Appendix 3

The Arts Council Grant for the Arts application, budget and evaluation report.

The Grant for the Arts application

If you’ve not seen one of these before, it might read a little strangely. Each paragraph is addressing a question or a point in the How To Apply notes and it doesn’t lend itself to beautiful flowing text. It’s actually a little frustrating, being given the illusion of a 2,000 word space when what they really want is a series of short answers. The language is also odd in places, especially for me, making assertions and statements that while accurate and truthful I wouldn’t be comfortable with in conversation. But it is what it is.

Finally, while it’s very definite and confident, you’ll notice the specifics don’t bear much relation to what actually happens. Given the whole process was about research and development it’s hopefully not unreasonable for everything to change. That said, at time of writing I haven’t submitted the final report to the Arts Council yet…

There are five headings: You and your work, How the public engage with your work, Making it happen, Finance, Evaluation.

You and your work

I plan to develop a programme of photographic events in Birmingham and a platform for future work.

The programme will consist of four participatory events leading groups on photographic explorations of the Digbeth district of Birmingham, which I have been photographing since 2006. While these will likely evolve – following research into street photography, walking tour guides, city planning, architecture, urban exploration, flaneurism and history – I have devised four initial frameworks:

1. The Tour Guide As Filter. What does it mean to be a guide? How does a guide inform perception of the city through route and narration? How can this be distributed among participants? What can we learn from storytelling, collaborative and didactic? How can the tensions between the guide and the guided be explored?
2. Expanding The Treasure Hunt. Can the hackneyed model of participants photographing a list of subjects be made fresh? How can exploration be narrated and guided through making connections, building new maps and creating new realities?
3. Photo Manipulation Through Sense. Can photographs be “manipulated” by altering other senses? Using audio triggered in specific locations, participants experience different sounds to explore how this affects their visual perception.
4. Storytelling. Participants are encouraged to build their own narrative of the area through ten photographs. Workshopped after the walk and exhibited online.

Documentation of the work will be online, accessible through desktop, mobile and ebook platforms.

I have been practising as an artist for nearly a decade with no formal training. I studied philosophy at Birmingham University in the 1990s. My creative background is in fanzines, DIY media, blogging and photography, which I currently document on art-pete.com. In 2007 I started the award-winning Created in Birmingham weblog, putting connecting with artists and arts organisations in the city. I’ve built professional relationships with a number of these as a digital/social media consultant, developing strategies for engagement to increase both virtual audiences and venue footfall. See attached CV.

In January 2012 I started Photo School with Matt Murtagh, running photography classes and events which combine technical skills and artistic development.

This ACE funded phase will allow me to develop my practice at a pivotal time in my career, developing four new participatory artworks which interrogate photography as a participatory experience in ways I’ve been unable to explore due to work commitments. The phase will also enable me to consolidate my practice online with a view to increasing my artistic profile and securing opportunities to create new work. Curator Karen Newman has agreed to mentor me throughout this process, offering production and curatorial advice and expertise.

I continue to maintain an interest in digital tools and online engagement and am developing a database-driven Birmingham Art Map smartphone app with digital agency Substrakt utilising their Nymbol CMS. The research undertaken for this project will contribute to my thinking and research in relation to this application, exploring digital mediation and photography.

Activity aims:

1. Develop and deliver four new artist-led participatory walks, exploring walking tours, street photography, flaneurism and urban exploration.
2. Research, including discussions with peers, historians, academics, practitioners and others, and document in an interactive blog.
3. Produce a simple PDF “exhibition” to be viewed on smartphones when exploring the area.
4. Produce documentation of process and results distributed via ebook.
5. Consolidate my work on art-pete.com.
6. Lay foundations for new collaborations with arts organisations.

My interest in photography as a collaborative artistic medium began when I founded the Birmingham Flickrmeets community in 2006. The artistic and educational phenomena of many eyes seeing the same thing has always informed my photographic practice.

I have developed an interest in place and identity through blogging about Birmingham since 2006. Taking cues from network structures of services like Twitter I have become fascinated with applying these models to urban communities.

