Case Study: Animated Spaces
The Animated Spaces initiative aimed to respond to the dual issues of empty buildings in the Ipswich CBD and the lack of arts and cultural spaces available for local artists.
The Creative Generator SEQ brokered a partnership between the Ipswich Festival, SWICH Contemporary Arts Space and Elders Real Estate to present a program of performances and arts activity in an empty building in the Ipswich CBD from 18th May to Saturday 28th May as part of the 2011 Ipswich Festival.
During the festival, what was once a vacant shop front has been converted into an intimate, rustic and often totally unique experience in theatre, music, visual arts and performing arts. This community led event lit up the city, inspired audiences and showcased the creativity of Ipswich artists. Artist and Arts workers from the Ipswich Arts Community took a lead role in developing the program of events including developing project and marketing plans, sponsorship and publicty, and non-arts business involvement.
In addition, a number of students from the Bremmer Institute of TAFE were also involved in planning and delivering elements of the program and used the ‘Animated Spaces’ project as a real world example as part of their course.
The Certificate 3 and 4 visual art students are enrolled in the unit - ‘Work with others’, and as part of their assessment criteria, they have as a group: - brainstormed about the concept, talked through the pro’s and con’s of various ideas, divided into groups to plan steps to achieve their stated outcome, done tests of materials for suitability, prepared materials for the workshop, checked the shop space to be used, prepared a roster for fair division of labour/ responsibilities.
The final outcome has given them a taste of how artsworkers create and interact within their communities.
Animated Spaces has been a successful community led arts initiative that has achieve valuable outcomes for the Ipswich community and set a precedent for future activity and partnership.