DIY: 2010 – Abi Davey An Artist’s guide to The Black Country

Rediscover the true “Black Country” as a tourist for the weekend, explore and experience it, then draw upon skills and senses to map out an artist’s guide to the area.

Would you like to have a holiday in the Black Country? A weekend at playing tourist and appreciating what it has to offer, with the black soot long gone from the area. The weekend is open to 6 artists who have a connection to the Black Country. The Participants will be introduced to thinking of themselves as witnesses/audience members to a performance when visiting the area/site/tourist attraction; providing them with the opportunity to use familiar sites to provoke ideas for creativity, with new ways of viewing by using all senses and mapping out findings as a form of documentation/performance for others. As tourists, the group will visit the Black Country Museum and other attractions, including discovering new ones, culminating in the creation of “An Artist’s Guide to The Black Country”. Let the area and all its characters perform for you, just as they do in the museum. The challenge is to fully experience the place that you may already know, but now as an audience to the great Black Country performance that surrounds you and inform others how to have the same experience. The Guide will be used/exhibited during Fierce’s Interrobang series to be held in the Black Country.

Dates, times and location(s):
Friday 6 August – Sunday 8 August, 10am–5pm each day.
Day 1: Friday – meet at The Black Country Museum (get to know the group and be a tourist).
Day 2: Saturday – meet in Dudley and set challenges to find new attractions, bringing back something to tantalise all senses.
Day 3: Sunday – meet at another attraction in the Black Country (TBC) to reflect, and then onto The Pie Factory, Tipton, for dinner and to map out our experiences as tourists to create “An Artist’s Guide to The Black Country”.
Participants will have to organize their own travel to any meeting points. Per Diems and admission costs will be covered for the weekend.

Application procedure: 
The call out is for artists from all disciplines, with a keen interest in performance and live art. All participants need to have a connection with The Black Country area in some way, shape or form; you may live there, have visited it, passed through it, you may have grown up in the area but have since moved away like Abi (lead artist), you may be an artist who has always been curious about the Black Country and would just love to be a tourist to the area. All baggage, memories, and knowledge of the Black Country are welcome.

To apply, please write a 200 word proposal on why you feel the need to be a tourist in the Black Country and a paragraph about yourself and your artistic practice. Consider the following questions: What is your connection to the Black Country? How do you feel about the area? What is your favourite place to visit in the area or where would you like to visit that you have heard about? Please apply (including contact details) to [email protected], the deadline is Friday 16 July.

The artist: 
I, Abi Davey, am part of a collaboration with 2 other artists, Breathe. Breathe aims to create sensory performative experiences in interactive environments, situating spectators in unsettled spaces between the public and private. www.breatheartists.co.uk I also have experience in facilitating Theatre and Multi-media workshops with young people. I am a born and bred Brummie, with both parents and family from the Black Country. I have since moved to Anglesey, North Wales, where I live with my little family on a farm. On returning to my “homeland”, I like to visit places in the Black Country and not just friends and family. I visit galleries, museums, parks, farms, places I’ve been before and places I’ve never visited. I find myself in an area I know well, but I am no longer a local and therefore a tourist who has done their homework. The Black Country Museum is my all time favourite tourist attraction, having visited many times as a child, both with family and school trips, also as an adult taking visitors to the area and going at Christmas time when they open their doors for the evening (The Black Country Museum is at its most magical on these occasions).

This DIY project is supported by Fierce:
Fierce has established an international reputation for risk-taking, excellence and innovation and is now widely recognized as one of the UK’s most important contemporary arts festivals. It has consistently engaged new audiences with a broadening programme. This programme of year-round work includes artist and practitioner development, public consultancy, the organization of networking events, artists’ surgeries and ‘Interrobangs’ (mash ups of audience engagement & research, art-experiments, seminars, workshops, installations, exhibitions, parties and activism!)www.wearefierce.org