Social Scaffolding's second pilot took place as part of the Emerge Graduate Showcase from 13 - 23 Oct. 2022. Social Scaffolding collective members are 3 generations of emerge residents; Aly has just left after her 2 year residency, Juliet is beginning her second year and I have just been awarded my first year of residency.
We were given a decommissioned textile print room on the first floor of Sion Hill campus, which is where Emerge is based. The campus is in transition as most courses have moved to the newer, Locksbrook campus. This means that it's very quiet, with no passers-by. The openeing event of the Emerge Showcase was very busy, but apart from that we had a few students visiting us. However, we decided to take the opportunity to trial some sessions with invited groups of University and Secondary school students, as this is part of our longer term plan. These were generally positive experiences, for us and the students, but we have reviewed them, will adapt them slightly and will plan accordingly as we tour.
We installed the same work we had installed before. Have a look at Social Scaffolding, Taunton, our Instagram @social.scaffold.artists and my YouTube for more delightful images and videos of visitors engaging with the work and us.
It was very useful to have the opportunity to curate the works in a different space, as, when we tour, we will need to be site responsive. We wanted to make Juliet's Urban Rookery more prominent, for example, but, in fact being in that space, the strip lighting interfered with her shadows and lights.
I was delighted that there was even a handy small dark room to set up a different Red room! I also installed my Parts of me and invited visitors to become Living sculptures again. I have written about my work on the individual pages.
One big difference was that Juliet ran a number of yoga sessions in the space while we were at Emerge. She's a trained yoga teacher and was interested to find out how participants responded to the works and the ambient sound and lights whilst doing yoga. It was very successful, with one person desrcibing it as 'sublime'. Juliet plans to develop scheduled movement sessions around the space as we tour the show. She is also developing a creative construction activity, where she will invite visiotr to build a large nest using found materials.
Another difference was that I wasn't available to knit in the space as much, so didn't have the chance to knit with others, sadly. I'm hoping I can develop Social knitwork as a growing, co-creative installation for the next exhibition. I'm also planning to make a new series of wearable sculptures specifiaclly to be worn by participants. Watch this space!