New Ferry Butterfly Park; Empty Shop Project

Juie’s PV evening as a great success, don’t know what she was worried about, I always knew it would be fab.

She’s posted about it herself here:

www.a-n.co.uk/p/2071880

But I want to blog about it too as she never does herself justice when talking about her successes.

The eveing started very early with kids turning up at 3.30 straight from school to collect their trees, we gave a few back but as the event didnt offically start until 5pm had to lock up for the grand finale in case there were no trees left.

5pm came and we had a good crowd which stayed steady all night long, more visitors than before, friends, volunteers and local people along with a few who’d heard about the project through the Liverpool Arts scene.
We’re only 15 minutes away from Liverpool City centre but getting people to cross the river or enter the tunnel to see art is increasingly more difficult.

Even with a free drink on offer, most PVs you have to pay for your wine nowadays. ~Whats the point of being a starving artist if you cant get a free drink at a PV?

Anyway, off topic. The whole evening was so relaxed, Julie and my husband Ian took down the indigenous community forest row by row, each time replacing with the dark inked spruce trees.
At times people seemed shocked as they’d be deep in conversation and not notice them changing then look up to see a whole new patch of deforestation had happened.

I think I liked this most about the installation as it kind of echoes reality, we don’t seem to notice these things happening in real life either. Julies worries about the trees looking the same proved unfounded as the rows looked markedly different each time.

We had lots of good conversation, free tea and coffee and juice by the front door. Wine was served too but kept away from the front so that we didn’t attact the local drunks in again, pleased to say that worked well.

I made a huge pan of Creamy Aspragus Soup as we’d had a crate of asparagus donated from Claremont Farm, our local farm in the area. It’s great that the local businesses are getting involved and I feel its important to show local people new food, food that they could grow themselves in fact, to tie in with our policy of trying to encourage planting in the area. A young boy thought it was Mushy Pea soup haha though in fact my son agreed. It seemed to go down well regardless.

Julie is still in the space, she had another commission she was working on and the new artist Andrea very kindly let her stay in the space to finish it, great all round really as Andrea has company and Julie can finish off in peace without upheaval.

It’s nice having more artists in the space at one time too.

We also had a really fabulous review you can read here:

It’s stepping up a pace, tonight is the PV Open Night and Julie’s last day in the shop :'(

Her residency has been a really lovely one, it’s been tough going getting people interested and in the door but the last week or so it’s really picked up. Her workshop last Saturday was constant if not full, lots of people in and out all day. A school workshop Tuesday, a local arts group ‘With These Hands’ had their monthly meeting in the shop and also made trees. I went out to a Scout group and help a workshop there too.

During the PV, Julie will be systematically taking down the community forest committing de-forestation and re-populating the space with the paper spruce trees she’s been making. I know she’s worried it wont work on the night but it will. It’ll be fabulous I’m sure.

Local farm have donated asparagus and so I’m making a massive pan of asparagus soup to share. We’ll have tea/coffee and juice available at the front. No wine out so the local drunks wont feel the need to come in this time I hope. Such a shame that but I really don’t want them falling asleep and ruing Julies big night.

We’ll have a bottle out the back to help Julie celebrate.

Tomorrow our 3rd artist Andrea Bassil starts her residency. I’ll be up early, in taking down Julie’s exhibition and getting ready for Andrea to start.

Andrea is an illustrator, with many childrens books under her belt. She will be producing ‘stepping’ stones all based around the inhabitants of the park that will then be placed into the park at the end of June.
She’s travelling a long way to get here, with elderly Mum and dog in tow and staying at a relatives house so I really hope it all goes well for her this month and she gets lots of interest.

We found out this week we’ve received another small grant for the Butterlfy Park, its great as it means we can now organise lots more workshops for the park and shop. Not art based but nature based, planting, foraging, talks about local history, walks and talks about butterlflies, moths newts etc.

So another way of engaging the local people. Quite exciting.

