My Place or Yours - case study

Commissioner: Apples & Snakes

Project aims:
•    To commission five artists from around the country to explore pioneering ways of presenting work on-line and live, engaging with audiences through a series of residencies on the theme of “Place”.
•    To share their experiences and works in progress through blogs, written, audio and visual on a web critical framework and then perform their newly commissioned pieces at a live event in their region.
•    The blog is an online forum in which artists can experiment with their ideas, share work in progress to an online community and receive feedback from key influencers in literature.

What Happened:
We began by talking to poets and the communities they work in.  We asked people why they would want us to work with digital technology. The feedback we got was that audiences were excited by the idea of being actively involved in the creative development of work. They didn’t just want to be presented with a finished product. They wanted to participate in the organic growth of a site that asked questions and listened to responses. We realised we needed to find poets who were up for taking part in an experiment - one that very much put them on the line as well as online.  We were asking them to share work in progress and to respond to comments and feedback as the residencies progressed.  This required flexibility, openness and a lack of preciousness – each poet had their own professional mentor as support through the process.

Emma McGordon was the commissioned artist based in the North West.  She chose to be a poet in residence in homeless shelters in Cumbria and Liverpool.  She wanted to explore the concept of invisible homelessness – sofa surfers and people who live in shelters and do not have a home.  Emma spent time in the shelters listening, talking and engaging with the community.  Emma wrote work in response to her experiences and shared this on the website through written work and film. See the "My Place or Yours" website at www.myplaceoryours.org.uk

Feedback:
“This is a really impressive and engaging piece of work. Huge congrats Emma.” 
“I have just discovered this website and clicked on you cos you’re from round here (Kendal). I am absolutely bowled over by the site. I have just listened to “The first Voice” and am thrilled with it. You have a strong clear voice, such resonance, so emotive”

Writer’s Statement:
One of the best aspects of the My place or Yours residency was the amount of control that I felt I had over my strand of the project. The loose brief meant that I could really explore my own ideas about place and construct a residency that was reflective of my own experience and concerns whilst addressing big issues.

Although there were deadlines and the project was structured, I felt very free to explore my own writing and performance style at the same time as being part of the blog community. I think this sense of freedom allowed me to expand my writing in a way that I’d not done before - I was very connected to the project without being constrained by it. The fact that there were five of us writing and lots of people reading and commenting on our work really made me feel part of something bigger. I was endlessly inspired during the time spent working with the other writers and staff when turning the individual pieces into a whole performance for the Big Chill festival and this led to being much more informed about my own work and performance when it came to my solo showcase event.

To learn more about the work and challenges of writers in residence projects don't miss our "Know Your Place" debate in February, book here