The reveal: The Bubble Project

I love the way Derek Dick from Warrington Museusm and Art Gallery promoted The Bubble Project's exhibition 'I used to say I'd run away but never actually got round to it'  The first stage was an article in the Warrington Guardian, http://www.warringtonguardian.co.uk
where it's described as a mystery appearance, (in true street art fashion) and asks for help identifying what it could be or where it came from.

The second article reveals the artists to be the Young Carers, http://www.warringtonguardian.co.uk/ There is also an interview with Roz Coleman, the manager of the Young Carers Group, and former Young Carer herself.  http://www.warringtonguardian.co.uk/ she comments: "You learn yourself through art. Children need to have art – it’s self-expression." and “Art is a great place to be. You can be yourself, it gives you room to reveal and to hide."


You can view more photos from The Bubble Project at our flickr site 
and read about the making of the poems and artwork here. 

Used to say I’m running away but I never actually got round to it

This collection of street art made by young carers in Warrington asks questions about how we care for each other as humans – and if the cost of caring is the freedom to be yourself.

A group of 8-11 year old carers collaborated with arts organisation arthur+martha at Warrington Art Gallery to create these subtle self-portraits, combining graffiti, poetry, collage, paints, ink. They name friends, fears, cares and freedoms – some of them buried, some of them harshly written across a face or inscribed in the heart. The pieces have been placed in Warrington’s indoor market, a familiar hangout for young people dodging rain and boredom.

Kitty and self portrait

Kitty Bland’s two pieces contrast a curled up introvert with a jumping skyrocket of a girl. Ryan’s firework-minded thinker is held to earth by a chair, his head in the exploding stars. 

Ryan and self portrait

Len’s basketballer is a teamplayer, but strives for individual glories. Lauren’s cross-legged image looks at us full in the face, while her eyes are masked and with her free hand she texts a message elsewhere. Luke Hall’s laconic bystander shimmers within his outline, can’t be pinned down – but at his centre is a ‘fireheart’.

Luke's Fireheart

Complementing the figures are self-portraits as training shoes – half-drawn, half-written customised trainers that give fragments of the makers’ lives and interests. But the shoes are also a means of escape – they are literally the method needed to run away. Some of them carry fragments of fearfulness or anger, and have been hacked to pieces. Others are joyous celebrations of the artists. On one set of training shoes is written the title of the show, a passing comment made by one of the young carers -  ‘Used to say I’m running away but I never actually got round to it.’

Used to say I'm running away...

At the information desk in the market, poems bottled like pickles can be requested – they describe emotions as trapped animals, wriggling to get out.

This exhibition was commissioned by Warrington Art Gallery as a response by local young people to the street artist ELBOW-TOE whose work has recently been exhibited in the gallery. ELBOW-TOE said of the collection 'These are awesome!' Warrington Young Carers partnered the project, which was directed by artist Lois Blackburn and poet Philip Davenport, arthur+martha. 

Kitty's customised trainers

Derek Dick, Museum Operations & Development Manager at Warrington Museum and Art Gallery  said 'I am so pleased with the responses and the work that everyone has put in. This group has really benefited from the whole experiences. It does put life into perspective.' You can view photos of work in progress and the final installation at http://www.flickr.com

Thanks again for all of those people who volunteered their time and help, particular thanks to Derek, Sarah, Louise and Melanie, and all those from the Warrington Youth Federation. We are grateful to the parents and children at Hayfield Primary School, who kindly donated so many trainers, as materials for customization. 

Used to say I’m running away but I never actually got round to it

Ryan's seated self portrait

The installation of the Bubble Project pieces was both a change up in gear and a race towards the final conclusion of the work. Installation is always a process in which the artist has one eye on the clock and this was no exception. We had only two hours with the group to decide where the pieces would work best in our chosen location the indoor market. Lois, Derek and I then had a further four hours to wallpaper the life-size pieces in position, fine-tune the placement of the training shoes and postcards and find a home for the bottled poems.

The rush is sometimes a valuable one because it cuts out dithering and requires intense focus. Our group all rose to the occasion, scouting out the best sites for their work, helping to blutac them on the walls, shuffling pieces around several locations until the best height and angle was found. Finding the right space, the right moment for a piece is as fine a craft as the making and can transform work utterly, for good or ill.

