DIY: 2015 – Geraldine Pilgrim ‘Going Home’

A developmental exercise exploring the concept of returning to what one understands as “home”

Project Summary

This project looks at the meaning of  “home” and how our personal relationship to this word affects artists and their practice.

Have you ever been back to a place that you lived or visited and have since left, never to return? It could be a much-loved family home where your family no longer lives; your grandparents house that you remember as a child; a room or flat you had whilst at college; your first home as a couple or by yourself. A park bench; a beach view – wherever it is that makes you feel like you’ve come home.

Going Home is a chance to question whether “home” is a place, atmosphere, or person.

How do we inhabit space/spaces and what are the traces that we leave there? Why do we feel at home in some places and not in others? Is home a concrete place or an emotional response? How are we affected if we have lost our home or never had one? If we reside across more than one location, then where is home?

Would you like the opportunity to go on a journey around the places you have lived or visit one particular place, one particular person. Do you want to examine other people’s concept of home? For example, you could visit every home you have ever lived in; talk to detainees in immigration centres; visit homeless people in shelters; explore your identity as a “foreign” student; visit older people who have had to sell or leave their properties to reside in care homes?

As part of a developmental exercise looking at the concept of “home”, 6 people including myself would be given the opportunity to each spend £100 in order to explore the meaning of “home” and then use this experience and knowledge to create a performance/installation that they share with the group in a safe environment over an intensive weekend during the AND Festival in the atmospheric Grizedale Forest in the heart of the Lake DIstrict.

Going Home follows a methodology I have developed through previous DIY projects, where after an initial one to one meeting participants go off to experience and develop their ideas individually. Then reconvene a week later as a small supportive group and share together the process and the outcomes, further exploring and developing our experiences and discussing in depth how this might usefully help us in understanding or developing our own practice.

Participants can be students, graduates, emerging or mid-career artists, who come from any area of artistic practice.

Application Deadline: Deadline passed.

Dates, times and location:
Saturday 12 September: One to one meeting with Geraldine Pilgrim- time tbc- either in Oxenholme or Kendal in Cumbria
During the week of 13- 18 September: Individual Going Home tasks to take place on a date, time and location of your choice.
Saturday 19 September and Sunday 20 September: 10 00 am – 5 00 pm 
The Yan, Grizedale Forest – as part of the AND Festival

The artist:
Geraldine Pilgrim director/designer and installation artist works across theatre and the visual arts; transforming buildings, landscapes and creating a contemporary dialogue with occupied and deserted historic buildings and sites. She is also artistic director of Geraldine Pilgrim Co, a performance company set up to continue to create site-specific events often working in collaboration with young people, older people and arts and community groups. Her particular site work specialises in installations and performances in unusual buildings and landscapes where the architecture of the site is used as inspiration and narrative, gradually revealing memories and atmospheres that have built up over the years, She trained as a fine artist and theatre designer, co- founded and became Artistic Director of Hesitate and Demonstrate the influential visual theatre company which toured Britain and mainland Europe and has since been making installations, theatre based performances and large and small scale site-specific events. She is also an Artsadmin artist, a Complicite associate an associate lecturer at Wimbledon College of Arts, and a visiting lecturer at Goldsmiths College and Central St Martins.

This project is part of DIY 12: 2015, supported by Abandon Normal Devices (AND) and the workshop will coincide with this years AND Festival taking place from the 18-20 September, in Grizedale Forest in partnership with the Forestry Commission. When the forest will become the temporary haven for filmmakers, artists, creative technologists and artists to explore the secret infrastructure of the forest. The festival will feature a programme of artworks trails, performances and workshops, which will explore the processes of nature and respond to the site.