by Alfie
user profile | dashboard | imagewall | contact user
I make things on the web, mobile and in the actual world.
I've done lots of bits and bobs over the years, and right now I'm mostly working on this.
I enjoy speaking about things I like, most recently this. You can email me if you'd like, and I'm on twitter.
,big art project,channel 4,uk catalyst,uk catalyst awards
arkangel says:
Here's a bit of background on the social innovation behind Big Art Mob:
BIG ART PROJECT / BIG ART MOB: Explores the whole area of Public Art in depth - just how public is it? how much influence do people have over what lands in the middle of where they live? what role can art play in improving people's local environment? This web / mobile / tv / on the ground project brings together communities to lobby for public art where they live (6 large scale commissions are happening as a result of the initiative, right across the UK - one larger than the Angel of the North). It gives people a chance to have their opinions about Public Art clearly heard, their preferences expressed, practices which normally exclude them challenged and revised, and the balance between the Arts establishment and the taxpayer significantly shifted.
The BIG ART MOB component of the project sets out to create the first ever comprehensive map of Public Art across the UK with the help of its users and their mobile cameraphones. Over 5,000 art works have been captured for posterity and discussion in the first year - this is before the transmission of the associated TV series and without marketing, purely word of mouth. Indeed BAMob has spread across Europe as far afield as South America and China. Artists have adopted the infrastructure to showcase the making and end results of their public works. Organisations have used it to spotlight their campaigns (e.g. Save our Sculptures, Sheffield Cooling Tower Campaign, etc.). The most common reaction you see in the comments is that it prompts people to suddenly notice the public art they walked by for years. It's interesting to look at the mix of works the public has uploaded to the site - a very significant proportion of street art, which says much about what people really value.
This project is a pioneering example of the closing of the virtuous circle of real life - tv - web - mobile. The WAP site at www.bigartmob.com/mobile is a good illustration of how carefully this journey across platforms has been thought through to enable people to engage with the initiative and the art whenever and wherever they want to access it from and share their perspectives.
