Forest of Dean, artist, libraries, people, books, blogs = Cabinet of Local change

And finally, we get the funding to deliver a project!

Are Community Libraries really more than books? Absolutely!!
Artist in Residence to explore the art of blogging – and teach others how to do the same.

Thanks to being supported by the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development: Europe investing in rural areas, Flow Contemporary Arts is pleased to begin a pilot ‘Cabinet’ project, working with Gloucester artist Simon Ryder, in the Forest of Dean. The grant is local funding for local activity and we’re really looking forward to meeting people in 2 community libraries in the area. We’ll be at Mitcheldean Community Library at 10.00-12.OOam on Monday 13^th May, Monday 3^rd June and Monday 17th June, and Newnham on Severn Library the same dates – but from 2-4pm. Don’t worry if you miss the first one, just come and join in on the 3^rd June.

Artist Simon Ryder is known for creating multi-disciplinary artworks in response to places and people. Simon and Carolyn have experience of working on projects like this together – most recently for Exploratory Laboratory (www.exlab.org.uk), part of the 2012 Cultural Olympiad in Dorset.

By meeting with library communities and volunteers, the project will look at change at a local level and how we might explore it creatively. We’re interested in how the new libraries can evolve into community hubs and be ‘more than books’. By commissioning an artist, the project introduces new approaches to how we think about books, libraries, blogs, nature the forest and technology. You can read the whole press release on the website.

Or download a poster: Are Community Libraries more than books? Absolutely!

Flow is looking for partners to commission more cabinets, she has in mind a collection that can tour and change as they go, cross-pollinating audiences and places, stories and artworks.

And as an aside, I recently visited the Diffusion photography festival in cardiff. Don’t miss it, there’s some great work there, see this blog for review!

Here’s an image to tempt you, Strude by Trine Sondergaard