We want to work with artists alongside community engagement to explore what people need from the places we care for now and in the future. Through collaboration with our audiences, local partners and arts organisations we will creatively explore alternative ways to engage in these areas in the future and test ideas at Crow Park through events and installations throughout 2020.

Call for Socially Engaged Artists, National Trust North region 2020

Location: Crow Park, The Lake District, Cumbria 

Artform: any

Description:

Trust New Art (TNA) helps to grow people’s love of our special places by using contemporary arts to explore and express ‘Spirit of Place’. It is supported by partnerships with Arts Council England. The programme helps to build new and repeat audiences for the arts and our properties and follows the Trust’s approach to programming. It provides commissioning and career opportunities to both emerging and established artists and has become recognised in the arts sector as a mark of quality. In 2020 there are eight TNA projects in the North region exploring different aspects of Art and Environment, Nature and Culture. We want to work with socially engaged artists for our 2020 TNA programme in Cumbria and the Northumberland.

What we want to achieve: We want to work with artists alongside community engagement to explore what people need from the places we care for now and in the future. Through collaboration with our audiences, local partners and arts organisations we will creatively explore alternative ways to engage in these areas in the future and test ideas at Wallington through events and installations throughout 2020.

Crow Park - one of the original c1750 Thomas West’s Lake District “Viewing Stations” and boasts panoramic 360 views across the town towards Skiddaw, Blencathra, Derwent Water, Catbells, Newlands and the Jaws of Borrowdale.

Fee:£23,000*

The Commission

The National Trust would like to invite you to consider a creative response to Crow Park.

Our aims in launching this project are to:

1. Use a socially engaged approach to explore the interconnectivity of people and place.

2. Commission contemporary work that responds to place and explores the tensions between: a what this landscape means to the people who live here and b what it means to a global community following the Lake District’s (and local hero Rawnsley’s) role in inspiring a global conservation movement.

3. Facilitate inspiring and dynamic experiences that bring the heritage of this outdoor site to life using experiences that are in keeping with the philosophy of ‘leave no permanent trace’ and our conservation principles.

4. Facilitate community engagement and promote active participation of local residents at Crow Park.

Why we’re doing this in 2020:

• 2020 is the 125th anniversary of the National Trust was founded to protect special places for the benefit of the nation
• 2020 is also the centenary of National Trust founder and local campaigner Canon Rawnsley. Through this project we would like to explore ideas about how we could mark the centenary.

We’d like to deliver these aims through the following objectives:

• To commission, plan and deliver on site arts activity between July - October 2020.
• To have a virtual hub for the project to signpost audiences to the project, which will include documentation of the project and its processes
• All activities will be free or low cost, and designed to be inclusive

Themes

These have been identified by the partners as possible starting points for the artists to develop the ideas, however the subject matter is for the artist to decide:

• What places mean to people
• Living in a World Heritage Site
• The centenary of local ‘volcano’ Canon Hardwick Rawnsley

Timeline

• 2019– 10th November – Closing date for expressions of interest (midnight)
• 20th November – shortlisting of artists
• 29th November – Interview workshops held – please hold this date in your diary
• December – contracting artist 
• 2020 ‐ Jan – community mapping work with National Trust project team and stakeholders to identify participants
• March – Activity on site begins, forming links with community groups
• July – 4-5 July is Derwent Water Regatta, a large public event run on Crow Park by the National Trust (approx. 10,000 people attended in 2019). We’d like some artistic programming from this project at the event.
• September - October – artistic programming
• November – Evaluation & reporting
• December – Project ends
• 2021 – January – February – Debrief and evaluation 

Budget for successful commission

Fees and materials

Up to £23,000 is available for the project. This is to include artist fee, materials and travel & expenses, and VAT. Please be advised that access to a car is desirable as it is a rural location with limited public transport. 

• Artists Fee: £9,000
• Artist travel grant & accomodation £2,000.00
• Artist production budget £5,500.00
• Community Engagement workshops & venue costs £2,500.00
• Contingency to be negotiated £4,000.00 

*Please note to receive payment you will need to be registered as a supplier for the National Trust, this will require completion of paperwork and proof of public liability insurance. 

How to submit

If you are interested in being considered for this commission, please send an Expression of Interest, which should include the following:

• CV or biographical statement
• Why you are interested in this opportunity (up to 400 words)
• Up to 6 images of your work or weblinks to the images.

https://nt.global.ssl.fastly.net/borrowdale-and-derwent-water/documents/artists-brief-for-contemporary-art-project-at-crow-park.pdf