More Than a Hundred Stories

We are two artists, interested in how art can animate, challenge and create communities. We’ve been commissioned by Creative People and Places to creatively map and respond to its achievements, the problems it faces, and the questions it has generated.

We are interested in the programme’s ambition to change how art is commissioned and experienced and will be exploring how and to what extent this ambition has been realised across all 21 projects.

We will be posting creative responses to conversations, observations and research throughout the project and will share our final work with you in autumn 2016. Do join us and follow our creative journey on this blog.

You can find out more about our work at:
www.urbanwords.org.uk and www.nicolemollett.co.uk.

Sarah Butler and Nicole Mollett

Smoke Screen

07.08.15

When what you need to do takes time; when what you need to do is almost invisible; when what you need to do is hard to explain, you might need to think big.

Consider a spectacle – huge, beautiful, magical, visible: acrobats and fireworks; drama and dancing; laughter and held breaths; the streets lit gold. Something to hold onto, to point at, to photograph. Something unforgettable.

It can buy you time for the smaller things: a cup of tea with someone who’s never much bothered with art; a three hour meeting to find the right question; time spent listening.

It can make the space for you to weave this slow, delicate web of connections, intentions, desires, compromise, ambition.

 

Inspired by conversations at CPP’s June conference in Stoke about the need for the programme to be visible as well as the need and value of small, consistent interventions and connections.