Teensy green hawthorn leaves are beginning to unfurl in hedges, and our cherry plums, tough as boots, are just starting to flower (usually this happens mid / late March). The daffodil we have here, 'February Gold' (clue as to what it should do is in the name) has just opened its blooms, mid April.

The advantage of all this cold is that we can keep planting bare-rooted trees, a job we are way behind with, and start this season's big border clear up and mulch, which has usually all happened by now. So the suspended Sprin is a bit of a blessing for the disorganised like me :-)

Debris from 2013 = Compost for 2014

Alistair Appears Via Future Link to Liverpool!

I probably need to begin with an apology… maybe two? First of all, this is the first JR memorial blog entry from me for well over a year – I don’t know where the time has gone, other than saying that the world has gone quite mad and, like everybody else, I’ve been busy trying to stave off the forces of terminal instrumentalization. Second, and far worse, this blog entry isn’t about DeLorean cars, flying skate boards, sleeveless bubble jackets or the consequences of calling McFly ‘chicken’ (though it has to be said, big JR would have made a good stand in for mad professor type person Dr. Emmett L. Brown). But this is about time machines – or, more accurately, Mechanics Institutes as they were once called. Yes folks, the good folk up at Grizedale have done it again. Just as we thought we didn’t have an appropriate metaphor to think through the process of ‘thinking ourselves otherwise’, up pop Adam, Alistair and Co with a reminder to look in front of our own eyes. And in my case into the history of the very institution I work in/for.

As you probably all know by now, Grizedale took the ‘Colosseum of the Consumed’ to Frieze Art Fair last October. During this multi-media, multi-project, multi-faith fandango, Alistair found time to communicate to us (at The Autonomy School in Liverpool) via the new fangled technology of Skype (something McFly and co could only have dreamed of in their Back to the Future II world of 1989). During this conversation, Alistair began to elaborate on various developments in Grizedale Art’s ongoing project. Most importantly, he invited us to imagine a bell curve of Social and Industrial assent and decline – beginning with the late Enlightenment/First Industrial Revolution and ending in our present economic chaos. If we were to draw an imaginary line back across this bell curve, from our present point in time, Hudson argued that we would find ourselves somewhere around the beginning of the 19^th Century – a time in which Europe was beginning to re-define itself along the lines of democracy, emancipation and extended social inclusion. This period probably reached its ideological apogee in the revolutionary year of 1848 and laid the foundations for the ideas of citizenship and cultural value that we are currently clinging on to (and re-defiling) today. Amongst this hubbub of this activity was, of course, the growth of the Mechanics Institute – those utopian expressions of social progressivism funded by self-elected (and usually liberal minded) pillars of society. Amongst this list of alumni was, of course, our own big JR who kindly funded developments in the rural/industrial village of Coniston.

What is important here for Hudson and the crew of the good ship Grizedale was JR’s insistence on teaching art as part of an extensive and integrated education – making it part of a syllabus that would also include literature, the sciences and the acquisition of everyday practical skills. Not only did this kind of syllabus lead to the Mechanics Institutes becoming crucibles of self-organisation and social change (centres of early union activity as well as the foundations for many of our current UK Universities), it also remind us of a time when art was also ascribed a socially integrated use value. For Hudson, ‘the current state of art galleries and museums is still determined by the framework marked out by economic and truth values; where value is ascribed to works of art based upon their operation within a market system and their perceived ability to reveal or lead us to seeing the world as it really is. In this scheme (from around 1848 onwards) the third value of art, based upon its utility or usage, has been largely suppressed, or diverted into the arena of craft, activism, politics and so on’. Re-inventing use value as the crucial third term (against the accepted mode ‘dual mode of advocacy of and advocacy’ – displaying works of art according to a consensus of what constitutes a work of value [as commodities in both monetary and aesthetic terms] and then advocating this value to the museum or gallery’s constituency) then becomes crucial. It becomes the cornerstone for beginning to re-imagine a more permeable and open form of arts institution – one not bound by its physical and geographical manifestation or legislation.

In its humble way, the time machine of big JR’s Mechanics Institute at Coniston begins to open up this possibility, the possibility for re-imagining a socially re-integrated art production which forms part of our productive identity and collaborative notions of citizenship, individual civil rights and access to what we have left of community. Such a time machine also gives us the opportunity to look back to the future, to re-assess the roots of our culture, to sift through what was kept in and what was thrown away in the processes of epistemological construct that were (and still are) our inherited Modernity.

So! In our next issue of the Big JR Blog more on Time Machines - and a big thank you here to discussions with Francesco Manacorda, Director or Liverpool Tate, whose own (and far more elegant) use of the ‘Time Machine’ as curatorial device put me in mind of McFly and Co (and also, if I’m honest, made me begin to re-think the Machines and Machinic illogics/counterlogics of Guattari’s ‘Chaosmosis’). Maybe also something more on permeable institutions? Oh, and we probably need to start a reconsideration of craft at some point I would have thought? Until then may all of your Ruskin beards be trim, may all of your bushy sideburns stay hearty (in a non-gender specific metaphorical way of course), and may your Workers Soup remain forever on low simmer.

