NAN

Chris Brown of g39 and Louise Short of Station, devisors of Quo Vadis, reflect on the motives, intentions and themes of the event.

Chris Brown of g39 and Louise Short of Station, devisors of Quo Vadis, reflect on the motives, intentions and themes of the event.

Chris Brown: A tale of two cities

After an advisory group meeting for NAN in September 2003, Louise Short and I sloped off to an Italian café opposite the Arts Council England offices in London, for a requisite post-meeting chat. The meeting had finished with an invitation to members of the group to propose events of their own devising that would realise the new NAN initiative. We had an impromptu brainstorm around proposing a joint event between our respective artist-run organisations, Station in Bristol and g39 in Cardiff, which would involve inspiring talks and activities, cross-border travelling, and a lot of good simple food and drink.

After discussing and troubleshooting the nature of artists’ networking with the NAN group for just over a year, it was enormously satisfying to put into practice what we had chewed over at length. Indeed, it’s only through artist groups and organisations undertaking events such as Quo Vadis that gives the NAN initiative an identity or tangibility.

I used to consider the ability to network as being a vulgar and inappropriate aspect of a non-commercial art practice: networking is for ‘suits’ who delight in career climbing in an aggressive and anti-social manner; it’s a unpleasant form of engagement reserved for the corporate sector. But the crucial difference here is that artists’ networking relies on mutual support, not self-driven improvement, and without this competitive element, meeting new people in your profession becomes less an irksome chore and more a sociable occasion.

Although Quo Vadis was intended to provoke discussion about cross-border artistic activity, we devised the event to be largely experiential so that delegates were encouraged to respond first-hand to the notion of a mobile practice. So the intensive two-day event was launched in Cardiff with tea and cake (a specially commissioned floral tribute NAN cake to the organisers’ grandmothers), and ended in Bristol with a cave tour, with several cross-border journeys in between by ferry, train and on foot.

We did not want to showcase the two cities to the delegates in a ‘friendly match’ of one-upmanship, but to demonstrate the possibilities in collaborating with one’s neighbour. Station and g39 are similar organisations and have a good working relationship, but have not collaborated before for various reasons – among them were public funding restrictions, perceived distance, limited staff time. In NAN there was the incentive and means to put that right, and following the success of Quo Vadis perhaps future collaborations between us will now seem less impossible.

Chris Brown is a Cardiff-based artist and co-founder of g39.

Louise Short: The Art of Colleagueship

In its early stages, the NAN initiative invited artists from each region in the UK to discuss how an artists’ network might best be developed. Over a period of two years NAN has striven to improve on and facilitate meetings and events by and for artists who have an active interest in networking. It soon became apparent that artists most valued opportunities to meet each other with the view to explore current approaches to artists’ initiatives. The form of these encounters is of vital importance. In order to get the most from the events we prioritised time and programmed an intensive weekend in Cardiff and Bristol for fifty artists. We were also determined to make the event free so we worked hard to gain funding for travel, food and accommodation. We also ensured that wherever possible we paid artists (as caterers, entertainers and hosts).

The Quo Vadis (translated from the Latin ‘Where are you going?’) weekend was aimed at artists with an interest in cross-city exchange. The event aimed to encourage networking activity between artists and artist groups in Wales and the south west of England, and beyond. The format has been devised to raise a number of issues relevant to artists and the effectiveness of their networks. Despite their proximity and similarity, the two cities are divided on a number of levels: by the physical boundary of the River Severn, the geographical border between Wales and England, differing social histories, and by a less tangible (but no less real) artistic boundary which attracts limited cultural traffic in either direction. While this is particularly relevant to these two cities it also raises several interesting discussion points about the ways in which different cities and artists groups operate throughout the UK.

In terms of evaluating the event we were aware that box-ticking questionnaires were not the answer. After the weekend I distributed my mobile number to the delegates and waited a few days before prompting a text response. My mobile was bombarded with messages about the value of direct and focussed contact between artists. Strangely it seems to be something of a rarity to have time for such necessary interaction. Whether the artists from the two regions will extend their activities further afield will be a question of time, but the opportunity to at least examine in depth each other’s situations as artists and facilitators proved to be inspiring enough to warrant deep reflection on the art of colleagueship.

Louise Short, Bristol-based artist and director of Station.

This article is part of a specially commissioned set of writing resulting from Quo Vadis.

NAN facilitates exchange, dialogue, and collaboration amongst visual artists, whatever their practice and location. It offers a focus for critical exchange and feedback and through research and mapping seeks to develop greater awareness of the value of artists' initiatives and of their changing professional needs. For more information about NAN go to Networking networks or contact emilia.telese@a-n.co.uk

Louise Short, Chris Brown

First published: a-n.co.uk February 2005