Artist Lockdown
With the Tangible Memories app, it’s really easy to take photos, sound recordings and text and put them all together to create the pages of your very own beautiful book, capturing your lockdown memories.
The Tangible Memories app is free to download, and the books can be ordered in any quantity you like, so you can create a one-of-a-kind record for yourself, or several copies to be posted out to the loved ones that you’ve not been able to spend time with recently. At the moment, it’s available for iPad, and we are currently developing a version for Android and for phones.
Tangible Memories books are also a great way to honour a person’s life or to document a project that’s been dear to your heart throughout this strange time in lockdown.
The Rule operates as a piece of sculpture and as a tool for spatial and relational exploration.
Marking out the enforced restriction in physical form provides an opportunity to reflect not only on the challenges brought about by navigating new spatial boundaries but on the issues that ‘keeping distance’ raises in terms of separation and its associated emotions. There will be further interactions in public as the restrictions ease with co collaborator Rebecca Stapleford and The Rule, and a workshop engaging the public directly, to record responses relating to personal space and recent experiences of the two metre rule.
To remain creative throughout this pandemic Emilie Sandy is continuing to take portraits; at a distance, adhering to the Government guidelines of at least 2 metres. “I want to document these aspects of people’s lives that we encounter every day on our ‘current allowance’ of daily walks - with the hope to create a visual historic document of our time, and our friendly community, right now.”
The hope is to create a chain of response to current circumstances; pandemic, isolation, or contented solitude; it will be an entirely personal response. Each artist creates and pins work to the map, or works directly onto it, before posting it on to a new participant. It is our hope that the map becomes a kind of shared canvas, or a psychic space. A place where we can belong as artists at this time.
Doesn’t have to be your nan. Dedicate a song to a loved one, your lost one, a key worker you know, or anyone who deserves a shout-out through the coronavirus lockdown.
Soozy Roberts will collect song requests and stories, through BBC Radio Gloucestershire and Deepbedradio dedicated to anyone that needs to be remembered or reached out to during this time.
You can also get more creative by submitting a photographic or collage ‘cover’ image, depicting their chosen song using themselves, family members and household objects.
To submit your dedication please fill in the simple form on: www.thecovidcovers.com
We want you to map your journeys around Stroud, be they from bed to chair, house to hill or purely imagined, using any method or medium you can think of.
Send us your ‘maps’; be they visual, poetic, satirical, weird or wacky.
If would like to know more, we’d love to hear from you. Please get in touch by mailing us at info@creativeneighbourhood.co.uk.
If you are looking for inspiration or just fascinated by the topic, Citylab have been running an international version of Maps of life under Lockdown. Take a look to take a look at the wonderful responses that they have had so far.
The Next Act is a unique collaborative film project created by local artist Danielle Tipton, supported by Create Gloucestershire for the #CreativityConnection series, with Strike A Light and Cheltenham Festivals.
Each new scene has to link up and carry on from the one before it, but that’s all – each artist is allowed to change any element they want, and they’re actively encouraged to change the genre and style.
If you want to get involved, just email thenextactfilm@gmail.com, and find the Next Act channel on Youtube : just search for 'The Next Act Film'.