It’s slow going this project at times. Not many turned up to Julies workshop at all, we’re publicising and posting on facebook/twitter etc but still no takers.

Bringing people in from New Ferry is as problematic as bringing people in from outside the area.

New Ferry does have a bit of a bad name lately, its such a shame as I’ve shopped there for nigh on 15 years now and it has some really great shops but the last year has had a noticeable downturn.

The last few months in particular have been much worse. There is a definite drink problem in the area, some tacky bars have opened and are attracting the wrong type of people in.

Last week there were Police around daily moving the drunks on. I saw kids being shouted at in the street by some drunks and we even had one staggering into the shop during a workshop.

It puts people off there’s no two ways about it. The local police are trying to promote an alcohol free pedestrian zone in New Ferry which I think would help massively, people lock up the shops by 4.30 now as no-one wants to be around after that. I feel so utterly sad about it all.

Community engagement can be such a great thing…if it works. The only way for it to work is for the people to actually want to get involved but if they dont want to come into New Ferry there’s not much more we can do.

I refuse to go down without a fight though, we have 4.5months left of this project and so we’ll just have to try harder, work harder (if at all possible) to get the people involved.

There are so many great people in New Ferry, I’ve met loads of them, I just need them to come in, work with us and make this project work for them.

One of my volunteers is looking into setting up an online petition in support of the alcohol free zone. I’m going to have a petition in the shop too as some of the other shops have.

Lots of support for this so maybe we just all have to work together for this aim and put the longer term aims on hold.

This week I’ll be sending invitations to all the local church/youth groups etc, scouts,guides and schools again to see if we can entice them to visit us and learn about the project and the butterfly park.

New Ferry still has the potential…The fight goes on…..

It’s been a very busy time at the Butterfly Park, we had our annual Open Day on Sunday which takes a lot of behind the scenes organising. I have been so busy with my job and the Comma Project I wasn’t able to do as much as I normally do, felt quite bad about that but at the end of the day one person can only do so much.

The Open Day was a success, we had less visitors than previous years, don’t quite know why. Maybe the fact that we didn’t put out a press release could be it or that the weather wasn’t too great. Who knows.

We did however make more money than previous years so that’s good. We do need to fundraise more for sure.

Julie managed to make it back from the wedding to come along to the open day, she set up a table with examples of her work and though she didn’t sell much she did manage to pass on the word about the Comma Project.

I was sat facepainting in my caravan visitor centre, warmer than last year. Pam Sullivan (July/Aug artist in residence) helped facepaint and between us we also spread the word – parents are a captive audience while a child is sat there…cunning plan :)

We had a visit from BYU (Brigham Young University) Utah, USA. Julie held a workshop for the visiting students, her blog about it is here /p/2071880/

Went really well, met some lovely people, made some book/trees and everyone enjoyed the evening I think.

We have a free workshop flyer now which is being put as many places as we can, online and within New ferry and the local area.

Next workshop is this Saturday, drop in event, really hope we get loads of visitors but New Ferry seems to be quieter by the day. Worryingly so.

Same day, new post as I wanted to keep the residents all separate.

Julie Dodd has now started in the space and has already made it her own.

We’ve had a few interested passers by coming in on her first day and saying they’d seen us in the newspaper and asking where the art was haha. So now there are paper book trees hanging from the ceiling and large paper trees on the walls. Julie got busy quickly.

Planning workshops even though we’re asking everyone who comes in to make trees, she needs a lot making for the installation to work in the way she’d like.

We have visitors from a University in Utah, USA next Tuesday night and a local arts and craft group ‘With these Hands’ are holding their meeting in the space another night.

We’ll be asking everyone to make trees then too.

Julie also had an experience with a drunk on her first day, he fell asleep with his head on the table whilst cutting trees (with safety scissors) hopefully this does not put her off!

At least she got an extra tree ;)

Oh and we’ve sold two fluttering butterflies once we realised what a fundraising goldmine they could be and got some to stock – hey if it brings people into the shop I’m not knocking them!