Opportunity? But you only have a few days

[Roy1]

This arrived in my e mail but I'm not an artist whereas some of you are.

URBAN OASIS
Call for expressions of interest.


Urban Vision
Architecture Week is the national campaign celebrating contemporary architecture, initiated by Arts Council England in partnership with the Architecture Centre Network and RIBA.

Urban Vision North Staffordshire is an architecture and urban design centre whose aim is to promote the value of high quality environmental design as a vital factor in achieving successful regeneration and an improved quality of life for all. Further details of Urban Vision and its work are available from our web site - Urban Vision.

The Project:
URBAN OASIS is a exciting project that is a collaboration between artists, architects and local youth groups. The programme will create architectural/landscape interventions to be a catalyst for greater engagement in building process, public realm space, art and architecture.

There will be a series of 3 co-ordinated projects each led by a team of 4 professionals (artists, architects, landscape architects and urban designers). Each group will be working with a local youth group to develop and construct an intervention to be installed/displayed in an area of open space in the city centre.
We will be developing a brief which asks the groups to create a piece that makes people look at and/or use the city centre space differently. These features/interventions could, for example be a green lawn, temporary shelter or water feature and they will be constructed in Hanley City Centre for one day during Architecture Week.

Continued next post

[Roy1]

The brief will deliberately be loose to allow the professionals to work with the youth groups freely. The approach, materials and aesthetic value of the structure are open to interpretation, but the feature/interventions must be a ‘real’, working, in situ interpretation of the design at the selected site.

Construction will be finished by midday on the event day during architecture week and will have to be dismantled by the end of the day/early evening.

(A full project brief will be developed and distributed to participating artists and architects)

A key aspect of the project is how members of the public respond to these new interventions in their city centre.
We are going to record and produce a DVD of the workshops and the main project. This will capture the way that these new components to the city centre are responded to by the members of the public.


Summary of programme:

Dates

April 2007 Brief development day – Artists and architects will have the day to develop their brief and discuss details of workshops with their team.
May- early June 2007 Workshops delivered at youth centres. (will possibly involve evening workshops)
Thursday 21st June 2007 Architecture event in city centre. (all day possibly till early evening)
July 2007 Evaluation day with artists and architects.

Expressions of interest

We are looking for 12 inspiring Artists and Architects (or other professionals working in regeneration) to work on URBAN OASIS.

The main skills that we will require from the artists and architects is that they are very creative, experienced at working and engaging with young people, able to commit to the project and work well within the mutli-disciplined team.

The workshops and final event will all be in Stoke-on-Trent so you will need to be able to travel easily to the youth centre and Hanley City Centre.
We have applied for funding which allows us to pay each artist/architect £200 +VAT per day (5 days each in total). The whole project is subject to confirmation of funding.

We would like relevant professionals to send their expressions of interests to jaina (at) uvns (dot) org or posted to Jaina Parmar, Urban Vision, School of Art, Queen Street, Burslem, ST6 3EJ.

This should consist of a copy of your C.V and a 50 word statement of your interest and suitably for inclusion in the project. Any photos or examples of past work may also be submitted. (Please do not send originals). The closing date for expressions of interest is the 5th March 2007.
Artist/architects will be selected for their creative and experimental approaches to site and structure; availability; and interest in collaborative and public initiatives.

Please call Jaina on 01782 575 321 if you have any queries.

Let me know if you think this should not have been posted here.

[Roy1]

Deadline passed.