Watch this space

Creatives were able to work on projects as diverse as songs for therapy to aerial performance skills thanks to Watch This Space.

The project hooked up artists with venues and everyone managed to use the opportunity to test out new ideas or rehearse techniques over their 48 hour pop-up space takeovers.

As was widely reported in national and regional press and media, Skipton opera singer Bibi Heal and arts consultant Jane Rice-Bowen hosted their ‘Song Surgery’ at Ambleside Parish Hall. The event included performing arts students from Bradford College acting as ‘triage’ to find patients for Bibi to treat with a prescription of music and poetry.

Further to the positive and overwhelming response to this initiative Bibi and Jane will now develop their idea further and have already planned a follow-up event at The Joinery in Settle in January – home of Settle Stories (another good friend of GPLD!).

Creative champion Steph Dwyer offered her Yorkshire Dales Guides barn base and climbing expertise to help dancers Ro Hardaker and Clementine Bogg-Hargroves rehearse new performance skills.

Clementine took to the air to practise aerial skills and Ro looked at integrating technology within their work, using green screens and body paint.

More than 100 people called in to Matthew Annable and Mary Woolf’s virtual reality and augmented reality doodle animations workshops at Qworkery co-working space in Skipton.

Musician Matthew and photographic artist Mary are now continuing to develop this element of their work.

Writer Louise Cross, creative producer Melissa Davies and cellist Sarah Smout joined photographer and film maker Juliet Klottrup for a mini-residential and some collaborative creative thinking at Newton Grange, near Gargrave.

GPLD consultant Emily Wilson said: “It’s given an opportunity to rigorously test ideas and provide a springboard to something else. This is fundamentally missing for many freelancers and independents as they embark on what might eventually be funded work – but this work usually has to be self-funded somehow, to provide the evidence for future bids. This instantly narrows the field as those who can’t afford to do the initial work, with their own funds and unpaid, never get the opportunity.”