Campaigning – East 1

Aims
*To engage students in a professionally organised exhibition showing alongside internationally recognised artists.
*To offer students work in both gallery and community settings
*To stimulate interactive and pro-active projects involving local community groups.
*To raise the profile of East 1 and the benefits of collaboration in the arts to extend the reach of creative projects.

Following a series of meetings the East 1 group arranged a series of events and exhibitions set around the theme of Campaigning to enable all organisations to be part of a coherent programme that could be promoted from the East 1 web site (East 1.org) and joint print media. (see card attached)
Campaigning began with The Women’s Library exhibition on Womens Suffrage and included talks at the Toynbee from Paul Boateng and Trevor Phillips, a symposium at the Whitechapel Gallery on subversive strategies in art, a singing workshop and performance involving young women from the Jagonari Centre organised by the Spitalfields Festival.
The Sir John Cass School of Arts Media and Design set a project with tutor Patrick Brill (A.K.A. Bob Smith) to make work for an exhibition to be held in Unit 2 gallery. Students were invited to make work in response to the title ‘Campaigning’ in any media. The same exercise was set for Royal College of Art printmaking students. B.A. Fine Art students were also invited to participate in workshops at St Paul’s Way Community School; four students assisted at the school to help pupils create work for the exhibition.
A series of tutorials where students could discuss their ideas and seek advice for the work were held and the students were then asked to submit a proposal for exhibiting the work, considering issues of display i.e. placement, framing etc..
The premise of the show was to be ‘democratic’ so that the works of pupils, students and internationally recognised artists should be shown alongside each other with no distinctions. Many of the artists created work that involved a participatory element, either involving visitors in a process or producing items that were to be given away or sold cheaply.
Visitors to the exhibition were invited to make their own posters and badges using facilities designed by artist Damien Grist, these artworks could either be taken home or displayed in the gallery.
Throughout the run of the show a number of events were programmed including daily performances by ‘The Clean Team’, who scrubbed an area of pavement matching the dimensions of the gallery frontage, which also featured in ‘The Metropolitan’ magazine. Artist, Peter Harris gave a talk on his work, and a seminar hosted by Bob Smith featured musical performances from Victor Mount and Mel Brimfield with previews of new work by Mark Titchner (Platform for Art at South Kensington).