Research at BCU-hosted Eastside Projects has created significant impact with redefining the role of “publics” for commissioning artists.
Summary of Research
Eastside Projects is a research space for creative practice at Birmingham Institute of Creative Arts (BICA). They have created the opportunities for a range of research activities set within an ‘artist-run multiverse’, combining critical aspects of traditional and alternative art institutional structures with newly invented approaches such as user’s manuals, long term artworks, upcycling, and useful art.
Eastside Project’s research has led to projects such as the commission of Turner Prize-winner Susan Philipsz’s £2m public artwork for HS2 Curzon Station and collaborating with David Kohn Architects, winning the £60m 2020 competition to design Birmingham’s Smithfield Market.
How has the research been carried out?
EP’s practice philosophy focuses on Making Art Public, applied through its operation as an Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisation. EP’s aim is to test ways in which art can be useful to society by developing quality public projects focusing on history, people, and concepts of permanence, and by questioning and supporting the local artistic ecology.
A major development in EP’s research on public art is their work on embodying forms that closely reflect the historical identity Birmingham. EP created and published The Artist and The Engineer in the form of a children’s book that retells the story of Birmingham, adopting the ‘heraldic supporters’ from the city’s coat of arms (an artist and an engineer) and re-presenting historical precedents for collaboration. This story became central for research within EP.
The team has undertaken several funded projects including the development of a mobile app, CHIME for Cheltenham Jazz Festival, the name of the app originating as an acronym for "Cultural Heritage and Improvised Music in European Festivals", as well as the design of the festival event “Hack the Jazz Festival” to push the boundaries of Cheltenham Jazz Festival’s commissioning process
Outcomes and impact
This impact work responded to key challenges facing the sector in the areas of audience engagement, artistic development, and organisational policy. The practical and artistic elements of the research that the team produced, along with the recommendations they made, had a direct influence on decision-making and are core to the solutions that Cheltenham Jazz Festival management has devised in response to the challenges this research has identified.
The CHIME mobile app developed by the BCU team is now central to the Cheltenham Jazz Festival’s digital strategy. The data gathered from users in 2016 and 2019 revealed the CHIME app’s effectiveness as a medium for better understanding the Cheltenham Jazz Festival audience.
The BCU team drew on their research to design the set of initiatives identified above, including Hack the Festival, workshops, and the mobile app pilots, that provided the conceptual and practical resources for Cheltenham Jazz Festival management to implement change in organisational practice.
