Publications

Artists Don't Bite

By: Mark Hewitt

Art at the Centre is an award scheme from Arts Council England, South East that seeks to involve artists from the outset of regeneration projects across the region. As part of this scheme, Maidstone Borough Council looked to develop an Artists’ Quarter in the heart of the town to promote the area’s wealth of creative talent. Here video-media artist Margherita Gramegna and consultants FrancisKnight talk about their involvement in this process and the resulting work, Artists Don’t Bite.

I met Louise and Laura in 2006. They were involved in the Chatham Vines Public Art Award which I was shortlisted for. As they were in the panel, they listened to my presentation and I felt like they understood my work and had a very open mind about it. Louise approached me afterwards and said, "Why don't you bring your project to us? We're running something in Maidstone." We had a first meeting where they explained to me all about Art at the Centre. With Louise and Laura I felt like they trusted me in the sense that they knew I would deliver something they would like, something that was going to be dynamic and quite mad and humorous. They explained what they were trying to achieve and asked me to create something that fitted in with those aims. I'd decided by then I wanted to do something different from my original Chatham Vines idea and in July 2007 I wrote a first draft for a new project. They didn't have the money to fund it fully but we felt there was enough substance there to make an application to the Arts Council England. I wrote the application myself but Louise and Laura helped me negotiate a few of the tricky bits. This project was always very much my territory,...

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