Preliminary work

ExperimentaLAB secured funding in December for the pilot project in Warrnambool from Arts Victoria’s Creative Community Partnerships. The ExperimentaLAB Co-ordinator has developed the project in conjunction with the community over four months. This will allow 5 local artists to work with communities in East Warrnambool, as suggested by Brophy youth services. Brophy Youth Services are providing support for the young people for the life of the project.

The Artistic Director, Executive Producer and ExperimentaLAB, travelled down to Warrnambool to meet key project partners on the 2/3rd of February. Meetings were held with Youth Support Agencies, Local Council Mayor & CEO and with SWTAFE Director and staff.

The local council are facilitating access to a studio space for the project in the Fletcher Jones Factory. Council have also offered access to the local community bus to transport the young people and other in kind support such as subsidised childcare. Warrnambool art gallery, a council facility has been instrumental in brokering these relationships.

Project Development

Master Classes
Master classes were held in Warrnambool for participant artists in New Media and CCD practice.
Facilitated by NMA artists Lynette Wallworth and Pip Shea, 5 local artists and 3 work for the dole participants from East Warrnambool participated in four days of workshops from Feb 28th – Mar 5th.

The workshop content ranged from a series of screenings of New Media work and work that was created in a community context. The following brainstorming session came up with two possible forms for the Warrnambool outcome.

1. House of Phone: an empty house in East Warrnambool with an installation of several phones in each room. Each phone will deliver stories and sounds of Warrnambool and its surrounds.
2. Television Tower: A monitor based installation that is operated by riding an exercise bike to view the content.

A day and a half of hands on workshops covered stop motion animation, video editing, sound manipulation and web based art works. From this a blog has been set-up to facilitate the evaluation of the project.

At the end of these workshops the group noted that extra classes would be required. As such the ExperimentaLAB Co-ordinator developed a series of hands workshops in animation, video editing and Photoshop during March. These 2 eight hour workshops were attended by four artists at SWTAFE’s Multimedia Lab. The artists spent March developing the workshop plan for the young people, after meeting and liasing with each group on a weekly basis. There are now five artists as one artist is now based in Hamilton. The artists overall fee is now split between the five.

Community Workshops
Warrnambool council has facilitated the use of a studio space for the project in the Fletcher Jones factory. Experimenta supplied all equipment for this studio space. At present the workshops have begun at Fletcher Jones with the skate group every Monday after school. The skate group consists of up to eight young people attending, some more sporadically than others. This group have made 3 short video works, one of which used stop motion animation techniques. There have also been short workshops in 12-volt power and alternative power solutions for the ball.

The young mothers intensive workshops took place during the week of April 11th – 15th. Four mothers attended over four 6-hour days working on imovie short narratives, based mostly on their life experience in Warrnambool. The artists picked them up from home in the community bus, delivered the children to childcare to help facilitate the mothers participation in the workshops. One of the participants suggested a scale model of the silver ball as the form to deliver the final content, housing tv ’s & dvd players.

The artists have been running the space at Fletcher Jones as an open studio space during the week for interested parties to drop in and make work. Two local students from TAFE have utilised this time weekly.
The artists themselves have been making video works about the community that worked at Fletcher Jones. Interviews with past and the few remaining staff members are being combined with found footage/photographs of the factory at work. It is through this contact with staff from Fletcher Jones that a final form for the outcome of the project was formed.

The artists have designed a scale model of the Fletcher Jones Silver Ball, which will contain screens that will deliver the content. The silver ball will be made out of fibreglass and has been commissioned. The content will be delivered via modified DVD players housed in a box at the bottom of the structure. These will be triggered via riding upon bikes & sewing machines.

Sketch of design for the ball, to operate viewers ride an exercise bike to operate the screens