Soft Estate

A month has whizzed by since I last blogged, with the result that I have numerous photos and things to write about.

Just after I started at Croome, we had a visit by an artist called Edward Chell who wanted to do some work at Croome, and I recently went to see his exhibition at The Bluecoat in Liverpool. The exhibition is called 'Soft Estate', and Edward's work explores the juxtaposition of the beauty of wild flowers with 

motorways and other busy roads. He links this with C18th ideas of the Picturesque and the beginnings of a tourist and national commerce industry which required a vast network of roads. The exhibition is accompanied by a book.

What struck me most of all was the very restful impression the work gave - very fitting for the wild flowers, but less so for their environments.

With the M5 so close to Croome and plants being so important to the place, it will be interesting to see whether we can work with Edward.

Stories: from Wolverhampton to Eden

Just over a week ago I spent a couple of hours with Jack at the Wolverhampton Council offices to discuss Jack's proposed Arts Council application for the photography project with teens in Heath Town. It is a very strong idea and the idea is that the group he would work with for a year would be taught photography (including darkroom techniques), document their own lives and familiar places, then come to Croome and do the same here.

There is a lot of support for this project, including from Wolverhampton Youth Service, Hope Family Centre, Heathfield Park LNP, Wolverhampton Art Gallery, Re-Entry and Wolverhampton Homes. I think this is one of the most interesting projects we'll be involved with and connecting Croome with such a different environment could provide all sorts of opportunities that we can't yet imagine.

In an area smaller than the Court and the Park there are so many people and so many stories. This is clear from the work already done by Jack, and everyone at the council in Wolverhampton seem very keen to see this project happen.

And then the following day I went to the Eden Project. Not on my own, but with a group of staff and volunteers from Croome. It was very good to be part of a mixed group like this, and to all meet Di Mullis from Eden together.

Di a storyteller and is running a series of workshops at Croome for all staff and volunteers to help us think about how we tell our stories. Storytelling is something we all do all the time to make sense of our world as we communicate with each other. It was clear from the visit that there are so many ways of telling a story, illustrated by the story of wine - factual, mythical (Dionysus) and through an artist's response (sculpture).

All the verbal storytelling was kept short - the audience didn't get bored and it left room for questions.

Drawing on the archives

Last week we had two groups of primary school children come for a drawing workshop with David Birtwistle and Fran Prince. Rachel (who leads on Community and Outreach) organised this with Number 8 in Pershore. As well as drawing what they see at Croome now, they will also be drawing their ideas of how Croome might look in the future. There are a number of schools taking part in this, and the best 5 will be deposited as a formal deposit at The Hive in Worcester.

This is not the only drawing that will be taking place at Croome, however. The plan is to introduce some tables into the long gallery which are inspired by Robert Adam's tables (other examples are here and here - scroll down a bit). They will have glass tops and copies of archive material, such as the Adam's designs for the long gallery under the glass. There will also be pencils and paper available for people to draw what they see in the room or through the windows, or to create designs for the room itself.

Perspectives

Because of all the different people involved with Croome, there are, inevitably, a wide range of perspectives. This number of people is increasing all the time, adding more, new perspectives to the perspective pot. And that's not to mention the visitors. This photo was my view as I left the building yesterday at about 4pm, and it struck me that although others use this entrance, that exact view, with that lighting and dampness, and those bins and board, was unique to me. It'll be familiar to many others, but never quite the same. It is so important that we keep reminding ourselves that everybody has a different view, and nobody has a monopoly on the 'right' one.

Shoes #3

Just before Christmas I visited a shoemaker in Bethnal Green, located under the railway arches there. His name is Thomas Rowe and he recently started the Parachute Collective - a collective of shoemakers - with workshop space, machinery and a shop. It's a very contemporary space, but with all manner of traditional shoe-making equipment, such as a Lockstitch Blake Machine.

Thomas studied shoemaking at the Cordwainers College (now part of the London College of Fashion), and a recent graduate is Maud van den Broecke. We expect to be working with both of them on our upcoming Soul to Sole project: making shoes, giving demonstrations and running workshops. I have also had a brief conversation with the Worshipful Company of Cordwainers about a possible partnership with them.

I also met with Helen Wyld - a National Trust employee who is working at the Met Museum in New York, undertaking research on the tapestries which once hung at Croome.

Turn of the year

I went to snowy Norway before Christmas, one of the reasons why I've not posted for a while. I lived in Oslo for a number of years, but that was many years ago, and it is always curious to see how a place has changed, or not, over a long period of time, and of course you always have a different perspective with the passing of time.

I visited the National Gallery, and it struck me that these are the places to understand how a

country/nation sees itself. Or perhaps how it likes to present a idealised view of itself. The main Norwegian artists here are Krogh, Dahl, Cappelen, Tidemand and Fearnley. I wonder how far the traditional presentation of a National Trust property is a similar way of creating an idealised view of a very English mythology.

I also had a look around the National Academy of the Arts, in particular the metalwork and

jewellery department. It's a fabulous place to study, with lots of space in very modern workshops, set in an old sail-making factory. Education is still free in Norway - they've made good use of all their oil money, securing a very long-term future with the largest investment fund in the world.

In the week after I got back, I had a meeting with Jack Nelson and Nicola Shipley (of GRAIN) back at Birmingham Library to discuss a GFTA bid to work with Jack on a photography project with teenagers. We also had a visit from Tom Godfrey to discuss working with young artists in the Midlands, and Ann Jones from the Arts Council to look at where we might show Grayson Perry's The Vanity of Small Differences when they come to Croome in 2016.

A day with the Heritage Lottery Fund

We had our six-monthly meeting with the HLF in Birmingham today to update them on our progress across the whole project. Between the 5 of us (Richard, Cate, Shaun, Rachel and I), we managed to keep talking for 3 hours! I’m not sure they were very impressed with that, but they were certainly impressed with all the work done to date, all the connections we’ve made and the overall progress of the project.

Summing up to the HLF about what I’ve been doing, I said it feels like I’ve been planting lots of seeds and they’ll get watered and fed, and we’ll start to see them growing over the coming months. Not everything will come to full fruition I shouldn’t imagine, but we’ll no doubt be doing some more planting in the new year.

I realise that what I’m trying to get away from is the concept of straightforward presentation, by which I mean putting things on display for visitors to just view, which tends to be the traditional approach for NT properties, museums and galleries. This different approach is already in evidence at Croome, albeit in a limited way – in the room with the 80s bar – but the scope for wider implementation is very broad.