SOFT DRIVE: BROADCASTS, SAFE EXHIBITIONS AND A BOOKLAUNCH

 Soft Drive presents...first, an hours discussion on BBC Radio Cumbria, then a small and safe exhibition in the market hall, a book launch and another exhibit in the Sir John Barrow Cottage garden...

John here.. Jamie and Ellie and me took part in Helen Millican's evening arts show..Helen had read the Soft Drive book and got us talking about the ideas behind the work and the work itself....radio suits us: we get the word out about our events, and as we talk the next project floats into view...the plan is to follow  up with an exploratory walk as described by Jamie in the book and to look at making content.. 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/11Hic00XPqSd6rr-16Bdzz-Kb7XBiGmeJ/view?usp=sharing

We have work to show you from Eleanor Chaney, Alex Blackmore and John Kenneth Hall, while the Soft Drive book tells the story of the project. We are launching this from a stall on Ulverston's Market Cross on Dec 19th...you'll get the artists ideas and methods, workshops, Dominic Kelly 's work on Storyfair, as well as musings on the way the year has impacted on our work, our lives, and our relationship with public and private space.

There are photos from Dennis Metcalfe and project photographer Lindsay Ward Photography and contributions from Jamie McPhie, Iain McNicol and Dan Elsworth from Greenlane Archaeology Ltd.  After the launch it heads into  the shops beginning with Suttons Books in Ulverston. Next to Elton John.

At the Market Hall you'll see Alex Blackmore's illuminated box constructions based on photographs from the Civic Society collection. Ellie will be showing her Lockdown Stories Box, which contains beautifully presented accounts of the experiences of local people...new routines, observations and escape routes,. Thank you on on behalf of the project if your story is amongst them.  On the wall you'll see a large study made by John Hall for a Tent made in response to the 1934 LMS Map of the Lakes by illustrator Arthur Watts and using Lindsay's photographs of the original, found in the Civic Society's collection. The Tent itself will be in the John Barrow Cottage Garden on sunday morning. 

A lot of this work has been a response to the times as much as to the initial idea behind the project..You may have heard us talking about this project on the BBC.earlier this week, or you may have been to our workshops at the cottage, or heard Dominic and Cathy Sullivan's stories on line or during a home ed session, or maybe you listen to our ghost story podcast.

While we have managed to get work out into schools and online throughout this difficult time , we are very pleased and grateful to be able to run these public domain events. The work has risen from community and locality, and needs to return to it. So, we are very keen to observe all the precautions expected of us by the market management..

We want to you to see our work in safety, so please wear facecoverings and maintain social distancing, as you would around any other indoor our outdoor market stall...and do some other shopping while your out and about in the market..be safe, and support our local traders.

Our thanks to our supporters, friends and colleagues. We hope you enjoy reading their comments and stories of the project.

This being 2020 we ask you to watch this space and Facebook for any updates. And please contact us with any questions.

The exhibitions were well attended given the way things are, and the book is beginning to make its way around. There is something good about public domain spaces, for one thing the barrier of the gallery door is not there, people approach as they would any other stallholder or occupier of a familiar space. Written comments and photographs are hard to come by but - despite the masks - conversation comes easier, arrives at a point sooner and ends without awkwardness, and there are pledges of more contributions to Ellie's lowdown stories collection. We are in the right place; the work is emerging into the community that engendered it and in the few precious public spaces that we can currently

share.

Outdoors, visitors and passers-by mix with neighbours who know us by now and watch from their gardens...other lean over the wall to read the tent and see the sunday papers and a coffee flask in there '...have you been camping all night?'.. For some we are part of a morning walk, they leave with postcards and a copy of the book and head off to allotments or in family bubbles We turn up on social media alongside views of storm clouds over the fells.

We will be sending the work into schools in the new year, and an equally popular and accessible community museum will host a further exhibition which we hope will be as much a celebration of our restored freedoms as of our work.