Sora Ami, Yasuaki Igarashi, Shared Lines: Wellington, October 2017. image: Ebony Lamb
Wellington is full of independent and strong minded creatives. Our artist and producer-driven initiatives have been profoundly influential in the development of Wellington's ‘creative capital’. We have so much history and experience to share - learned the hard way.
So Letting Space is introducing, the UDB mentoring scheme!
As part of its Urban Dream Brokerage Programme Letting Space is offering four artists or collectives peer-to-peer mentoring to help them deliver independent arts projects in public or unconventional spaces in early 2018 in Wellington city. We want to hear from artists now, with their project ideas for the city and their mentoring needs. First deadline Friday 8 December (there will be a second deadline in February, but note its first come first served). We want to help artists share knowledge to produce independent work that interacts with the city and its publics in new ways across all artforms. For more information email urbandreambrokerage@gmail.com or contact Mark Amery 027 3566 128. And make a submission using our online form here (where we ask you to present your project idea and requirements also).
We’ve expanded our reach to meet the needs we’re hearing from artists – that means assisting in the development of projects for public and underutilised as well vacant spaces, and providing mentoring and more support networks. Producing work in these spaces often involves working independently with a broad skillset. Artists also lack curatorial and governance feedback that others may have, and can be isolated and stretched in their resources as they develop bold new platforms. Let’s help each other!
Following the inspiration of the much-heralded Handshake project for independent practising artists (with an applied arts base) the kaupapa is that established artists and producers hand-over some of their quality knowledge but, as Handshake say “it is a two-way project that encourages symbiosis and give and take.” Let’s empower each other to think differently, and to make new kinds of stakeholder relationships in the city.
This series is working in tandem with the Urban Dreams monthly podcast and conversation series which you can listen to here.