Inland Art Festival is a contemporary art festival founded by Alice Mahoney, Cat Bagg and Rosie Allen and produced by Field Notes. It brings diverse communities together in the historic town of Redruth, Cornwall, providing a locally rooted platform for local and regional creative practitioners and opportunities for audiences to see internationally renowned art in unusual locations.
For the second Inland Art Festival in 2016 we worked with local residents, artists, academics and musicians, showcasing 120 artists in 21 venues to create a three-day alternative future around Redruth.
For the second Inland Art Festival in 2016 we worked with local residents, artists, academics and musicians, showcasing 120 artists in 21 venues to create a three-day alternative future around Redruth.
CONTEXT
During a schools tour at the 2014 edition of Inland Art Festival, we were told proudly by pupils from Redruth School that this was once the richest town in the world. As relative new comers this seemed unlikely and extrodinary given the socio-economic problems facing this small community, but it is a fact, Redruth, the trading centre of Cornwall’s historic mining industry, once held the title of ‘richest square mile in the world’.
From our experience although the monetary wealth has all Redruth is still rich in a number of ways, with an incredibly invested and proud community, an actively used high street (despite empty units), a wealth of community projects and a growing population of artists. We therefore decided the festival should celebrate some of the hertiage of the town, but with a firm focus on the future: amibitious and quixotic ideas for Redruth itself, and possible and impossible, weird and wonderful futures for the world at large.
One of the first things put in place for the 2016 festival was a commission for artists Go Happen to work with Redruth School to collaboratively develop new work for exhibiting at the festival that reflected a youth led vision for Redruth to be publicly seen, heard and celebrated.
We also developed a series of playful artistic surveys inviting residents to personal share stories about themselves and history of the town, and to think about their priorities and hopes for the kind of society and infastructure that might exisit there in the future.
Holding true to the original values and aims of Inland Art Festival 2014:
- artist-led organisations and projects from Redruth, and elsewhere in Cornwall and Devon, were given small budgets to produce their own projects
- works by artists at different stages of practice, selected by open-call or by curatorial invitation, were show side by side in a host of unsual venues
- there was a focus on intrguing and inviting opportunities to ‘join-in’
From our experience although the monetary wealth has all Redruth is still rich in a number of ways, with an incredibly invested and proud community, an actively used high street (despite empty units), a wealth of community projects and a growing population of artists. We therefore decided the festival should celebrate some of the hertiage of the town, but with a firm focus on the future: amibitious and quixotic ideas for Redruth itself, and possible and impossible, weird and wonderful futures for the world at large.
One of the first things put in place for the 2016 festival was a commission for artists Go Happen to work with Redruth School to collaboratively develop new work for exhibiting at the festival that reflected a youth led vision for Redruth to be publicly seen, heard and celebrated.
We also developed a series of playful artistic surveys inviting residents to personal share stories about themselves and history of the town, and to think about their priorities and hopes for the kind of society and infastructure that might exisit there in the future.
Holding true to the original values and aims of Inland Art Festival 2014:
- artist-led organisations and projects from Redruth, and elsewhere in Cornwall and Devon, were given small budgets to produce their own projects
- works by artists at different stages of practice, selected by open-call or by curatorial invitation, were show side by side in a host of unsual venues
- there was a focus on intrguing and inviting opportunities to ‘join-in’
COMMISSIONS
Go Happen and Redruth School
Graham Taylor
Keiken
Rosalie Schweiker and Jo Waterhouse
Bridgette Ashton
TRYBE
Architecture Making Community, Frances Crow and Simon PersighettiEVENTS
FRIDAY
Bouldering, landscape and phenomenology workshop
Led by Andy Whall
Imagining Future Garden Tray Workshop
Led by Sue Hill
Everything Lives
Performance
Eye Projects/Ken Turner
Street Food Dinner
The Garden Talks
Artist and boulderer Andy Whall
Artist Louis Jack Horton StephensEthno Botanist Andrew Ormerod
Kabbalistic Synthesiser
Sam Conran/Orbs Asunder A 30 minute session where three sets of recordings taken from local stone circles were synthesised live.
Bouldering, landscape and phenomenology workshop
Led by Andy Whall
Imagining Future Garden Tray Workshop
Led by Sue Hill
Everything Lives
Performance
Eye Projects/Ken Turner
Street Food Dinner
The Garden Talks
Artist and boulderer Andy Whall
Artist Louis Jack Horton StephensEthno Botanist Andrew Ormerod
Kabbalistic Synthesiser
Sam Conran/Orbs Asunder A 30 minute session where three sets of recordings taken from local stone circles were synthesised live.
SATURDAY
Connected Communities – Architecture Making Community
Led by Frances Crowe and Simon Persighetti
Krowji LIVE
Studio holders at one of Cornwall’s largest creative hubs gave demonstrations and talked about their practice.
Family Time Capsule Workshop
The Why Don’t You Club
The Elms
Blue Badge Heritage Tour Led by Viv Robinson
The Buskers
A work by Liam Jolly
Manifesto Party
Led by Counter
In Our Own Time procession and performance
A work by Apex Arts
Basic Space
A work by First Line Theatre
REVOLTINTASTE — NOW
Performance work by ATTEMPTATION/OVERT OPERATIONS
Artists Dinner
Penventon Hotel
B-Side presents @ The Future Project
Live Music at Charlies Bar
Hedluv & Passman
THNK TNK
Wolf Note
Mildred Maude
Disco Rococo
A Thousand years of Light
Connected Communities – Architecture Making Community
Led by Frances Crowe and Simon Persighetti
Krowji LIVE
Studio holders at one of Cornwall’s largest creative hubs gave demonstrations and talked about their practice.
Family Time Capsule Workshop
The Why Don’t You Club
The Elms
Blue Badge Heritage Tour Led by Viv Robinson
The Buskers
A work by Liam Jolly
Manifesto Party
Led by Counter
In Our Own Time procession and performance
A work by Apex Arts
Basic Space
A work by First Line Theatre
REVOLTINTASTE — NOW
Performance work by ATTEMPTATION/OVERT OPERATIONS
Artists Dinner
Penventon Hotel
B-Side presents @ The Future Project
Live Music at Charlies Bar
Hedluv & Passman
THNK TNK
Wolf Note
Mildred Maude
Disco Rococo
A Thousand years of Light
SUNDAY
Connected Communities Exhibition
at The Garden
Sunday Screenings at The Regal
Slow Action – Ben Rivers
Towards the Possible – Shezad Dawood
The Stability of The System – Sasha Litvinseva & Isabel Mallet
The Mother’s Bones – Abigail Reynolds with artist talk
Remnants of the Future/Plans for The Past – Uriel Orlow
Connected Communities Exhibition
at The Garden
Sunday Screenings at The Regal
Slow Action – Ben Rivers
Towards the Possible – Shezad Dawood
The Stability of The System – Sasha Litvinseva & Isabel Mallet
The Mother’s Bones – Abigail Reynolds with artist talk
Remnants of the Future/Plans for The Past – Uriel Orlow
FUNDERS AND PARTNERS
Inland Festival 2016 was supported by funds from Arts Council England, Heritage Lottery Fund, Big Lottery Fund, FEAST, Cornwall Council and Redruth Town Council, and delivered in partnership with Krowji, Cornwall College, Visual Arts South West, Field Notes, LUX, Falmouth University, CMR Project Space and Back Lane West.
GET IN TOUCH:
info@fieldnotes.org.ukThe development of this website was supported by Cultivator Cornwall