Open Pamphlet Call for Radical Aesthetics event organised by Loughborough University at The People's History Museum:

Art, Politics and the Pamphleteer

A RadicalAesthetics/RadicalArt (RaRa) event

People’s History Museum, Manchester,

FRIDAY June 14th 2013

Call for Participation

The RadicalAesthetics-RadicalArt (RaRa) project invites artists and scholars to prepare and submit a pamphlet for presentation at a one-day event, Art, Politics and the Pamphleteer. Instead of the traditional ‘paper’, submissions must essentially be for or against something – in essence a protest. The form that the protest takes is open to interpretation, for example print, paper, images, video, performance, public intervention. We invite you to address the idea and format of your provocation/declaration as imaginatively and radically as you wish.

How have artists used the trope of the radical pamphlet? How might it be utilized as a format?

Art, Politics and the Pamphleteer will explore the history and relevance of the pamphlet for contemporary art practice through presentations by speakers and performers. The one-day event will coincide with a small display of selected pamphlets from the PHM collection (curated by the RaRa organisers) together with a selection from our ‘call for pamphlets’. See below for more information.

Guidelines for proposals: Please send an abstract for your proposal (max 500 words) PLUS a brief bio (max 150 words) to j.tormey@lboro.ac.uk and g.whiteley@lboro.ac.uk

Deadline for proposals: 30th MARCH 2013

Context: Radical Pamphlets, the People’s History Museum and RaRa

Radical Pamphlets

It is written because there is something that one wants to say now, and one believes there is no other way of getting a hearing. Pamphlets may turn on points of ethics or theology but they always have a clear political implication. A pamphlet may be written either for or against somebody or something, but in essence it is always a protest.

George Orwell (1948) in British Pamphleteers Volume 1, from the sixteenth century to the French Revolution

For Orwell, the pamphlet is a polemical provocation. Through the 20thc and beyond, artists have worked and acted provocatively and polemically with text, images and performance, publishing writings and producing pamphlets and manifestoes, including the Futurists (1909), Surrealists (1924), Fluxus (George Maciunas, 1963), First Things First (Ken Garland 1964), Mierle Laderman Ukeles (Manifesto for Maintenance Art 1969) and Stewart Home’s Neoist Manifestos (1987). More recently, in 2009, Monica Ross and fifteen others co-recited the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on the Anniversary of The Peterloo Massacre at John Rylands Library
Manchester and the Freee Art Collective have performed their manifestoes in a range of public settings. The edited book (2011) by Danchev 100 Artists' Manifestos: From the Futurists to the Stuckists (Penguin Modern Classics) demonstrates it as subject of current interest.

The last decade has seen art’s increasing engagement with political and social issues, whereby in some instances artists’ activities have become indistinguishable from social activism (e.g. Wochenklauser) or other disciplinary functions (e.g. artist as ‘anthropologist’ as in Jeremy Deller’s Folk Archive).The art community’s current preoccupation with revolutionary movements and global politics is being addressed from different perspectives. The format and traditions of the ‘radical pamphlet’ may provide an alternative platform for artistic intervention and provocation.

People’s History Museum (PHM)

The People’s History Museum is a national research facility, archive and accredited public museum, which contains unique collections of documents and artefacts. The collection includes the British Labour Party and Communist Party of Great Britain papers, extensive amateur and documentary film holdings and the largest trade union and protest banner collection in the world. The Museum suits our particular brief of radicality in its focus on histories of radical collective action.

http://www.phm.org.uk/

The project will extend invitation to a range of social groups in Manchester, for example: Manchester Social Centre, All FM Community Radio, Manchester Radical History Collective, Radical Routes network of co-operatives, Working Class Movement Library, Manchester, Centre for Research in Socio-Cultural Change, University of Manchester.

RadicalAesthetics-RadicalArt (RaRa)

The RadicalAesthetics-RadicalArt (RaRa) project was initiated in 2009 at Loughborough University (LU) under the auspices of the Politicized Practice Research Group (PPRG). The RaRa project and its associated book series (with I.B. Tauris) explores the meeting of contemporary art practice and interpretations of radicality to promote debate, confront convention and formulate alternative ways of thinking about art practice. Previous RaRa events have included ‘DIY cultures’ and Radical Footage: Film and Dissent at Nottingham Contemporary.

http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/sota/research/groups/politicised/index.html

http://www.ibtauris.com/Highlights/Radical%20Aesthetics%20Radical%20Art.aspx

Gillian Whiteley/Jane Tormey

January 2012

Art comes in many different shapes, sizes and pretentious prices and thus Grizedale comes as a refreshing change as an organization that is concerned with the little things that help a community sustain and grow, as well as maintaining a respected presence in the big, bad art world.

I left Grizedale with a clearer and stronger understanding of art’s relationship with society, however my plumbing skills, sadly are yet to be improved.

