Preston Tweetup II – so, how can we support the arts in Preston?

28th, July 2009 by

Discussions across the room at Preston Tweetup IIThe second Preston Tweetup took place on Monday 27th July 2009 at the New Continental. Blog Preston was hosting the event again, with help from They Eat Culture, and it was a relative success.

We managed to attract a few people from arts organisations, artists and the bit of the council responsible for the arts. More importantly, we attracted some talented and interested people who for 45 minutes to an hour put their minds to work on how we can support the arts in Preston.

The general theme was that the arts is doing okay at the moment but doesn’t enjoy the same profile, funding or support as sports does in Preston. How could we raise it to an even keel? We felt that there was lots going on with the arts but that it was often under the radar in Preston.

The Preston Tringe Festival is a good idea. It’s been going strong, attracting decent crowds but when asked who knew about it – only a few hands went up, and they were people I would expect to know about it.

So, promotion is a key thing. How can we let people know about the arts? One great idea that came out of the evening was to create one single website that was a hub of events happening in Preston, and anyone could submit their event to the site and be listed. No marketing crap, just a community-based events website.

The other idea was that there needs to be more participative art around the city, especially with Preston Guild approaching. One person at the event spoke about their friend who did interactive art installations and they’d done one where if you move your hand in front of a screen it set off a virtual firework on a big screen – so if loads of people jumped and waved around you got a huge firework display. How cool would that be on the flag market?

Another idea was to reward those who attend arts events regularly. Taking the ‘Costa Coffee’ concept of attend six events and get the seventh free. But who would subsidise this? Well, surely the council. We pay our council tax and some of it has to be put into the arts.

A final thought is where is Preston Arts Association in all this? Hardly anyone at the event had heard of them, their website is awful and apparently they’ve held an arts festival for the past however many years. It was news to us.

Let’s dust off the arts, let’s make it more participatory and let’s get new media involved to help raise the profile of the arts online. It can be done.

You can read the wiki with all the ideas from #prestontweetup and for a limited time see the twitter messages from the evening. The next Preston Tweetup will be in the autumn.

Image credit to James Brunton, 23rd Parrallel.

  • ruby_gem

    The PAA website actually hurt peoples’ eyes when they looked.

    It was easily created in the 90′s, is in desperate need of an update, publicity and to utilise artists from the era: graphic and web designers!

  • J

    Really liked this write up, and the wiki. Shame I couldn’t be there in person, but it was great to join in from home and that is one more benefit of holding these conversations in a semi-public way on twitter.

  • Jake

    Firstly, I’m really sorry I wasn’t able to be at your event, my name’s Jake and I work for the library service, one of my roles is looking at arts and culture for the service and the ideas you’ve all had sound very exciting!

    The discussion about participatory art feels a very worthwhile one in that this is the way to help show that arts do not *have* to be elitist, or even passive, and that expression and the ability to feel, to be sentient and affected by the ideas art is located within and stimulates. I think this is a real way forward in trying to ensure the arts aren’t ghetto-ized and it’s a massively exciting time in terms of the role that new media is able to play in helping to achieve this!

    There’s a governmental move at the moment to view culture as including sports so perhaps the strength of the sports scene in Preston – which is alluded to above – could be utilised also as a strength for building joint arts/sports platforms and initiatives. Perhaps that will be viewed sceptically because of the politics that lie behind the decision, but it’s worth pointing out that without audience, the arts cannot exist and there is certainly an audience for sports in Preston is that something we could capitalise upon – or filch?!

    How do you foresee turning some of the ideas above into reality? What type of support and partners are needed for that and what role could the city and county council commitment to arts play in that? Also what role do you see yourselves as having. Do you plan future tweetups to make further plans for the arts? If so would I be able to attend? I’d certainly be keen to.

    As for Preston Arts Association, I feel a great affection towards them they are making movements, I think it does take time and a concerted and sustained effort to develop new projects and programmes and then to make sure these progress. When the Hay Arts Festivals began, they only attracted little over 1000 people as their audience, look at the status they have now twenty-one years on! I’ve been working with them for an author event this year and hope there will be ways to increase our involvement in future years. Joining together to form a real network in which people feel valued and have their skills and experiences accepted is a way of helping to make some of these ideas a reality. Support and be supported!

    Finally from ‘The Field of Dreams’… “If you build it they will come” let’s work towards that! Incidentally, I’m very taken with your logo!

  • Samantha Blackburn

    Hi Jake, it would be good to have a chat about City and Council contributions to all of this – please send me an email and we’ll arrange to meet up.
    Cheers,
    Samantha.