With Sunday the 18 July being World Listening Day, I will be asking the public to Opening our ears: learning to listen and help to survey the sonic landmarks of the seaside.
 - What is the seaside soundscape like?
 - What sounds are important to them?

Public Domain is a three-day festival happening from 16 – 18 July in Bournemouth Lower Gardens. The festival includes film screenings, family workshops, installations, performances and participatory events from leading artists with international profiles encouraging participants to explore what it means to share parks, gardens and other public spaces. The festival invites everyone to take part through collaboration and creativity in the workshops and some of the artworks, or simply by bringing a picnic and experiencing one of the many screenings and concerts that are on offer over the weekend.

For full programme: www.scansite.org/publicdomain

Meet with daisi and  John Whitehead, John Bradford, Simon Ovens and Ed Tomlin from South Dartmoor Community College in Ashburton. We ran through some potential ideas that could be realised by the end of the summer term. Discussing how using creativity to make the local area and issues of society and citizenship come alive for young people, and how we can establish new and lasting connections between schools and their communities.

Two possible projects might happen. One would be to discover a new understanding of our past, present and future through research, conversation and survey’s comparing and contrasting opinions of those living and working in the region. This project combines art, history and anthropology for an investigative look at people, places, and stories and how they contribute to our collective understanding of who we are. The children will become detectives, searching out clues to the town’s past and present.

Together we will form a production team and produce a newspaper. Children take on roles, which they have to apply for. Editor, reporter, copywriter, photographer, production manager, art editor, illustrator, sound editor, web input.

We will document the environment using writing, sound and photography. We will then edit our research and combine this with autographical skills to create our newspaper.

Most people use maps for directions,we will be exploring a personal map of the town. Asking participants;

• Do the official maps show how YOU use Sherborne?
• Do they show where you work, play, eat and hang out?
• Do they show which routes you like to use to get about?
• Are there parts of Sherborne that you don’t know and would like to explore?
• Where do those green footpath signs in town take you if you just keep on going?

Experimenting with photography, sound recording, signs and drawing we will create some new maps in and around Sherborne. Our maps will mix images, sounds, our own signs, descriptions and GPS positioning data to show the town as we find it in 2009.

Global Positioning System (GPS)

The Global Positioning System (an initiative of the American Department of Defence) is a technology with which you can always find your location from radiographic signals from 24 satellites that circle the earth. A device no bigger than a mobile phone does the job. With a triangular (timing) measurement, the receiver records your position on the earth each time a measurement is made. Afterwards these points can be downloaded into a computer and you can decide if and how you want to share the recorded locations and time codes with the rest of the world.

digital:works have just completed their latest project ‘My Future City’, working closely with Artswest and the BBC. This work, which involves a website (www.greatwhitecity.com), a 30meter banner around the BBC and supporting publicity. This was launched today with the help of pupils from St Stephens School and Cllr Anthony Lillis, Cabinet Minister for Children from Hammersmith & Fulham Council.

Pupils from St Stephens School, Shepherds Bush attended the launch told us how, “The project made me feel like I have some responsibility over the way things might be in the neighbourhood.”

They said, “digital:works let us express what we think about the neighborhood.” Going on to say, “I like the way our thoughts are displayed in a different way and how the imagery on the hoarding came from our ideas.”

The work is about how the area of West London, ‘White City’, has developed over the last 100 years. In 1908, the Franco-British Exhibition transformed this part of West London. In fact, it gave the area its name: ‘White City’, taken from the fantastical, white stucco exhibition palaces created for the event. One hundred years later, we are on the brink of another major transformation of White City, so we asked local children and young people to say what they wanted their future city to be.

I felt that after visiting the site at the BBC it was clear the images had to be on a human scale as you can’t stand very far back from it. We felt the young people’s words needed to be read but not in a linear fashion and new things had to be seen when walking past for the second, third or fourth time.

Robert Seatter, Head of BBC History, said, “We really wanted this community hoarding project to capture the thoughts, feelings and dreams of the children and young people of White City. The design from digital:works perfectly matched this aspiration, creating a dramatic and colourful artwork, with a contemporary, urban feel, which I’m sure will get the whole community thinking about what they want their future city to be.”

This was a challenging brief and the fact it’s had very glowing responses from everyone involved has been very pleasing.

Clare Burnett, a member from the Artswest organization said, “I think it looks fantastic and is really fun and interesting to look at and read.”

You can see the hoarding artwork here.