Tania and Fernando table talk

We had a recent visit here from useful artist Tania Bruguera who is working on a Museum of Useful Art for the Van Abbe Museum in October next year, part of the project The Uses of Art: the Legacy of 1848 and 1989 we have been developing with the Internationale group of European museums. We spent the weekend with Nick Aikens, a ginger curator of the Van Abbe Museum, refining the criteria of Useful Art or Art Util as she prefers to call it. Whilst here we hooked her up with the Fernando Garcia Dory, awarded last month with $25,000 and the gong for The Leonore Annenberg Prize for Art and Social Change at the Creative Time Summit in New York. Fernando and Tania only ever communicate via Skype, the preferred medium of purposeful artists. Here you see them head to head in a feed back loop of social engagement. Fernando is currently working in London on Now I Gotta Reason, go use him.

To be arte útil it should:

1- Propose new uses for art within society

2- Challenge the field within which it operates (civic, legislative, pedagogical, scientific, economic etc)

3- Be ‘timing specific’, responding to the urgencies of the moment

4- Be implemented in the real and actually work!

5- Replace authors with initiators and spectators with users

6- Have practical, beneficial outcomes for its users

7- Pursue sustainability whilst adapting to changing conditions

8- Re-establish aesthetics as an ecosystem of transformative fields

Are they working?

The show at the Jerwood Space opened for business yesterday. Co-curated with Marcus Coates, the premise of the show is looking at ways in which art, artists and culture can play a more useful role in society. The main discussion so far seems to be about money and in particular the artist and their unpaid or unvalued labour. As we will be making the budget spend transparent and encouraging the artists to think about generating income through their activity, money talk is no surprise so we will see where these discussions take us in the coming weeks.

Not really, he doesn't exist. However, we could really do with some help bringing special seasonal art cheer to our local village. From making Christmas decorations, serving mulled wine at the Christmas Lights Switch On to offering a gift wrapping service at the Farmer's Market and Art Fair, you can use your creative skills in lots of useful ways. For more information, email Maria.

Art Critic Louisa Buck enthusing about the best thing at the Frieze Art Fair this year.

Even more astonsihing than the Tim Marlow revelation is Alan Kane saying something positive about Grizedale Arts

Art historian and media legend Tim Marlow consumes a cake phallus from Bedwyr William's Curator Cadaver Cake at Grizedale Arts' Colosseum of the Consumed at Frieze Art Fair 2012.

This year we did have the foresight to erect a large new polytunnel in March, without which we really would have empty trugs and plates. In it we have done much propagation as well as growing a fair crop of very late tomatoes, plus some experiments with early carrots, lovely basil and other tender herbs, and dahlias for cutting. It's bliss to be in there with the rain hammering down outside.

So, a few notes on the best and worst trials this season:
Our very young orchard had a fair show of apples on three trees - varieties Keswick Codlin (very local), Monarch and Bardsey Island (a Welsh heritage variety). Eastern European pear 'Humbug' has made healthy growth too.

Like many, we tried grafted tomatoes alongside our seed grown this year - from seed we raised 'Stupice' and 'Latah', both from the wonderful Real Seed Company, both eastern European cool-weather hardies. ' Latah' is a bush variety but we grew it as a single cordon as usual, and both are still cropping well (to be honest they didn't start till September). Stupice has the better flavour and rather endearingly odd shaped fruits.

Of the grafted varieties we bought from Suttons, old fave Shirley did best in flavour and cropped reliably. Santorange is a yellowy-orange large cherry type and we liked its flavour and healthiness. Conchita tried to make very long cherry strings of fruit but set was very poor - weather probably. Belriccio has large, tasty, ribbed fruits, which set well. Elegance cropped heavily but isn't such a good flavour for us. Cupido has small and tasty cherry type fruit and plenty of them. I'd agree that cropping is heavier and plants are more vigorous than seed-grown ones but you'd need a decent season to truly test the grafted varieties to the max.

Our pale green indoor courgette 'Segev F1' continues to fruit healthily in mid-October. Leaves are now slightly mildewy but its been mighty impressive, the cropping starting in late June. Potatoes Cosmo and Red Duke of York remain reliable for us, and mangetout pea 'Shiraz' has yielded a heavy and beautiful purple harvest for weeks outside. Lettuce 'Reine des Glaces' had a superb flavour and stood well in the ground, and pea 'Kelvedon Wonder' never fails to crop well here.

I came to Lawson Park with very little idea of what to expect from volunteering with Grizedale Arts - I decided to volunteer because I was aware of the organization through family connections with the area and wanted to find out more about it. I was immediately impressed with how much was going on - no two days were the same and every day was very busy. The jobs I did ranged from feeding the pigs to archiving the library, making pizzas with the youth club (and the film poster, as pictured) or doing the ironing and making beds, and every job was made interesting (even the ironing!) because of the people I was working with and I learned so much just by being involved.

What I found most interesting about working at Grizedale was the sense of a community working together, both at Lawson Park and within the village, And the feeling that everyone there is valued and has their own important role in the day-to-day running of the organisation. At mealtimes visitors, artists, staff and volunteers all ate togther and discussed what they had been doing and at the institute people from all aspects of life in the village were involved.

Overall the week was a very good experience which I hope will not be my only time at Grizedale Arts.

