WHAT | FLOCK SOUTH WEST

Flock

South West

What we do

Flock South West can provide a variety of production services for organisations, artists, and communities. This ranges from individual art works and one off events to larger festivals, exhibitions, and programmes of work. We can deliver the whole project or offer consultation, advice or time in areas you need a bit more support.

Between our directors and associates we have the skills to support every aspect of developing and delivering arts projects, including: project management, curating, marketing, budget management, fundraising, interpretive writing, administration, technical support, documentation, logistics, community engagement, and evaluation.

You can explore Flock's current and past project, as well as the variety or projects that we’ve worked on before setting up Flock below.

DRUMROLL

2020/ 2021
Artists: LOW PROFILE
Production, partnership development marketing support.

DRUMROLL is a new audio artwork composed for 8 drums, distributed online on New Years Eve (31 Dec 2020) as a shared (but distant) listening event.

DRUMROLL takes a simple, recognisable musical flourish (a drumroll) as a starting point and extends and expands this to create an evocative, engaging, immersive listening experience.

DRUMROLL (2020) made in collaboration with Richard Sharp.

Production and Partneship Development support: Phil Rushworth, Lucy Stella Rollins,
Marketing: Tilly Craig and Molly Erin McArthy.

Image: DRUMROLL (2020) LOW PROFILE.
Photo credit: Dom Moore.

Image description: A close up photo of an orange snare drum on a stand in front of an out of focus image of the sea crashing against rocks. Two drumsticks rest on top of the drum.

Speedwell

2020
Artists: Still/Moving
Public Engagement Production and Marketing.

A site-specific installation, Speedwell uses the simple language of illuminated signage to oppose the historic idea that there ever was a 'New World'. It urgently asks us to imagine new ways of living, caring and dying well together on this damaged planet.

As the text changes slowly and silently in the vast space of Plymouth Sound it gives rise to complex questions. By using three words (NO, NEW, WORLDS) it invites viewers to ask complex questions about themselves, the damaged planet and the legacy of the pivotal journeys made by the Mayflower and its companion ship, Speedwell

Public Engagement Production: Lucy Stella Rollins, Phil Rushworth
Marketing: Tilly Craig
Additional Consultation: Rachel Dobbs

Image: Speedwell at Mount Batten Breakwater, 2020, Still/Moving
Image courtesy of the artists.

Image description: The words 'No New Worlds' are spelt out in loghts, in capital letters across the breakwater, with water below and sky above. It is night and the water and sky are both dark blue. The letters cast a short reflection on the water.

Plymouth Art Weekender 2020

Client: Visual Arts Plymouth
Coordinators and Community Engagement Producers

Plymouth Art Weekender is a three day contemporary art festival that takes place throughout the city each September. Organised by Visual Arts Plymouth CIC, The Weekender showcases a wide and diverse range of free events and exhibitions by artists from near and far; from large scale exhibitions to interventions in public spaces and participatory events.

Growing year upon year, PAW has been made possible with generous support from sponsors, Plymouth City Council, partner art organisations in the city and project grant funding from Arts Council England.

Coordination: Lucy Stella Rollins, Phil Rushworth
Community Engagement Production: Rachel Dobbs, Beth Emily Richards, Leah Harris

Image: Lockdown Tarot, John Walter at KARST.
Photo Credit: Dom Moore

Image description: John Walter sits behond a round table in front of a black room. He is hearing a turquise cropped wig, a plastic face sheild and a short cleeved shirt covered in brightly coloured drawings. The table is covered in matching fabric and there is a small pump bottle of hand sanitiser on the table. John is fanning a set of orange tarot cards and looking directly at the camera.

In The Company of Insects

Fiona Benson 2020 Arts Commission
Client: Arts and Culture, University of Exeter

Continuing her 2019 ‘Urgency’ commission collaboration with Mair Bosworth, Fiona Benson, In the Company of Insects continues to explore the urgency inherent in an insect’s short lifespan, as well as the urgency of the environmental crisis and shrinking biodiversity.

In the Autumn and Winter of 2019 and 2020, Fiona led a range of poetry workshops with the public, including school children, families, students, poets and non-poets. She also continued her own research, talking to entomologists and other experts. The culmination of the commission is an online audio pamphlet of Fiona’ poems and a selection produced in the workshops, with sound pieces produced in collaboration with Mair Bosworth and Eliza Lomas

Cultural Producer: Phil Rushworth

Image: In the Company of Insects listening event at RAMM, Nov 2019.

