AN IDEA WHERE

I NEED YOUR HELP

An Artist Walk.

John O Groats Trail

THE IDEA

An Artists Walk - People and Place

To Connect, Have Conversations and Create

  • The Walk

    Over a period of 1 to 2 years to walk south on The John O Groats Trail to Inverness, slowly, in small stages, meeting and talking to other artists along the way.

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    Then separately, hopefully if this proves successful to continue the journey south to Fort William and ultimately to complete the circle and ultimately walk home again via the Cape Wrath and finally when finished the North Coast Trail. It’s a big wish.

  • Place

    The feeling of place is an intrinsic part of my artwork. My connection to that place through spending time there, most notably with other people. Bonding with the landscape through bonding with others. Finding an emotional connection to the land itself through human connection.

    The inspiration I gain will feed my future work. Inspiration both from the land, the people I meet and the people I walk with.

  • People

    I plan to walk with other people to gain connection.

    My aim is to reach out to other artists on the routes and to talk to them about their feeling of place and where they live and how this effects their art practice, if indeed it does.

    I will invite them to walk with me to talk about their bond with the land they live in.

    Over the period of time I spend with them I will curate an series of small film snippets and a taped interview about their art and their art practice which will ultimately be uploaded to a YouTube channel I aim to set up.

    The aim is one of connection and community. To create of library of information that is personal to both the artist and the landscape they live. This library will tell the tale of working artists on this route, investigate their working practice and inform others about it and them.

    I plan reach out to specific professionally practicing artists on route- these I will look to pay for their time through funding sourced. Some I know of some I expect to find out about from those I meet as I travel.

    However, I will also have an open invitation to other artists to be part of the journey on a voluntary basis. For parts of the journey where the walk is accessible to more I hope to create artists walks with a larger group. Working with local partners to create a workshop where we create a memory of the walk together through an artist book. The book will reflect the elements and thoughts of the walk we took each personal to the person attending.

    Inclusion is valuable and may turn out to be the thing that shine lights where needed most.

  • Outcome

    A series of interviews.

    Visually via YouTube.

    Auditory via taped conversations.

    A digital library of visual creatives which the public can find out about via these links.

    A body of work created by myself from inspiration gained from the landscape I have walked in and a proposed gallery show in the future to depict the finished work.

    And ultimately an invitation to those who I took the time to spend time with to also produce a piece of work that can be shown in a future exhibition.

REACHING OUT -

SEEKING ADVICE AND FUNDING PARTNERS

I am right now writing an application in the hope to receive an Open Fund Grant from the Scottish Arts Council. On investigation into this it seems that any proposal would be more likely to be successful if I had other partners that would willing to also invest in the project.

I am looking to seek community partners for funding of the parts of my walk where I aim to open my walk and invite people to join me. Walking, talking and creating for that day. This will be done on the more accessible sections of the walk such as the beaches at Sinclair’s Bay. I would plan to run an artist walk workshop on those days, where we walk talk and ultimately create a concertina artist book each documenting our walk. This will hopefully open the project up for inclusion and interaction to artists of all levels.

Above as you have read is my idea, in brief, please take time to read it if you haven’t already. I am from you, looking to find information of anywhere that you think I can approach to secure funding or help in making sure my application ticking the boxes and written correctly.

HOW YOU CAN HELP -

  1. If you are a community group, or already run workshops, perhaps you would be interested in funding workshop days?

  2. You may know of someone who might be willing to fund community parts of this project in some way - perhaps the windmill funds on route? If you do and could help me in some way by pointing me in the right direction or assisting me in applying. That would be amazing.

  3. Reading and offering suggestions for the proposal that I have drafted for the main grant from the Scottish arts Council.

  4. In particular if you have experience of creating the budget element of this type of proposal helping me here and giving me guidance would be invaluable . It has become a wall for me.

In short I am reaching out to you because I believe that you have a better understanding of how to acquire the funding I would like to acquire in order to successfully fulfil this project. Indeed you probably have a much better idea of how to write the proposals in the first place. If you would be will to help me in any way, that would be amazing.

To note, I am not a charity and although I hope to create a community through my project it will not cover just one physical community such as a council area but instead will pass through many on route. This, is where, I am finding difficulty in knowing who to approach. If you know of someone to contact please let me know.

All help, any help is welcome.

THANK YOU

FINALLY SOME OTHER THOUGHTS

From a wellbeing note I hope to create an community of artists that can feel a common bond together.

Art is a solitary occupation and comes with many doubts and uncertainties.

Potentially I hope to create something special. A network/ pathway of artists and information about them. To promote the artists in these areas for the good of our local culture and for those visiting our area.

At the very least I hope to create a digital documenting of artists that I mee and interesting and entertaining content for others and some wonderful work as a result as well.