Bethany Cowley.

On a few occasions I accompanied the Grizedale group to the village, to help out at the Coniston Institute. Consequently, I was able to gain a little insight into this project and the relationship between the people of Coniston and the Grizedale staff.

Overall the week was enjoyable and I came away with a clearer idea about the way Grizedale works. Another perk was sampling the delicious home baking, which was really welcome after a long day in the garden.

Tate Liverpool Collective shaping the future in the Coniston Institute Reading Room

The second text I would like to share with you is a draft outline for how a UK manifestation of the 1848 project might be and this is underpinned by a question relating to the issue of how we might measure usefulness and how we might measure aesthetics.

If we believe in the idea of usefulness and if we believe in aesthetics (in its widest conception of the reception, communication and processiing of the senses) as the how and why of art and society - how do we measure these things, as Sam provokes, without damaging the object of study?

The New Mechanics

The New Mechanics is a touring concept and a project to develop youth citizenship that is delivered over multiple venues across the England. It is being developed with three UK art institutions and Grizedale Arts.

Project Overview

The New Mechanics is designed as the UK component of a larger international project 1848: The Uses of Art, an ambitious 5 year project, conceived by Grizedale Arts and developing six major European Musuems and two Universities. This pan-European Project aims to reintroduce the idea of Use Value as a central function of art and to develop the civic future of museums and galleries using the concept of the Mechanics Institute.

At the heart of this endeavor is an ambition to use art, artists and art institutions more effectively in civic society and to build a form of citizenship based on creativity and social responsibility.

This process would involve a drive to reshape museums and art, based on current socially oriented art practices and revisiting the Mechanics Institute as a mechanism for social change – working with a more comprehensive, expanded constituency, reaching and building new audiences and developing a model of art that is valued more widely, beyond the current conventions of economic and personal impact.

The consensus of opinion that has grown around this project (particularly the idea of the usage of art) has formed from a new generation of work by artists and curators that aims to be effective outside the performative frame of art – that is understood for how it works, not how it is consumed.

This project was initially formed out a synthesis of recent work by Grizedale Arts around a rethinking of John Ruskin, the 19^th Century Mechanics Institutes and Liam Gillick’s current work around European revolution in 1848 and grown with interest from writers such as Barbara Steiner, Marie Jane Jacobs, Jeremy Millar, Simon Critchley, Tom F McDonough and Stephen Wright. It will consist of a long term programme of activity (a touring concept rather than a touring exhibition) built around three key themes:

1. Education: the use of art and creativity as an educational and developmental tool

2. Land: The role of aesthetics in social and ecological change

3. History: Rethinking the story of how art can be used in society

The New Mechanics in the UK will primarily focus on education and rethink how art is presented within an art institution. This is envisaged not as a stand alone project, but one that will emerge out of existing relationships forged through the Plus Tate Learning project and create content for and inform the larger European Touring programme over the next five years.

This project addresses some crucial questions around the role of art, artists and art institutions:

• What does the art institution of the future look like and how can we shape it with the new generations who will use them?
• In a era of de-development what forms of institution are best suited suit help society adapt to change and how can the younger generations direct this process to their advantage?
• How do we more actively engage with our constituencies, particularly young people as the future users of culture, who cannot use the resources of museums and galleries?
• Can we work with these groups to develop better ways to operate more meaningful programmes that are clearly valued for how they can be used by the public, rather than increasing cultural capital?
• Working with the project participants, what kind of new institutional forms could be developed which would increase the civic, social and cultural function of our organisations.
• How do our institutions create programmes that are valued by a broader population? And as a reference point look at the Mechanics Institutes as a public resource that were valued enough to support a subscription membership, over and above public subsidy.
• With the participant groups, can we test the institutions to fully synthesise the educational and curatorial programmes?

Existing work

The participating UK venues of Grizedale Arts, MIMA, Tate Liverpool and Ikon Gallery are currently working together via the Plus Tate network on a JP Morgan funded programme re-thinking young peoples’ learning programmes. This project consists of each Institution developing learning programmes though residential trips to the Lake District with their respective youth programmes. This experimental research stage culminates in a conference with all 18 Plus Tate partners in December 2012. Rather than seeing this as an end, we would like to think of this as the start of a durational set of evolving relationships that comes to fruition with active projects in The New Mechanics, expanding on the work already undertaken, drawing on education as a way of thinking about institutions and how they engage with audiences and communities and in particular young people.

Background

The Mechanic Institutes of the 19^th Century are a neglected model for how culture can work effectively in society today. The Mechanic Institutes sprung up across Britain as places of education, social reform and where the growing working class could develop with the new skills of the age. Much like a cultural centre for the working man, the Institutes provided educational instruction in technical subjects - including the arts - and access to literature and learning in a variety of different fields and trades via a small subscription. The Institutes were built around a holistic and altruistic programme of arts and sciences and social, collective action.