Image description: Fiona Benson, a woman with long hair, is reading from a notebook on a stage with dim green and clue lighting, her face is illuminated. In front of her Mair Bosworth is sitting in front of a laptop at a table, her long hair covers her face. You can see a sound mixing programme on the laptop.

Creative Fellowships 2019-2020

Client: Arts and Culture at University of Exeter

Arts and Culture Creative Fellowships at the University of Exeter offer creative practitioners the opportunity to engage with innovative research across the University’s colleges and campuses. Rather than being a ‘residency’ where an artist produces work for a host that assumes the context of audience, these opportunities are described as placements, where the cultural practitioner is a peer, producing creative outputs that support and enrich the core activity of the host

The 2019/ 2020 placements were: Choreographer Lea Anderson with the Bill Douglas Cinema Museum, musician Domenico Vicinanza with the V-Simulator facility and Vibration Engineering/ Human Movement Science and artist Alex Julyan with the European Centre for Environmental Health and Health and Environment Public Engagement Group..

Cultural Producers - Phil Rushworth, Lucy Rollins, Hannah Jones

Image: Domenico Vicinanza and Dr Genevieve Williams, V-Simulator facility, University of Exeter

Image Description: The photo is of a room with bright blue walls with lots of power pounts and cables. There is a large grey metel panel inset into the wooden floor. Dr Genevieve Williams stands on the metel panel, wearing a black VR headset and a head to toe black outift with white dots along her limbs. her hair is tied up. The the right, and slightly behind her, Domenico Vicinanza, with short black hair and wearing a black jumper and black trousers, kneels floor, just on the edge of the platform, looking at various sound and computer equipment, including a sound recorder and digital sensor.

Plymouth Art Weekender 2019

Client: Visual Arts Plymouth
Coordinators and Community Engagement Producers

Plymouth Art Weekender is a three day contemporary art festival that takes place throughout the city each September. Organised by Visual Arts Plymouth CIC, The Weekender showcases a wide and diverse range of free events and exhibitions by artists from near and far; from large scale exhibitions to interventions in public spaces and participatory events.

Growing year upon year, PAW has been made possible with generous support from sponsors, Plymouth City Council, partner art organisations in the city and project grant funding from Arts Council England.

Coordination: Lucy Stella Rollins, Phil Rushworth, Rhys Morgan, Tim Mills Community Engagement production: Rachel Dobbs

Image: MAKE IT UP, Tabatha Andrews and Tim Bolton, Union Street.
Photo Credit: Dom Moore

Image description: The photo is a view of a white wall behond a pavement and road. On the wall hangs a line of six groups of large cut out shapes of different materials and colours (red, black, green and a light bare wood). Each group includes several cut out shapes, layered on top of each other, they vary in shape from square and angular to curved or a micture of both. Five out of focus people walk in front of the wall, on the pavement. Two of the people are walking next to each other.

Urgency Arts Commissions

2019, Fiona Benson, Catherin Cartwright, IJAD Dance
Client: Arts and Culture at University of Exeter

Flock worked with Arts and Culture at University of Exeter to produce three interdisciplinary arts commissions exploring the theme of Urgency:
Brave New World by Catherine Cartwright, used printmaking to explore the controversial use of automatic facial recognition technology and potential impact on public protest.
Future Proof Your Body 01 by choreographer Joumana Mourad (IJAD Dance) experimented with virtual reality to explore the science behind the way we move how this technology could help us unlock our bodies’ potential.
In the Company of Insects, a collaboration between poet Fiona Benson and Sound artist Mai Bosworth produced a series of sound works encouraging us to celebrate and empathise with insects.

Cultural Producer: Phil Rushworth

Image: Futureproof Your Body 01, IJAD Dancy, University of Exeter Nov 2019
Photo Credit: Steven Haywood

Image description: A photo of two female dancers, taken from the thigh upwards, in the middle of the photo. They are both wearing black outfits with large white spots, VR headsets and they are holding VR controllers. One dancer is at the front of the image, facing the camera and looking up. her right arm is stretched above her head and her left arm reaches out to her side. Behind her the second dancer faces away from the camera, looking towards the floor and with her arms kept low and bent loosely at the elbow. They are in front of a black background with lines of purple and blue lights fanning out from the centre.

Before forming Flock, and outside of thier work here, our directors and associates worked on projects across the South West both with arts organisations and directly with artists. These include gallery exhibitions, off-site projects, festivals, conferences and artist residencies. We’ve put together a selection of these below.