The workshop aimed to bring benefit to the region by providing opportunities for artists, curators and critics who are resident in Cornwall and the South West. Candidates not resident in the area could apply if they had a special interest in, or relationship with, the region and had knowledge and experience that could be of particular benefit to the workshop discussion. The workshop set out to attract artists, curators and arts writers interested in producing public outcomes and who had ideas they wished to develop. It was targeted towards applicants who have experience of working independently and of making exhibitions or initiating projects and public events. Read More

The Cornwall Workshop aimed to address the specific needs of artists, curators and critics based in Cornwall and the South West and to expand the region’s capacity by connecting to national and international networks and debates.  It set out to be specific to its context and to address the situation in Cornwall and other such remote, dispersed, non-urban areas.

The workshop set out to develop ideas suggested by Lucy Lippard’s keynote address for The Falmouth Convention, ‘Imagine Being Here Now’. Read More

The workshop ran from Saturday 15 to Friday 21 October 2011.

Workshop participants arrived in time for dinner on Saturday 15 October and the workshop began on Sunday 16 with a field trip on the Lizard peninsula, devised by FIELDCLUB and led by folklorist Steve Patterson and Dr Robin Shail, Senior Lecturer in Geology at Camborne School of Mines. The field trip offered two parallel and contrasting narratives, one relating to the folk history of the area, the other to its geological formation. Read More

Imagine Being Here Now Tour

There are so many layers to a place – cultural, geological, and archaeological – that it is difficult to recognise them all at any one time. Yet they are, whether we are aware of them or not, what make up the places we inhabit. This tour was conceived by FIELDCLUB, and led by geologist Dr Robin Shail, folklorist Steve Patterson, and FIELDCLUB’s Kenna Hernly. It was an attempt to show the participants of the workshop the relationship between human culture and geology in the unique region of the Lizard by offering the contrasting views of a geologist and a folklorist, with Kenna adding local historical facts and anecdotes. As the opening day of The Cornwall Workshop, it was also intended to orientate people to their location, and to help them get to know each other. Read More

In preparation for the workshop, participants were asked to select a text to introduce to others in the group.  Lori Waxman describes this task as follows:

Writing presupposes reading. We learn to be great, or at least interesting, writers through exposure to a broad array of texts written inside and outside of our chosen fields. We write with these words, and sometimes against them.

With this in mind, participants were asked to choose a single, relatively brief piece of published writing to bring with them to the workshop to share with colleagues. The text could be written by an art historian, a novelist, a journalist, a philosopher, a poet, a curator, an artist — anyone, really — but it was supposed to be about art, or the act of looking, something that had inspired them, or prompted them to conspire, or even made them transpire. Read More

As part of a daylong writing workshop led by Lori Waxman, participants were asked to write a short text, with a particular reader in mind, in response to the Sunday field trip developed by FIELDCLUB and led by geologist Dr. Robin Shail and folklorist Steve Paterson. Read More

The workshop was conceived partly as a pilot for similar activities in the future, both at Tate St Ives and in the wider region. Willingness to provide detailed feedback was specified as a condition of participation, and evaluation of the residential workshop model was a key aim. Participants and workshop leaders were asked for oral feedback throughout the workshop and provided detailed written evaluations at its conclusion.