Proposed Activity

This project proposes that the art gallery today should be re-viewed, much like the Mechanics Institutes were used in the 19^th and early 20^th Centuries, as a place for learning and public interaction. The principal is to develop a programme, across all four venues, of artist commissions, events and activity focussing on young people as an emerging generation of civic participants, who will build the next generation of institutions. The programme will be developed by all partners to draw on their education and social programmes as the central activity, to enhance their existing work but to find linkages and cross programming to interact with the other sites. At the core will be a range of young people focused art-based projects that attempt to reinstate creativity to the centre of civic society. Using the Mechanics Institutes as an inspirational starting point the project will open up how an art gallery is used and perceived by their visiting audiences and the wider constituency.

The programme, as with the methodology of the wider European project, is not a touring exhibition but a touring concept, creating an active network of discussion and development for young people to reshape the institutions for the future.

The key to this will be to develop large scale projects for each partner with their constituent youth groups, working with an artist or artists whilst ensuring that the young people are genuinely empowered to drive the project.

The project is conceived over a long timeline of 12 months to ensure strong relationships and meaningful evolution. Each project is initiated in April 2013 on the back of the research and findings of the Plus Tate programme.

It is therefore not a one off project, but the nexus of a continuum of thinking and activity that will work to re-establish the fundamental role of the Institution within society and make it fit for purpose.

Four venues will work together to develop an artist brief with their locality in mind however there will be a relationship between all partners to establish core principles and keep a coherency across the project – as the aim of the project will later be manifest in the European touring project as exemplars of effective practice. It is hoped that the six key partners of the European project will advise and contribute to artists selection.

Throughout this process opportunities will be created for exchanges and collaborations between projects and people.

Where appropriate activities will be integrated into the galleries ongoing curated programme, with the full participation of the curatorial teams, who will see this project as part of core programme, not that of the outreach nor education departments.

There will be encouragement for the young people to take over gallery resources for the purposes of the project. We will be commissioning artists to work with the gallery and young people to develop projects that embed the activities of the gallery back into the fabric of their everyday lives, pushing the idea of active citizenship for both young people and the host institutions.

Beyond the 12 month period of the project in 2013 the 4 projects will feed into the expanded European project with the potential to develop the idea of a ‘touring audience’ to work in international partner venues.

The project would be centred on a research question, which comes from the groundwork undertaken in the current Plus Tate/JP Morgan project between Grizedale, Ikon, MIMA and Tate Liverpool. In turn this question should in effect come from the participant groups of young people and look at changing the way the sector works.

The project is aimed at challenging the established ways of touring programmes. It is a large scale and important body of research, which aims to genuinely find strategies that work for each partner and to genuinely fulfil the goals of public funding and government agendas. In this process there should be an emphasis in learning from each other, given the range of contexts, experience and scale of operations.

As a consequence it has to be experimental and, to certain extent, open ended in nature: although it is thought that a reasonably prescriptive brief is drawn up for the artists’ projects.

Within the process there will be a series of conversations around sociology, the role of culture and growing institutions in relation to current thinking beyond the art sector for example, economics, sociology, wellbeing, history and so on.

I would like to share with you two documents. These are two draft project outlines for projects in development which show you the trajectory of our thinking.

The first is the concept I have written out and currently developing with six significant European Museums, who are all looking at this as a way to rethink how their institutions can develop in new and relevant ways for their constituencies, particularly as public funding gets withdrawn, the established value systems and modes of operation are increasingly prone to criticism and cuts.

1848: The New Mechanics

A touring concept developed by Grizedale Arts

1848/1984: The New Mechanics  is a long term, multi-faceted project to promote a movement, or growing consensus, to re-establish the idea of use value as a central tenet of art.

On the one hand this project will highlight artists and art strategies that share an ambition to have effect beyond the confines of the world of art, whilst on the other looking to the origins of our present era, signified by the years 1848 and 1984, to offer a new reading of art history that supports the case for a new approach to art, whilst rescuing the best of modernism’s ambitions.

The endeavour will be a mix of historical exhibitions and live projects, making clear links between the emerging arts practice of activism, action and effectiveness with its antecedents in the socio-cultural history of European Culture.

The historical aspect is seen as a rethinking and part of a solution to unlock the current stasis that pervades at a moment of declining Western influence, economic crisis, ecological anxiety and an inability for the arts to make a case for their value in society.

1848 proposes a range of approaches that attempt to reinstate the function of art at the centre of civic society.

The key principles of the project are:

1: To re-introduce the idea of the use value of art, or the usage of art, for social, aesthetic and educational development and as a means to resist the entrapment of art by the idea of the Contemporary and its recognizable forms. In this there is an ambition to open a discourse around the idea of a value system of usage, that could be used to differentiate between the work of artists operating in the social context, whilst reevaluating historical works through the lens of a use-concept.

2. To foreground approaches to art that operate on the periphery of the performative frame of art and present them as viable alternatives to market orientated work.

3. To rethink the standard of the art historical survey and to revisit the 19^th century structures and concepts that instigated the Modern era (Ruskin, Mechanics Institutes, European revolution, social re-organisation) as a way to re-read of our current situation of technological advancement, social and political unrest, ecological crisis and to use new readings of time to bear on how we re-think this past.