I have been running walks in Digbeth through Photo School for over a year. Initially a low-cost sampler, they’ve hinted at a hybrid of photography workshop, walking tour, flaneurism and performance.

I feel close to unifying my interests in image-making and location with the public’s desire to document photographically their city and I am keen to move beyond the a simple photo walk.

My participatory activities will enable people to engage with their environment in new ways through photography. Technical skills and aesthetic appreciation are developed and social connections made during and after the events.

My personal development will make me a valuable resource for arts organisations. I’ve recently been approached by Birmingham Architecture Festival and Ikon Gallery to adapt my photo walks to their needs.

I consistently share my ideas and process online as an essential part of my process. Everything produced will be available in digital formats and open for feedback.

How the public engage with your work

My photography teaching, through search engine placement, reaches a gender and ethnically diverse group with ages ranging from 15 to 70. Many do not consider themselves to be engaging in “art”. This as my base audience.

Engagement will occur in a number of ways:

• The walking events themselves, each involving 10-20 people.
• Online documentation across various platforms including:

1. Project-specific section of art-pete.com website.
2. Blog with comments.
3. Flickr/YouTube for photos and video.
4. Twitter/Facebook sharing and conversation.
5. PDF/ebook.

• Formal engagement with peers through FierceFWD artist development programme (application pending) and related programmes if applicable.

On basic photo walks, participants develop their technical photographic skills, aesthetic appreciation, a deeper awareness and understanding of their city, and gain social connections. I expect these to continue with the new works with the following additional factors:

1. The experience of being involved with a live artwork.
2. If the work has a post-walk section, the experience of co-creating a larger work.
3. Meeting and interacting with historians, artists and local figures.
4. Exploring how senses other than vision can be used to explore locations; developing awareness of sound, smell, etc.

Marketing engagement will increase. Over the past year marketing has been solely through search engines and word of mouth, supported by a strong web and social media presence for myself and Photo School. I will now add a fresh strand developed through online documentation, a Google Adwords campaign and flyers/posters around Birmingham.

I see the work as building a solid foundation for my work. Future engagement in 2014 and beyond might include: more events consolidating successes and exploring new methods; adoption of works by arts organisations and festivals; developing events in other cities; and the development of a sustainable smartphone app with a local digital agency. My documentation will remain online and will spread through the usual channels to interested parties in a variety of fields.

Local press will be informed of public events and I will use my connections with arts organisations to join their mailings. If opportunities with arts organisations emerge, I will explore synergies. For example, a photography class on Birmingham myths tying in with Ikon’s Shimabuku exhibition in August has been proposed by Head of Learning Simon Taylor.

Making it happen

I have scoped out my areas of interest and research resources. My reading list includes:

• The Tour Guide - Jonathan R Wynn 0226919064
• The Practice Of Everyday Life - Michel de Certeau 0520236998
• Hidden Cities - Moses Gates 9781585429349
• London Walking - Simon Pope 1841660566
• BLDGBLOG - Geoff Manaugh 9780811866446

I have identified the following people to approach about my research:

• Ben Waddington - Historian, walking artist and director of Still Walking festival.
• Rob Horrocks - Curator of Crossroads of Sabbath tour and researcher at BCU Centre for Media and Cultural Research.
• Joe Holyoak - Architect with an interest in Digbeth.
• Nikki Pugh - Artist whose project Uncertain Eastside was inspirational.
• Sam Underwood - Sound artist.
• Hamish Fulton - Artist whose Group Walk was inspirational.
• Pete James - Head of Photography, Birmingham Library.
• John Tighe - Landlord of Spotted Dog pub in Digbeth and local activist.

I am also taking regular guidance from my mentor, curator Karen Newman.

I plan to visit major UK cities on at least six occasions to research work done by formal institutions and at grass-roots.

A research trip to Ars Electronica Festival in Linz in September will enable me to consider how my work fits within the international digital arts context, and be an inspiring experience from which to develop future projects.