Ryan's action man' self portrait

Ryan was as ever afire with ideas and enthusiasm – he steered the placing of several pieces, cackling gleefully as he did so. 

Luke's Fireheart

Luke dived deep into the whole process, working with Derek to build up bits of bric-a-brac around his ‘portrait’, choreographing the space to great effect. 

Lauren's Egyptian self

Lauren was decisive and direct, as she is. 

Len's jumping self portrait

Len found an excellent point for his basketballing self to leap into space. Finally, Kitty positioned her pair of contrasting ‘selves’ so that they linked but weren’t visible at the same time – one introvert, one extrovert. She also tried out arrangements of the training shoe text piece and the star poems. The works became powerful in the environment, it was a living frame for them. As we glued and cut and pinned, the excitement ran between us.

Kitty's Rabbit brain

The fact that the market is a hangout for local teenagers put the group on their mettle – they seemed determined to make the best of their pieces, especially when being judged by their (possibly unforgiving) peers.  The acid test of public reaction can sting, but it also brings insight – the perspective of others. As it happened, all of the teenagers we spoke to were enthusiastic about the work (‘Good things aren’t they?’). The pieces ask questions about how we care for each other as humans – and if the cost of caring is the freedom to be yourself. And freedom is a favourite subject for all adolescents everywhere.

Lauren and Lauren's falling figure

A particular hit with the audience were the training shoes – half-drawn, half-written customised trainers. On one set of training shoes is written the title of the show, a passing comment made by one of the young carers -  ‘Used to say I’m running away but I never actually got round to it.’ I’m so glad that the group stayed the distance with us to make this work. I felt burstingly proud of them. When we said our farewells, it seemed impossible to me to explain how far I thought they’d travelled on this creative adventure with us – and how much inventiveness, humour, courage and sweetness they’ve shared.  

used to say I'm running away but I never actually got round to it

More photos at http://www.flickr.com

Week 5: I'm free to run

 life size portrait (detail) Kitty

Saturday's workshop was a ball of energy and excitement, with a tinge of sadness dancing at the edges. It was our last making session.

It feels sad partly because we've grown attached to this little gang and have started to know them and their lives more deeply; it's also sad because at precisely this point their making has become strongest. They've relaxed into the process and now the work they're producing mirrors their own situation, giving them a chance to know themselves (or potential selves) in a different way. It is a very powerful psychological tool to be able to rewrite the script we've been handed in life. Making art allows people to dream different versions of 'me', even contradictory versions. For someone who has a family role as demanding as 'carer' it can be valuable to try on other personae, to look at the unacknowledged creatures under the surface.

We started the day writing creature specimen poems for jam jars, to be placed around the museum. I'd prepped 'PICK ME UP' stencils for the labels, cleaned and scraped a multitude of jam jars, so felt happy to sit back and let Phil lead on the poetry making. We took inspiration from the wonderful, lugubrious cases of taxidermy that surrounded us in the art room and pondered what creature you would place in a container? The group conjured up a delightful mix of snakes and rabbits to spiders, through to flesh-hungry zombies. Phil asked a series of questions about these creatures, so that they described bottled emotions and finally morphed into poems.

Rabbits when they die

The young carers, not content with simply stencilling the words Pick Me Up on their labels, added their own instructions, warnings, sly jokes. For some of the children a highlight of the project was finding a location for these poem/artworks amongst the museum displays.  'It's a real privilege to go inside the display cases'  Lauren explained

Lauren behind the scenes in the museum

They took their time considering choices of location for their artwork, Luke's poem included a zombie curse and a fear spider, so it seemed appropriate to leave his jar in the poison collection.

Luke's poison 

Kitty had more difficulty finding a location for her piece, so I was very pleased when she decided on placing it amongst the wonderfully eccentric Victorian 'skit on cockfighting'. Kitty's sweet little homage to rabbits and the idea of home comfort counterpointed the mock courtroom of adversarial animals.

Kitty's homeloving rabbit amongst ' a skit on cockfighting

Luke continued to check on his piece 'a circle can be anything' to view the public's contributions. He also brought in a fantastic illustrated newsletter that he had made, and took time out from making art and writing poetry to interview Derek Dick the Museums Operations and Development Manager. Its been fantastic to see him grow in confidence and to take the initiative to create interactive artworks for the museum and start on a journalistic carer! 