4: To promote education, in its broadest sense, as central to the process of art, foregrounding and presenting it as a primary function of the institution – to bring the respective educational activities of each venue into centre stage.

Concept outline

The aim of the New Mechanics is to articulate a new, emerging tendency in art; a movement built around the idea of the use value of art and the value of art as tool to see, mediate and effect the world around us.

It is conceived as an ambitious, landmark project and it will look to advance the position of art beyond the conditions that have dominated the last two centuries under the influence of modernism and the Romantic paradigm. This will be achieved through a network of exhibitions, discourse and activity, presenting new emerging art, artists and art-like projects, alongside a re-thinking or a re-reading of the last 200 years of European art as way to help formulate new forms of art that can have a use in present times.

The timing of this project is pertinent; against a background of economic, ecological and cultural crisis as the world moves from an era dominated by European thinking to an era of not just global interdependency, but also planetary thinking – a broader ecology of culture and nature. Furthermore it is being developed in response to the continuing dominance of market orientated work as the ‘main story’ whilst there emerge from the periphery a range of viable other artworlds, or ways of making art, that none the less are part of the continuing history of art. In many ways this is a claim for the role of aesthetics as central to social change.

1848: The New Mechanics is proposed not as a fixed touring body of material, rather a touring concept, an evolving body of work (in the operative sense) and a productive discussion between European partners that will advocate for art as an active agent in society.

This concept has its roots in the early 19^th century and the beginnings of industrialisation; as society reorganized itself through Mechanics Institutes, revolution, democracy, environmentalism, social welfare, education, in a moment when art, science and civic society were still fused together. It is subsequently seen in alternate paths that weave through Carlyle, Ruskin, Morris, the Bauhaus, the Utility movement, the Diggers and even current strategies utilized by political activism.

Therefore this project is as much historical as it is current. In order to assert the usage of art, it needs, as part of the concept, to use history as vital and continuous part of our present.

Structure

As the scale and scope of this endeavour is so large it is proposed that the project evolves over a five year period and is developed specifically in each location in partnership with the staff of the host institution, with each context developing the material and content using the resources (programme, community, collections, learning programmes, etc) at its disposal.

The project is built around a core body of live and documentary material that exemplifies the new work being made by artists and art agencies that have or aim to have a useful function within a socio-economic context.

Each host partner will elaborate this theme with use of its collections, outreach/social programmes and partnerships with its own constituencies, to bring to life the ideas and actions that are pertinent to its own context.

In this there is an ambition to open a discourse around the idea of a value system of usage, that could be used to differentiate between the work of artists operating in the social context, whilst reevaluating historical works through the lens of a use-concept.

This lens would be considered as having three facets, with each of the partners choosing to emphasize one of these three facets or subject sub-themes that demonstrate the idea of the usage

HISTORY

Relating current issues to the 19^th century structures and concepts that instigated the Modern era (Ruskin, Mechanics Institutes, European revolution, Thorbecke, social re-organisation) as a way to re-read our situation of technological advancement, social and political unrest, ecological crisis and perceived ‘decline’ and to use new readings of time to bear on how we re-think this past.

Also using historical and modern works to re-write the history of art according to how it can be used, at a personal level (how an individual subject uses a work of art) and at a political level (how a society uses a work of art).

LAND

To foreground approaches to art that operate on the periphery of the frame of art and present them as viable alternatives to market orientated work. This ‘new territory’ would include artists whose practice, or rather implementation, functions as rural activism, ecology, social architecture, food supply, political action, architecture, farming, urban planning and sociology – making the case for art as an essential component in a bio-physical and socio-cultural ecology.

EDUCATION

To promote education, in its broadest sense, as central to the process of art, foregrounding and presenting it as a primary function of the institution – to bring the respective educational activities of each venue into centre stage, rather than supplement or to the core program or even for the education programme to take over the gallery.

Background

The New Mechanics is formed out of a synthesis of recent work by Grizedale Arts (for the last few years proponents of the idea of making artists useful) around a rethinking of John Ruskin (as an artist, art critic, educator and social reformer), the 19^th century Mechanics Institutes and recent work by associate artists around European revolution in 1848.

These historical phenomena can now be read as extremely pertinent moments in our present, offering new insights into current art and particularly the urgency for sociality and ethics in art.

In the case of John Ruskin, for example, this can be re-read as complex body of work that prefigures the issues now surrounding social reform, environment, ecology, capital, aesthetics and politics, combined with the complex, difficult persona of the artist. To date his writings have been subsumed by a formalist story of modernism, which he was partly responsible for, yet he is now emerging as a critical voice in the debates around the emerging calls for art to be more effective in society.

At the heart of this, is the case for restating the use value of art, an idea that has arguably been neglected (and refuted) since 1848, subsumed by the value systems of truth and money in the evolution of the Romantic model, whilst there is an assumption that usage is antithetical to art, or at least an uncultured view.

Four our purposes 1848 is cited as the symbolic date that frames the current conditions, that marks the end of the key period or industrial and social reorganization in the west, dominated by the Machinery Question (1815 – 1848) that identified the effect of technology on social, economic and political systems. In this project we can identify this period as a parallel enquiry to our own in the era of digitized information and biotechnology.

