Creative Embassies, a new way of organising? Let’s trade!

Arcadia, Leeuwarden, and Bouwurk

From the 17th of May to the 21st of August, Leeuwarden, Fryslân, is ‘transformed into a playground of connection, art and culture… where young and old come together to celebrate life for 100 days straight’, produced by Arcadia with the support of the Proinsje Fryslân, Gemeente Leeuwarden, Univé Buurtfonds and other partners.

As part of this cultural programme, I was invited by Walk the Plank to take part in the Creative Embassies Project being held at Bouwurk, a modular building assembled for this festival. Scheduled to be there for 3 days, our prompt was to come up with creative interventions in collaboration with other international artists, exploring what a Creative Embassy could look like, how it would work, and how people could find refuge in these spaces.

Halifax and Hebden Bridge

Prior to this I had been working on a project assembling cairns (stacks of stones typically found on the tops of hills) using found and donated materials [find out more here].

I was fascinated to hear why people offered the items they did, what I found on the street as I wandered around Hebden Bridge and Halifax, how these seemingly worthless things carried so much significance, and the ways people responded to these collections of items and the stories they drew from them all being brought together. And, of course, the feeling of exchange.

I wanted to explore this further, sack off the money, let’s trade!

Maak Rumite

Back in Leeuwarden our small cohort of artists were supported by Anne Graswinckel, author of De Verdwaal Atlas, Producer Annemarie and musician Wytse to engage in creative prompts such as reflecting upon a time we were lost, creating a balancing stick with a place we find comfort on the one side and places where we feel exactly the opposite on the other, and discussing what material a Creative Embassy would be made from.

Space to make space to make…

was one thing that stuck out to me from our discussions around creating a manifesto for Creative Embassies. Could a Creative Embassy be as simple as people who have access to space, opening up that space for others to use however they like? Space to make space to make space to make…

How would that benefit artists interested in trying new things, people who want to express but don’t feel as confident to stroll into these spaces, and the wider communities who live around the proposed locations of these Creatives Embassies? Do Creative Embassies already exist, but we call them by a different name?

These discussions led our group in many wonderful directions, and where I landed was in a rommella, a messy drawer. I wanted to trade objects from my messy drawer with others, and to turn one of the spaces in Bouwurk, the White Box, into a rommella.

A messy drawer is an essential part of the home, it seems. A sacred place where we put all the things that could be useful; the one sock, an unidentifiable veil of nice smelling spirit, a particularly good pen, a paperclip, rubber bands. In the context of a Creative Embassy, what would we need to keep in our messy drawers so anybody coming into these spaces feels an immediate sense of home and belonging?

Weg Geef Kastje – Finding equivalent value

Trade, trade, trade. First, myself and two friends made during the project came across a little ‘Weg Geef Kastje’, similar to a micro library where you can take and leave something. I started by taking a CD and leaving a business card I had been given. People then donated me stickers, hairbands, a book! And I went on trading that hairband for a bottle of beer, that beer for a record, that record + a top hat for €5 (later trading that €5 for 2 keychains, and later trading one of those keychains for a patch cable and some stickers), trading T-shirts, M&M’s, fabric for sewing lessons from one of the artist Tanja Blaskovic, passport pictures for sweets, temporary tattoos for permanent artwork by a talented musician, Rome Coda, and one young girl must’ve traded with me 5 or 6 times!

As I traded, I worked with a music producer and sound artist, Mark Wagenaarr, who used a modulator to create a soundscape in the White Box, accompanied by cardboard cutouts of huge keys, luggage tags, and coins to turn it into a rommella. Once people entered the messy drawer, their conversations became part of the fabric of the room, mixing in with droning sounds and beeps and bops which made you feel like you were overhearing the objects talking to one another within the rommella. And we had neighbours! Just across the way were Wytse and Rui Daniel, who had connected up their modulator to Mark’s and were plugging fruit in to make all sorts of different sounds, interspersed by all of us coming together to undertake a ritual every hour, announcing aspects of our manifesto, sharing some of the fruit (before it had been plugged in) and making people aware of what was available to them – sewing, trading, making hats, and so much more! Thanks to Nia Hoffmann for sharing your voice.

Little Hulton

Now I’m back home, reflecting upon just how Leeuwarden pulled it off – or whether it was always destined to happen with it’s crooked spire giving it an energy unlike anywhere else. I really like the idea of a Creative Embassy, somewhere that exists outside of the laws and regulations of the place it is found in, a home away from home, a safe space to make space to make.

On September 6th and 7th we will be running a family festival in Little Hulton, my home town, where Leeuwarden’s energy will certainly find a way in. We intend to have arts and crafts activities, an exhibition and stalls for selling work and sharing information, live music and performances, sports activities, creative interventions, funfair rides, the whole rommella! So it makes me think, if Little Hulton has this space, the people who are interested in it, and those people have access to all these resources, does that make it a Creative Embassy? What is stopping Little Hulton becoming the Creative Capital of Salford, Greater Manchester, or even the whole North West? At the moment I could list the many reasons, but I feel if we can name them, we can challenge them.

So we can challenge stereotypes, we can challenge access to good quality work and opportunities, we can challenge lack of consultation before investment, we can challenge each other to do better.

The crooked Spire in Leeuwarden has been around since 1529, and the story I was told is that the architect had built many similar spires but was unused to the Fryslân soil so, as they built it, it began to droop to one side. They corrected halfway and now De Oldehove stands to this day, overlooking all the good chaos going on underneath it. Little Hulton has a crooked spire, although it’s not a spire, it’s a Precinct without benches, a lack of park equipment, a stereotype of antisocial behaviour and violence. So if Leeuwarden can do it, why can’t we?