Luke's interactive artwork

We finished more of the large scale self portraits,  with Ryan and Kitty completing their second piece of work. Each piece is unique to the individual making it, a reflection of their own story. 

Len with his portrait

The customised trainers were completed with a circular text piece 'used to say I'm running away but never actually got round to it', a comment made by one of the group with one word on each shoe, we have tried a few layout ideas, but final decisions will be made on Friday at the exhibition space.


For more photos, please visit our portfolio site.

week 4 Special Offers

Special Offer Poems

This week Phil started the session working on Special Offer poems, short concrete poems in the shape of stars, reflecting the young peoples wishes. Some funny, some touching, they gently reveal a little about the authors. You can see examples at http://www.flickr.com and http://www.flickr.com/

It's beginning to feel more like an art foundation course, rather than a usual community art project- the time we have been given to get to know the children- and visa versa. This is the fantastic opportunity that five hours spent in one day, and 5 weeks gives you. The depth of the work, the time spent on one piece- the large self portraits worked on over a series of weeks- a luxury that schools would never be given.

Len Stenciling

Each young person bringing their own personality and interests to the work. There's lots of laughter and tons of energy, its a joy when we introduce an idea and they take it and run with it in their own direction, bringing their own self to it.

Then out of the blue come moments that reveal another side of being a young person, and a young carer. The anguish, the frustrations, the anger, the sadness, reflected directly in the words below scratched into the paper. This young artist, told us the previous week that she used art making directly as a release for the tensions and anger of being a young carer- running to her room and scribbling into paper.

 'Help Me'

We had a bit of a break through with the trainers. I had the idea that the stenciled words would look great on them, layering with their handwriting. Thanks to Luke we had our first example. Next week we are going to encourage a whole poem written over a collection- one word or line on each shoe.

Luke's trainer, 'Tiring'

As the group were leaving, I asked 'will we see you next week?' Ryan loudly exclaimed, 'You're not getting rid of us now!' 

Ryan's stencilled self portrait

These workshops seems to be getting the thumbs up.

Bursting the bubble: week 3

This was a breakthrough day for the project, on our third week; suddenly the writing came alive and found a place among the portraits and collages and all the visual richness that Lois has helped to conjure. Anger was the key that unlocked the words, as it often is.

I'd just had a long conversation with Roz, one of the organisers of the young carers' group. She took time out from her usual busy-ness to talk me through her thoughts about the group and caring generally. One of the hidden aspects of care, she explained is anger. It gets buried, but it's there. Many young people who are carers lose their childhood and that is a high cost, seeding great resentment.

Immediately after this conversation, Lois called me over to the trainer customisation table, where a little experiment with destruction was taking place. The kids were wrecking training shoes, gleefully and very efficiently. Scissors, scalpels and good old fashioned ripping were all taking place, sometimes simultaneously.
"We were just talking about anger," I said, "how convenient."
"So what makes you angry?" Lois asked the group.

And out it came, the sofas that they hit in frustration, the walls, the screaming into pillows, the whole aaaaaaaaaaaaaah. One girl painted her 'anger pictures' - big crazy paving patterns filled with burning colour. Another ripped paper to pieces. Another drew pictures of herself over and over and scribbled them out.

In every single case they described, they went into another room to show their fury.

One girl explained how her Christmas present had been broken by her sibling ('He's ill. Got something wrong with him. I have to look after him.') and when she got cross about it she was reprimanded for showing anger to the invalid. All the outrage of a child's sense of injustice was in her face, real and powerful.

I made some notes as they spoke. Perhaps these pieces will feed into next week's session, a spur for our portraits into somewhere new. But however it moves, we have gone deeper, we have broken the surface.
 

The Bubble Project week 2

You can usually give a bit of a sigh of relief on week 2 of a project; you know a little of what to expect- the people you are likely to be working with, the room layout, the pace of the day... and so we relaxed a bit into the project. Added to our core group of Young Carers were new faces, bringing fresh ideas and energy.

painted latex glove

With our projects with older people, I'm used to the discussions and word making being the popular activity and older people struggling with confidence and the physicality of visual art making. However with the young people, Phil and our roles are reversed. Here Phil is the one having to find inventive ways to motivate the group, and my job is to introduce ideas and techniques and watch the Young Carers run with them.

