Artists and Curator opportunities with Evolve

Arts Award Discover at Home – brief for creative challenges

We are seeking 5 Devon-based artists, from a range of artforms, to help us deliver Arts Award (Discover) for children across Devon and Torbay. We plan to deliver Arts Award Discover online via a page on our website. Arts Award Discover, the first level of Arts Award, is designed to get children involved in and excited about arts and culture and celebrate their creative achievements. Create Gloucestershire have created a webpage similar to the kind of thing we are trying to achieve.

Through this project, families will be able to access a range of arts challenges and download all the materials they will need to complete Arts Award Discover at home. It is aimed at children aged 11 and under (or anyone under 25 with additional needs).

This brief sets out the requirements for the range of arts challenges needed to create a webpage that will encourage children to:

• take part in arts activities
• find out more about an artist or arts organisation
• collect evidence of what they have done
• share their arts discoveries

It is also an opportunity for local artists to link to their own websites and showcase their work to a wider audience.

Deadlines:

• Ideas to be received by 5pm Monday 11th January 2021
• Notification of appointment by Tuesday 19th January 2021
• Activities delivered by Monday 15th February 2021

For further information and the application process please click here.

Unlocking The Cage Curator

In mid-2021 Libraries Unlimited will be launching a new interactive artwork entitled ‘Unlocking the Cage’ to tour across our Devon Libraries. Unlocking the Cage is an augmented and mixed reality experience based upon Kim Sherwood’s original essay ‘Unlocking the Cage: Women in and Behind the Exeter Library Rare and Early Printed Books Special’.

“There are over eight hundred books in the Rare and Early Printed Books Special Collection at Exeter Library. These books are sealed away in the basement, in a room known as the Cage. Women wrote eight of them” – Kim Sherwood

The content for this experience draws on the writings and research of Kim Sherwood and is specifically focused on several women writers who feature in the Rare and Early Printed Books Special Collection at Exeter Library. The collection is dominated by male authors. With over eight hundred books, the collection includes just eight books written by women, reflecting our male-dominated literary canon. However, just as the canon is both subjective and skewed, this is not a true representation of the role of women writers in our literary history. ‘Unlocking the Cage’ seeks to highlight the women writers in the collection, who are some of the most important poets, translators, critics, and novelists of the eighteenth century, a time of great change for women intellectuals. The project also seeks to highlight the women who donated to the collection, many of whom were writers themselves.

The experience uses a combination of sound, music and 3D animations which are presented as a series of seven AR ‘portraits’. A printed book containing approximately 15 pages of images and short texts is used as the trigger source for the AR portraits. When ‘spawned’, each portrait augments and merges with the world around the audience, bringing to life Kim’s research and writing. The portraits are experienced via a companion application. When viewed through a screen, the printed book’s text and illustrations trigger music, soundscapes and 3D animations to emerge from the pages of the book.

What are we looking for?

To accompany the launch of this installation we are looking for an independent female, or female identifying, curator to curate and programme a bold collection of pre-recorded online performances, workshops and talks around the theme of ‘Extraordinary Women’. These can be events around the specific content in the artwork, or more generally around the theme.

Given the nature of this time, we are imagining that the vast majority of this programming will be digital, but we are open to a blended programme.

We are interested in programming that explores the themes of activism, empowerment & celebration with both a local, national and international slant.

As part of this engagement we would like you to engage with one of the staff team members at Exeter Library (who are also booking some literary events around this theme) to both ensure a coherency in programming and also as an opportunity for them to engage with an independent curator.

For the full project brief click here.

If you are interested in this post please send CV and covering letter explaining why you would be excited to explore this opportunity as well as your approach to: evolve@librariesunlimited.org.uk by 5pm 4th January 2021.