Oh we do like to be beside the seaside

We're delighted that we have just been appointed as Artist Consultants for the Jaywick Parklands Project on the Essex coast.
The brief includes revisioning some 55 acres of land around the seaside town and also redesigning some smaller areas more immediately. We'll be working alongside the Council's landscape architect and also with the local school to inform plans.
The project has already been rather controversial locally - but Somewhere's never scared!

Posted Wednesday 13th May, 2009 at 8:40 am by Karen

Can be sown NOW!

As mentioned in previous postings we will be beginning our project What Will The Harvest Be? on site at Abbey Gardens in May 2009, with the realisation of our plans for the Harvest Garden. Although I know lots of people will get involved with the project it's hard not to panic about the mass-germination of seedlings needed to fill such a large space, especially when my studio is already full of seedling trays and lots of boxes of seeds with PLANT NOW written on the top. We have 800 meters of raised beds to fill and make amazing by the end of the season.

SO do get in touch if you're a Newham local & you'd like to be involved with this project, especially if you would like to bring on some seedlings for the project at home. We can post you some of our amazing selection of Chiltern Seeds!

Posted Tuesday 5th May, 2009 at 3:45 pm by Nina

Show down in Devon

My Exmoor National Dress is on show in May down in Devon in a brand spanking new art centre (for some reason this flyer doesn't have the address so here goes!)
Venue:
Duchy Square Centre for Creativity
Tavistock Road
Princetown
Devon
PL20 6QF

Telephone : 01822 890828
www.duchysquare.org

Preview of the show 'Triparks' is 6-8pm on Friday May 1st, then show runs till May 27th

Posted Thursday 23rd April, 2009 at 5:29 pm by Karen

Join us & Friends of Abbey Gardens, Sunday April 26th

You're warmly invited to Abbey Gardens to find out about getting involved in our 'What Will the Harvest Be?" project - an open-access garden in East London.
Somewhere & FOAG (Friends of Abbey Gardens) will meet at the gardens (Baker's Row, London E15) on Sunday 26 April from 11.30am. Joining the FOAG is free, all welcome.
Seeds sponsored by Chiltern Seeds will be distributed free at the event, with help and advice on sowing these for planting in the garden next month. There will be refreshments on hand too!

Posted Tuesday 21st April, 2009 at 11:59 am by Karen

Somewhere spring events

What Will The Harvest Be?

Spring waits for no commissioning process and just in the nick of time it seems that all the pieces of the laborious Abbey Gardens funding and permissions process are slipping into place. SO we are delighted to announce two up and coming events for those who would like to visit the site (before it all changes) and find out more about becoming involved:

Meet the artists: Join the artists and Friends of Abbey Gardens on site.
We will be at Abbey Gardens from 11.30 to 13.00 on Sunday April 5th. We'll have the site plans with us and free seeds to give away to anyone keen to start growing plants for the Harvest Garden - instructions given for gardening newbies!

You are also welcome to join us on the ‘Three Mills Loop’ walk (led by Gordon Joly) which immediately follows the meeting and will take walkers across the Olympic site ending at Three Mills.

Friends of Abbey Gardens Meeting: FOAG will be meeting at the site on Sunday April 26th at 11.30 am, this meeting will provide a progress update for members and a chance to sign up for activities at the garden over the next few months. New members are welcome. Free seeds available.

Posted Monday 30th March, 2009 at 6:31 pm by Nina

I think they said yes - green light for What will the Harvest Be?

Finally, some news on our Abbey Gardens public art commission.
At a meeting last week in opulent Stratford Town Hall, Newham Council, us and Friends of Abbey Gardens took a collective deep breath and decided to go for the Harvest Garden we'd proposed - in time to grow fruit and veg there this summer!

Posted Monday 16th March, 2009 at 11:39 am by Karen

Guerrilla Seeds

As mentioned on the project blog progress with What Will The Harvest Be? is proving VERY slow at present, so l really enjoyed catching Richard Reynold's talk at Broadway Bookshop this week. Seeing the very immediate and fresh efforts of other gardeners who are in contact with him from around the globe was quite uplifting.

If all else fails with Abbey Gardens perhaps the residents should just adopt the Guerrilla approach and get on with it!

In return for the free sun flower seeds he gave us (which personally I've never been keen on but I can see they are ideal for this type of gardening) I just emailed a link to the Plaistow Landgrabbers (who inspired our project) and of course offered some of our own wild flower seeds gathered last summer.

His book,website and seed packets all look great so you won't be surprised to hear that his 'day job' is in advertising!

Posted Friday 27th February, 2009 at 2:32 pm by Nina

Living with the Tooooodursss

Nearly a year since my relentless promotion of the film at Austin's SXSW Festival, Living with the Tudors is finally out on DVD stateside c/o Indiepix!
See here for more:
http://www.indiepixfilms.com/film/3643
Please buy it, you lovely Americans!

Posted Tuesday 10th February, 2009 at 1:40 pm by Karen

Preview of films made with H.M.P Preston

At long last the series of short films I made whilst on residency at HMP Preston last summer are going to be shown - on the outside at least!
The Preview of a show of different works by offenders working with artists and writers
"The view from my house"
is on
Thursday 5th March from 6pm - 7.30pm
Preston Harris Library
Market Square, Preston PR1 2PP

RSVP catherine.sadler@litfest.org

Posted Tuesday 10th February, 2009 at 10:11 am by Karen

Chicago & my lost tape eureka moment

I've been a bit slow getting into the Somewhere New Year so this posting is coming a bit late BUT we're excited to say that Living with the Tudors is enjoying two special screenings at the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago.

For more info on the actual screenings go to the Gene Siskel Film Center web site and click on the "Stranger than Fiction" section. The dates are:

Sunday, January 11, 5:30 pm
Wednesday, January 14, 6:00 pm

Also, fingers crossed, I hope the production of the US Tudors DVD is now finally underway after what feels like months of trying to sort out the lost master tape of the all important extras, which somehow disappeared when the UK version was made. The whereabouts of the original still remains a mystery (lost somewhere in a vortex between 24-7 & Soda pictures) but just at the point I had almost resigned myself to re-editing 40 minutes of material from about 40 different tapes in all different formats I experienced one of those "I'll just have one last check in this unlikely looking shoe box" moments and found a safety master the wonderful Matt Jones from Illumina must have made for us. He too had felt my lost tape pain over the last few months when searching the not insignificant archive of our work held in storage at Illumina! Anyway, it will hopefully now all end well, with a lovely new NTSC set of shiny DVDs assuming the new master arrives safely with Indiepix in the US ... now where did I put that UPS tracking information ...

Posted Wednesday 14th January, 2009 at 2:04 pm by Nina