Phil worked in a low-profile way this week, asking people to comment on their work as they made it - little insights began to emerge, interests and concerns, ways of looking at the world. It's these little phrases that can tell so much about someone; Phil jotted them down, getting poem sketches. I saw him talking with Ryan and snapped a picture of the piece that was developng out of a conversation about the band Green Day. Ryan's work has a punky energy and a touch of Scarfe too - I'm hoping that some of the cutup song lyrics will find their way into his final piece.

Ryan's Customised Trainers

This week we continued with the customised trainers, continuing to find ways of combining the word and the visual. You can see more examples at our flickr site. I love the bold simplistity of Ryan's sprayed, written and painted on trainers, and the storytelling of Kitty's. With a little guidance from Phil she devised The Trainer of Optimism and The Trainer of Evil, each with a twist on her initials: Kitty Bongo for happiness and Killing Bonanza for her dark side.

Good things, Kitty

The life size portraits continued to grow and take shape. It was inspiring to see the energy of the participants being channeled into the action painting, using the diffusers, spattering, spraying, dripping, paint brushes and hands the artworks quickly took shape. Its great working on the floor, it encourages a loose physical approach, working 360 degrees around the piece, loosing the sense of top and bottom. 

Next Saturday we will start to cut the figures out, so we can take another look at them with view for exhibition. 

Collage making was our additional technique this week, particularly when it combined image, colour and word. Kitty did a fantastic collaged hand, that I hope she will add to her life size portrait. It seems to sum up the day, a hand never still, and covered in ink!

Thanks again to our helper Louise. This week we also had two volunteers, Bryone from the Youth Fed, who found us by happy accident at the beginning of the day, and stayed joining in activities and invaluable help clearing up tables, brushes etc. and the wonderful Sarah, who brought with her a welcoming calmness brought of years of experience in teaching art and textiles, and skills and ideas from her own professional practice.

peacemaker

The Bubble Project: working with Young Carers in Warrington.

On Saturday, Phil and I started the first of 5 workshops for The Bubble Project, at Warrington Art Gallery and Museum. We had a small but perfectly formed group of young people join us for an assortment of art and writing activities around the theme of Street Art and the current exhibition in the Art Gallery. After a facilitating guided tour of Elbow Toe's exhibition from Derek Dick, everyone had an opportunity to try out a variety of activities including poetry writing, trainer customising, making collage materials, contributing to a record breaking long poem and drawing, and life size portraits. The surprise hit of the day was using the spray diffusers with the brusho ink. There was something so transfixing about watching the inks moving across the page and the colours mixing and blending in unexpected ways. There's something freeing about covering a page with colour and shape without using a paint brush or pencil, it takes the fear out of the blank white page.

The size of the group allowed us to get to know each other faster, and for the quieter, shyer children to have space to come out of their shell in a way that may not have happened so easily if they had been lost in a larger group. There wasn't much talk about their roles as carers, it seemed more natural to simply enjoy the time, space and freedom to get on with something creative, to forget any troubles at home, to enjoy exploring materials, colour and words as any other child might.

I'm really looking forward to next week, they are a wonderful group to work with. Next week we develop the life size portraits further, and introduce the technique of collage.

A big thanks to all our helpers, Ann who has had the role of a carer herself and in turn been cared for, enthusiastically cheered on the children and enjoying having a go herself. Louise quietly got on with activities and encouraged others to do the same. Jamie from the Youth Federation came in and combined a burst of energy with working sensitively with the children. Melanie freely shared many creative ideas and helped to make the children feel relaxed and welcomed. And a thanks to the parents and staff at Hayfield Primary, who have been collecting un-wanted trainers for customising.

peacemaker

everyone has different foundations
of love and hate
family traditions
my grandma’s cup of tea
Quality Street from my mum
dad the cornerstone
it’s different the ways you grow
tho when you’re going through you don’t understand
experience is difference
eating hot choc fudge cake is different to
Pringles sour cream and onion
or stopping a punch
just like every family is different to every

and every everyone has different
traditions
love and hate come one+two together
when you’re a carer
you’ve got to grow tall quicker
build your own confidence
get all your homework done
get injured, lose trust, lose your pet rabbit
go to a concert and be a rock n roll star
drink from the well of rage
go exploring
the tranquillity of solitude
go and look at the biggest trees
you’ve ever seen

each has different foundations.

(group poem)