REAL ESTATE
Real Estate is our long term live/work artist residency scheme taking place in Blackpool and Wyre. The residencies were developed and shaped by our experiences working across Blackpool and Wyre over the last six years and are one of our longest interventions to date. They are a direct response to opportunities that have presented themselves, a wide range of partnerships and the potential to become pioneers for change in the area. They are a response to the question we often get asked when a project finishes ‘what happens next’? They are also an experiment into what happens when artists become part of a community rather than visiting a place.
The residencies are in partnership with our two housing association partners Blackpool Coastal Housing and Regenda, who are as interested in the role of an artist in reframing the conversation as we are. They know that their interventions reach only a certain percentage of their tenants and that their very position as ‘landlords’ acts as a barrier for them to have a more transformative relationship with some tenants.
The artists that undertake these residencies have socially engaged practices and are interested in how art can be used as a tool for discussion, observation, and activism.
We are currently in round two of Real Estate with two new artists who moved in in Feb 2020.
We are purposefully not at this moment providing any detail on the current artists or residencies as we want them to be given the opportunity to live their lives in the neighbourhoods as residents as well as artists. We will share the findings of these residencies at the appropriate time.
In 2018-2019 the resident artists were:
Ocean Farini, who developed Front Door and Our Big Green
Natalie Lee, who developed Hawes Side Stories.
In 2020 Mark Borthwick completed a six month residency in Hawes Side.
Alongside the main residencies, we also host micro, or ‘third bedroom’, residencies which help to support, challenge, experiment or play with the main residency artists.
The micro residencies are also an opportunity for us to work with socially engaged artists to R&D ideas that might have come from the resident artists, neighbours or one of our partners. They offer the opportunity to provide support for the main resident artist and to bring a different artist practice into the area.
In 2018-2019 we worked with:
Helen Strattford
During the current 2020 pandemic we are working with:
Tina Dempsey
And have developed the Small Radical Acts artists group.