Equally there is at the forefront of this project an emphasis on the new politicization of the rural, ecological or the peripheral. This new ecology, far further evolved from the ecological debates initiated by Ruskin in the 19^th century, now includes economics, activism, technology, shifts in global power, rapidly increasing demands on agriculture and natural resources.

This is not a straight forward historical re-evaluation, but an analysis of current art production through a restructured historical context, citing the mid 19^th century as a vital and pertinent part of our own critical context with all its human endeavour to adapt and survive. Perhaps this project can be seen as an ahistorical survey for a post-chronological era, history as subversion, a non linear re-evaluation of the social purpose and complex function of art, presided over by artists such as John Ruskin and Liam Gillick.

The principle is to tour, not an exhibition, but a concept and a range of methodologies that in each location will elaborate on and adapt the theme working closely with the host institution’s curatorial and education teams.  It will use some historical material to make points, whilst showcase current artist, curatorial and ‘art-like’ projects that operate actively within a social context, to have, at least, an effect, or that seek, in the face of multiple ethics and dynamics, to keep going, to try to make the world a better place.

Alongside a profile of exemplar projects, the project would bring the host’s education and social programmes into centre stage, the activity to be the exhibit itself and return the gallery to its origins as a public classroom in the Mechanics Institute model.

 The different manifestations of the project will add to the whole endeavor rather than repeat the programme. Therefore it might be that in each location the ‘volume’ of the different aspects of this programme are turned up or down accordingly. For example in the UK the emphasis might be on education, in Spain ecology and rural activism and in the Netherlands historical re-evaluation.

In terms of content, the project is used to channel much of Grizedale Arts’ and the collaborators’ ongoing programmes. Particular attention will be focused on artists’ projects that can be read through their use value or ‘double ontological status’ (Stephen Wright) – having applications that are valid and visible outside of the frame of art.

In this respect, there is a case for highlighting projects in which there is an element of co-creation by author and audience or which enhance social activation processes around the direct management of resources. This would inevitably reveal a range of projects that are currently working outside the market orientated art world in ‘peripheral’ zones outside the metropolitan context and present them as strategically advanced ground.

The key issues of history, education, sociality, periphery and ecology addressed by this project are designed to shed new light on the wider political scenario of economic crisis, de-growth, technology and the decline of Western influence. In one way or another, many of the artists or projects that The New Mechanics puts forward, are attempts to adapt to these circumstances and to push for a change in art and the way it is used.

Suggested Exhibition Components

A Barricade

To create a barricade using works of art from an institution’s collections for practical purposes, as was the case in 19c Paris, a provocative method of display and action.

A new art history

Commissioning research and new writing to re-evaluate the History of Art, 1848 – 2012 through the lens of use value. This is intended to develop a more sophisticated language to describe and evaluate current art practice; particularly those are now operating in the social sphere and to differentiate between the multiple strands of this work. Some ideas are being currently being developed with the RCA Critical Writing course.

A core exhibition

A set of historical and contemporary works that can travel between venues for the purposes of education and interpretation. To be developed with the curatorial committee of the project and the host venue.

Project Exhibitions

Developed by each partner in relation to the themes

Commissions

A number of artist commissions that are operative in the respective venue contexts.

An education programme

To devise a model education programme that will take centre stage at each venue, turning the gallery in to a classroom. Working with project partner education teams, universities, night classes, community projects and artists. This is in some ways intended as a challenge to each participant institution, to present their own social programmes as centre stage, rather than as complement to the exhibition programme.

The Mechanics Institute

A series of projects that looks at the Mechanics Institute as a model for the future development of the civic function of art within society, including the profiling of the Coniston Institute project by Grizedale Arts and associated artists. The Coniston Mechanics Institute was originally conceived by John Ruskin and WG Collingwood as the ideal education for the working man, but also the originating framework for social organisation, democracy, education and art centres in the UK.

The Secular Church Service

A reinvention of the service format created by artists, curators, writers, musicians for a social dissemination of philosophy, music, art, etc as a curated event.

Re-Coefficients Dining Club

Discussion and dinner performance event tested by Grizedale Arts that combines lectures with the banquet format

Cream1848

Club night by the legendary Liverpool dance club for one night only – Chartism meets Situationism meets Ibiza

The Touring Audience

Rather than touring an exhibition, the touring of a group of people to experience the project in all its venues and manifestations.

Coniston Mechanics Institute and Online Library

The new Library for the Coniston Institute, designed by Liam Gillick, will act as a fully functioning Cumbria County Council Library (a meme for rural libraries) whilst doubling up as the ‘research centre’ for the 1848 project.

As part of this there will be an online library that will be an accumulation of texts essays and ebooks that frame the project, considering the use of art, education, social change, ecology, history, politics.

Research

As a key part of the project there will be a network of academic research that will develop the themes pursued with 3 European Universities.