My schedule, assuming application approved early July:

• July-August: Research period. Reading; visiting cities; meeting artists, tour guides, urban explorers. Research recorded on project blog enabling peers and interested people to contribute. I am highly conversant with using digital tools in this manner.
• September: Deliver programme of events. Sales processed using established Photo School systems.
• October: Analysis of findings; delivery of final documentation. PDF prepared with Apple Pages, ebook with Leanpub.com. Verbal presentation to art community at Fierce FWD sharing event.
• November: Personal Review. Archive prior work in context of project and establish process for documenting future work on art-pete.com website. I have built countless websites to the standard needed; work will mostly be on copy and hierarchy.
• November: Close and evaluation to enable a smooth transition to new work in 2014.

Past experience:

Since January 2012 I have run 13 walks and 27 classes through Photo School involving approximately 150 people. I have tools in place to manage, promote and collect feedback from all activities.

I have been blogging since 2000 and was an early adopter of Flickr, Twitter, Facebook and other services. I am skilled in publicly documenting my work and consider working in an interactive, social, open environment essential to my process. I have experimented widely with digital publishing tools and formats from mapping to ebooks, and consult professionally on these matters.

I have been registered self-employed since 2005 and am competent at managing my personal and business finances.

Finance

Along with income from Photo School and digital consultancy I can spend at least one full day a week on this project at £200 per day and maintain my income. The budget provides me with 29 days of activity.

I estimate visiting other cities to witness photographic explorations undertaken there and attending appropriate events will cost £400 in travel and fees. Visiting Ars Electronica festival will cost £400 for travel, entrance and budget accommodation.

I have budgeted £200 for the purchase of research material. I own the technical equipment required (cameras,computers) except for a pocket video camera for video documentation at £150. Other expenses are detailed in this application.

I have raised at least 10% of my requested budget from other sources. Through ticket sales Photo School will pay me a minimum of £500 to run both research walks and the final works. A proposed workshop with Ikon will pay £200. I am also applying to be on the Fierce FWD development programme from the Fierce Festival, which gives a bursary of £250.

A goal of this activity is to consolidate my knowledge and develop my artistic practice. By consolidating my reputation in this area, along with a product I can sell in to organisations, I see my financial position strengthening through 2014.

I shall manage the budget as I manage Photo School’s accounts: depositing funds in a savings account and transferring artist fees and expenses to my current account monthly. Expenses will be budgeted and full accounts kept.

Evaluation

I’m keen that this project leads to greater things so it is important that lessons learned are recorded and evaluated in a manner to enable this. It’s also essential that my peers are able to access and use my experience for their own work. I see the evaluation process as a natural and important complement to the more informal blog.

Quantitative information will include:

• People at events.
• Downloads of ebooks/PDFs.
• Web analytics.
• Social media metrics.

Qualitative information will include:

• Questionnaires for participants.
• Photo/video documentation of events.
• Formal interviews with key participants.

The evaluation will by available on art-pete.com as part of project archive.

Huge thanks to Karen Newman, my mentor, for her help in writing this. While I did all the legwork she gave valuable feedback and advice on language and buttons to press while ensuring I kept on track.

The Grant for the Arts budget

Income

The Arts Council expects you to raise at least 10% of your budget from other sources. Where my anticipated sources fell through (the Fierce FWD program was postponed and Photo School didn’t bring in the expected revenue for the walks) I found new ones to the total of £808.00.

Expenditure

The expenses budget changed as the shape of the project changed. Any remaining monies were put towards the writing of this book.

The Grant for the Arts activity report and self-evaluation

It would not be an understatement to say this process has been life-changing. I was uncertain as to what it meant to be an “artist” and of my place in the creative community. I now have the confidence and resources to call myself an artist and have a coherent and sustainable plan for the future. The process was at times overwhelming and more fundamental than I anticipated and even a year later I am having trouble evaluating it coherently.

