 2008
Being In Common Exploration Packs
December 8, 2008 by Orlagh · Leave a Comment
As part of our commission (Being in Common) for the Art of Common Space at Gunpowder Park, 21 Exploration Packs were sent to participants around the world to explore what ‘common space’ means to different people in both urban and rural areas and of different ages. Participants were carefully selected to get a wide variety of responses from various walks in life including a market stall owner, computer programmer, wilderness guide, NASA space worker, parkour artist, mother, social scientist, tourguide and sea-kayaker, and from diverse places such as London, Sweden, Vietnam, Spain, Australia, Canada, India and Greece.
Each pack contains objects and questions exploring what the phrase ‘common space’ means. Participants have been asked to respond in whatever way they wish – write, draw, use stickers, take photographs, use sound recorders or video. The packs include a guide, eNotebook, Matchbox, StoryCube, Photos, Feltboard, Collage Pack, CD, a World Map and International Reply Coupons. Each was designed to offer an understanding of what ‘common space’ means within the participant’s particular context.
Some of the questions include:
- Describing a common space :
- what does it look, feel, taste like?
- What do you like about it?
- What makes it a common space?
- Who else shares the space?
- How do you navigate around it?
- What are the edges / limitations / restrictions you encounter? - What are the features of a common space? Who belongs to / owns the space?
The responses will feed into Proboscis’ artwork to be made for Gunpowder Park early in 2009.
Rita King has blogged about receiving her pack here.
At The Waters Edge: Grand River Sketches
December 3, 2008 by aliceangus · Leave a Comment
At The Waters Edge: Grand River Sketches
As part of Proboscis ongoing creative research partnership with Waterloo, Canada based RENDER, Alice was commissioned to develop a new work specifically for the atrium of the University of Waterloo School of Architecture in Cambridge. Combining new media and traditional methods, the project reflects the Proboscis strategy of engaging the social, cultural and natural histories of specific sites and territories. Alice brought interest in rivers as life-lines, connectors and definers of place that has grown out of her long term work on Topographies and Tales.
For this project she, and RENDER Director and artist Andrew Hunter, explored the Grand River from its mouth at Port Maitland on Lake Erie to Elora. By bicycle, car, foot and kayak, they wandered through and around the numerous cities, towns, villages, communities, farm fields and industrial sites the river penetrates, defines and skirts, making focussed stops along the way at Chiefswood National Historic Site, Paris, Galt and Kitchener. Alice’s inquiries have also taken her to libraries, museums and archives and into conversations with numerous individuals whose lives have been touched by the river. The resulting work is a personal and poetic reflection on a significant body of water whose role as a critical thread through the region is often forgotten or obscured by more recent grids of development, pathways of transportation and community boundaries. As with her other work At The Waters Edge: Grand River Sketches maps a dialogue between the artist and place emphasizing a process of inquiry.
At the heart of RENDER’s ongoing collaboration with Proboscis is creative research grounded in local history and the built environment. Past collaborative projects have included Anarchaeology and The Accidental Menagerie. At the Water’s Edge will be further developed into a publication and Proboscis will play a central role in RENDER’s upcoming GROUNDWORK community garden project at rare.
Proboscis and RENDER would like to thank Robert McNair (UW School of Architecture), Paula Whitlowe (Chiefswood National Historic Site) and Joyce Majiski and Tuktu Studio in Whitehorse (where Alice spent a week working on At The Water’s Edge) for their support of, and contributions to, this project.
Photographs by Robert McNair 2008
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