After expressing my interest in Grizedale's initiatives I was invited to spend a week there working in exchange for accomodation and food. This kind of invitation and form of hosting seems to offer a good alternative to unpaid labour, and is something that visual arts organisations working in the rural and community context tend to be quite good at. After all, gaining a taster experience of an organisation and its working practices within a relatively short period of time would be all but impossible otherwise. Also, keeping these organisations open to wider interest like this seems to benefit their organisation in imparting an understanding of what is happening there; the folk at Grizedale seemed to be particularly open to my responses and reactions which was nice. Having not researched Lawson Park that much before my arrival, I was completely overwhelmed by the outstanding architecture which seemed to speak cleverly about parts of Grizedale's ethos: functionality, aesthetic sensibility, intelligent design and a distinct preference for functionality over nostalgia or romanticism (I was amused by the windows that had to be designed so that people could not look in at the horror of a modern interior amidst the rolling hills of the lake district). Needless to say, spending a week in Lawson park was like living in pure luxury – a space designed perfectly for living, working, productivity and social exchange, picturesque scenery and lots of delicious food. I spent time working on various different aspects of productivity that make Grizedale flow: editing website texts, doing a workshop on film-making with local youth group run by Maria, weeding, cooking and baking. The most interesting part was finding out about the different dynamics occuring between the organisation and its funders, its audiences, and local reception. We discussed problematics such as knowledge dissemination and organisations' intentions as well as general art-world quandarys. It was quite eye-opening actually, as well as bringing my attention to the wider issues involved with tourism in the area and the local economy's reliance on (and pandering to?) this trade. I suppose an organisation like Grizedale brings a new kind of tourism to the lakes: international artists, arts and culture professionals and an online global presence. Grizedale seemed to have a lot of fruitful relationships with other cultural organisers and arts people locally and the addition of the honesty shop in Coniston town centre could help to build more relationships with locals and tourists. I just wonder whether the locals read Grizedale's working practices as different, or superior, to their own; I would like to think that a generally friendly and accepting attitude to the lifestyles of local people (not just those relocated wealthy retirees) would make room for a mutual understanding between working people within the vicinity of Grizedale Arts and the organisation itself. This will allow Grizedale to get away with more critical, complex and thought-provoking initiatives. Despite the slug infestations and unrelenting Cumbrian rain rain rain, this was a week well spent and I hope to keep in touch with Grizedale.

By Claire Briegel

The Coniston Youth Club, which we started just over a month ago, is arranging its first public event - a film night in Coniston Institute on Tuesday 24th July. They decided to screen the 1960's sci-fi film, Village of The Damned, a film about a group of children in a village who have telepathic powers and are able to force people to do things against their will! We will be joined by a group of young people on a residential visit from Tate Liverpool. Do read the Coniston Youth Club weekly blog here.

my time with the little ginge

Keeping me company

First task of tidying the fruit cage, wish i had one

I was excited and nervous when i took my first steps on Grizedale land, but soon relaxed when i met everyone there and got a pick of four awesome bedrooms with ensuites : D

I felt very lucky in having a chance to work on Lawson Park and with Grizedale and also not forgetting the amazing views (I miss them very much) and trying out tasty squirrel!

Spending a week there was amazing and i had a variety of jobs to do; such as weeding, planting veg (some in the wrong place : / Sorry Adam!) feeding the piggies, bonding with ducks, and organising lovely sweet smelling sheds...

I also met this little ginger one which kept me company in between my jobs and when everyone else was out : )

Jackie from CACS works up the Coniston slate

On June 28 resident artist Mat Do, he of the sharp atire and sharp Essex attitude, brought together the Art in Irton Group with the Coniston Art and Craft Society at the Coniston Institute. This is all part of his long term project working with Egremont's Florence Mine, a haemetite mine in West Cumbria which closed in 2008 and is being re-visioned with our help as a quasi Mechanics Institute for this post industrial community.

For over two years or so Mat has been working on a number of projects there includng a film with a group of amateur actors and looking at ways in which the mine can be re-activated through new projects that use the iron ore in new ways. One outcome has been a process to get the iron ore made into paint and pigment products that can be then used and disseminated to promote the town out and create products for export out of Egremont.

This has led to an interested group of local artists (The Art in Irton Group) setting up a co-operative to make products from the very rich Florence haemetite; one of which is artists quality paints. The group learnt the process themselves from books and a workshop arranged by Mat and given by professional artist and paint maker Pip Seymour.

In this last workshop the Irton group passed on their knowledge of paint making to the Coniston Art and Craft Society. Ih this workshop they demonstrated watercolour production from the Florence iron ore and produced a very rich, deep grey from the slate dust provided by Coniston Slate - an unsued by product of their engraving and polishing processes.

One ambition is that the paints can be made into household paint products that can used as domestic paints. Lord Egremont owner of Florence Mine and Petworth House, Sussex (and relation to the 3rd Earl who patronised Turner so profusely back in the day) is eager to work with Mat on a series of projects at Petworth including the use of the iron as an estate colour. See what he's doing there.

The new Honest Shop in the Coniston Institute has opened. Designed by An Endless Supply to provide homemade products without the inconvenience of human contact and a chip and pin machine. In the video AES's Harry Blackett and Robin Kirkham talk us throough the retail experience.