SUMMARY

I did the following:

• Researched and developed my photo walks
• Ran a Psychogeography Workshop
• Ran three new photography walks collaborating with sound artists
• Personal artistic development
• Consolidated artistic practice
• Wrote a book about Collective Photography

I worked with the following artists:

• Cathy Wade, A3 Project Space
• Annie Mahtani, SoundKitchen
• Iain Armstrong, SoundKitchen
• Sam Underwood, If Wet

I engaged with the following:

• Number of participants on the three walks: 32
• Participants at Psychogeography workshop: 5
• Followers on personal Twitter: 3,500 followers.
• Photo School Twitter: 400 followers
• Photo School newsletter: Nov 06, 2013; 418 recipients, 44% opened, 76 visited site.
• 19 registered downloads of the book so far.

Website stats during November 2013 (delivery time):

• art-pete.com: 1,165 unique pageviews
• photo-school.co.uk; 2,114 unique pageviews

My engagement reach on the walks was unsatisfactory. I failed to engage my usual audience through Photo School and resorted to getting friends / peers to come. I speculated this was because I marketed them as “Art” walks, to satisfy the requirements that people be aware they were engaging with an artwork, and didn’t fully understand how off-putting the term “Art” can be. This was an important lesson which I realised in retrospect I already knew from my photography teaching. People won’t pay to learn about, say, composition but when you sneak it in it’s the thing they enjoy the most.

The outcomes were:

• Development and delivery of participatory art events combining sound and photography.
• Increased knowledge of subjects relevant to my work.
• Documentation on art-pete.com and in an ebook.
• Presentation to peers at the Bees In A Tin event and Birmingham Loves Photographers talk.
• Visits to festivals in Linz (Ars Electronica), Belgrade (Resonate) and Manchester (Future Everything) as an artist to contextualise my work internationally.
• Developed artistic practice without commercial pressures.
• Emerged as a working artist in the region with a clear plan for the next few years.

The project lead directly to the following:

• Commission from Ikon and Still Walking as part of the Ikon Traces 50th anniversary programme.
• Development and delivery of new series of photo walks in Birmingham.
• Development and initial delivery of the Birmingham Camera Obscura project.
• New work based on the live sonification of images launching in October 2014.

There were three aims: to research the practice of participatory photography walks, to deliver a programme of photography walking events and to develop a platform for future artistic practice.

RESEARCH

I soon realised I had thrown myself in the deep end with the broad research topic of Art Walking. At the time I felt I had failed to achieve my research aims but on reflection I believe it would have been impossible in the time allowed. That said, being in the deep end has given me a deeper understanding of walking-as-art.

I did the following:

• Attended the Still Walking festival and talked to some of the artists leading walks.
• Acquired the Walk On exhibition catalogue and researched the exhibiting artists for an overview of Art Walking.
• Organised a Psychogeography workshop with Cathy Wade in Digbeth to explore the subject.
• Visited the Pervasive Media Studio in Bristol to talk with creative practitioners in this area.
• Ran an artist walk for the WeArtB38 community arts festival.
• Ran a workshop / photo walk for Ikon alongside their Hurvin Anderson exhibition.
• Regularly attended the monthly If Wet salon for sound artists and experimental musicians.

I read numerous books related to the exploration of place including:

• Psychogeography Pocket Essentials
• A Field Guide To Getting Lost
• London: City of Disappearances
• Scarp
• How Maps Change Things
• The Tour Guide
• The Practice of Everyday Life

Much of this has been documented on art-pete.com and in the eBook.

DELIVERY

Three walks were delivered in November 2013. I decided to collaborate with sound artists to force me to focus my attention and step of my comfort zone and ensure the walks were not like my “normal” walks. This would also develop my skills at collaboration. I chose to collaborate with Annie Mahtani and Iain Armstrong of SoundKitchen, a Birmingham-based artists collective, and Sam Underwood, a West Midlands sound artist and musician. All three are recognised in their field and a few years ahead of me in experience.

SoundKitchen had run a sound walk for the Still Walking festival which was similar in style to my photo walks while being completely different. I wanted to see if we could combine our approaches and media.

I ran two walks with SoundKitchen. The first was an Active Listening tour of key locations in Digbeth with interesting soundscapes. The participants were asked to tune in to the sounds around them and then, mindful of that, take photographs of their surroundings.

The second SoundKitchen walk involved participants listening to a pre-recorded soundtrack while walking a route led by me and taking photos to see if this soundtrack affected their photography in any way.

Sam Underwood co-runs the If Wet salon in Callow End and has an interest in field recordings and augmenting spaces with what he calls “sonic graffiti”. I had long admired his work and wanted to use his approach to augment my own. We focused on small details using contact microphones and stethoscopes to tune into the urban environment, following this up with close-up photographs of the detail in the streets.

Lessons learned:

A double act needs rehearsal. While the walks were well prepared and discussed beforehand they did not always run as smoothly as I would have liked. I should have taken a firmer lead and had a clearer idea of what I wanted the outcomes to be.

Combining the senses of sight and sound is a rich area for exploration which I have starting to bring into my other work. For example, I now run an “active listening” exercise during the Spaghetti Junction photo walk, asking people to imagine the traffic sounds are musical rhythms.

Aftermath:

I was accepted as a speaker at the Bees In A Tin event, a gathering of “people who make or are interested in unique interfaces for the world around them”. I used this as a chance to work through some questions with my peers and to share my findings. My talk was well received and created some new contacts and relationships.

As a sequel to the funded walks I developed a series of walks around the Queensway ring road in central Birmingham, exploring this liminal space where the city is disrupted by a dual carriageway. The walks were cancelled half way through due to lack of bookings and my sense that I wasn’t achieving my artistic aims.

I chaired a panel discussion at the Supersonic Festival for Birmingham Loves Photographers about “Collective Photography” at gigs and festivals, looking at the phenomenon of people taking photos from the audience with their phones, why they do it and whether it’s a problem. This brought together my various ideas about ubiquitous cameras including those developed about street and group photography during this period.

I was asked by the Ikon gallery and the Still Walking festival to run a guided walk as part of Ikon’s 50th anniversary celebrations. This involved visiting the four previous sites of Ikon, three of which no longer exist, and asking walkers to use copies of key artworks from Ikon’s history to “tune” their perception so they might take photographs in a new way. The walk marked the final shift from my being a photographer who dabbles in art to an artist who uses photography.

I was asked to give a talk to the Birmingham Loves Photographers group in September about Looking and Seeing and decided to use my findings about photo walks to talk about group photography. The BLP group was varied with a bias towards “traditional” photographers and was curious and receptive to my ideas while challenging them at times. The talk was followed by a brief dusk walk where we put some of my ideas into practice.

Having been disappointed by the Ars Electronica festival in Linz it was recommended that I go to the Resonate festival in Belgrade which I did under my own steam. This festival was more practitioner led involving visual artists at the cutting edge of computer-driven art, showcasing the technical possibilities and the aesthetic and political issues of those possibilities. The visit was both eye-opening and reassuring, allowing me to bed in many of the things I’d been thinking about over the past year. I also cemented relationships with the Coventry-based digital arts company Ludic Rooms who I travelled and stayed with.

Alongside the formal research and development of the walks I developed a sideline interest in the phenomenon of Selfies, which was getting interesting towards the end of 2013. I produced two films: Typologies of Hypernetworked Vernacular Self-Portraiture and Spectral Songs of the Slitscanned Selfies. Typologies was screened at the Flatpack Film Festival as part of the Magic Cinema strand while Spectral Songs formally started my next project, developing work around the sonification of photographs. This work would not have happened without the space and framework enabled by the funded period.

Throughout the funded period I have continued teaching beginners photography through Photo School. I have noticed my understand of the technical and aesthetic issues has deepened and developed a nuance which, critically, I am better able to communicate to my students. This has led to more satisfied customers and helped secure my financial stability.

I wrote and published a 10,000 word ebook - Collective Photography - about the whole process.

DEVELOPMENT

I have joked that since becoming “an artist” I have the closest thing to a coherent business model than at any time in the past 10 years of freelancing. I am now able to channel all of my skills and ideas, from digital publishing and teaching to theorising about the future of photography, into one coherent platform. Having this stability in focus allows me to develop my business alongside my artistic practice, not in competition with it, making for a more stable financial future.

While I am fairly well known on the Birmingham arts scenes it is mostly as a social media consultant. This process has helped me make the transition to working artist and to shift the relationships I have with local arts organisations in that direction. This has been most obvious in conversations I’ve been having related to the Birmingham Camera Obscura project in which I take the artistic lead.

Having worked from home for the past few years I have started making inroads into the Birmingham artistic community again. I have joined Vivid Project’s Black Hole Club and will be joining the BOM (Birmingham Open Media) community when it opens this Autumn. These will see me collaborating more and being physically based in the creative communities of the city.

The Birmingham Camera Obscura project has been in pre-development during 2014 and looks to be my main source of artistic and financial work for the next few years. Among many other things I’m able to apply lessons and experience from this funded process both as an artist and as a producer.

The Live Sonification of Photographs work is my personal artistic project for the next year, combining a wide range of interests in one artistic vision. This will be premiering at If Wet in October 2014 and will form the basic of applications for residencies in 2015.

Feedback from collaborating artists

SOUNDkitchen, collaborators on first and third walks:

SOUNDkitchen have been running soundwalks for some time and the opportunity to work with Pete Ashton on his photo walks offered an interesting new dimension. With the listening walk we attempted to readdress the sensory priority of a photographer by putting a strong emphasis on listening to the environment, potentially changing the visual perception of a place or situation. Discussions after the walk suggested that the photographers did indeed find themselves approaching the composition of the images in new ways. The soundtracked walk offered a chance to explore the subliminal effects of sound on the photographer. We found this approach to be very interesting although did feel we would need to run this a few times changing the parameters each time to really see the results! It was a great project to be involved in and working with Pete enabled us to take our practice in new directions and engage with a new audience. Pete was supportive of our ideas and concepts and did everything he could to facilitate our needs. It was a pleasure to be involved and we’ve found a new direction that we would like to continue working in.

Sam Underwood, collaborator on the second walk:

“Despite having prior experience of leading sound walks and lectures the visual bent of this walk caused me to have to think hard about how I might help to stimulate visual ideas through sound. I was given free reign by Pete and decided to focus on teasing out sounds, through the use of an array of microphones and deep listening. The group were attentive and engaged throughout, and I was pleased with the outcomes. Pete Ashton was on hand throughout on the day but allowed me to direct proceedings. Collaborating with Pete on this caused me pause for thought about “how sounds look”. This has continues to fascinate me.”

Cathy Wade of A3 Project Space, collaborator on the Psychogeography Workshop:

“The workshop bought a new audience to the A3 and gave an opportunity to fully engage and test questions about Psychogeography through live intervention with the environment. One of the elements of Psychogeography I am always keen to question is the enduring myth of the male flaneur who deciphers the environment for a wider audience. This was why I was specifically keen to address issues of Psychogeography with a diverse audience and encourage participation in this (as most of my conversations with this subject are with Fine Art Degree Students).

“These was an ambitious sense of ‘packing it’ in with the workshop, a talk an activity then a walk. Essentially the most engaging element of session was the activity, testing things out, being rather lost as to how to tackle the environment.

“The walk we did through rolling the dice took us down every street we did not want to walk down, it became comical as one turn had the overpowering smell of blood from the abattoir, yet, part way down the street we found a work by Newso that made revealed the secrets that you do not find with everyday walks, The dice somehow rolled us back, (here I’m sure you can enforce human will on dice). We also took images at the same point, throughout the walk, this was fascinating (the images were paired together later) as it showed how the unique experiences regularly captures through mobiles, are actually common and are shared, echoed and repeated again and again.

“What was needed at the end of the session was conversation and exchange, which we did. What we should look for in a future session is a direct activity, an opportunity to take this out into the world then to reflect on it. Essentially the academic framing of the subject was not needed in a short session, and may be better pitched as information that was available in another format or session.”