Sunday. We were up early and at Vindolanda meeting Barbara Birley before it the site opened to the public. In the Education Room we installed the Vindolanda door sculpture which looked fabulous! Here we had recycled the Vindolanda office shredded waste, recycled it into postcards and then used these to write about life today as modern Frontier Voices. There are some super examples - go and see them! These become ‘stones’ in our gatehouse wall. Gatehouses allowed communication through the Wall and here we are using it as a metaphor to capture today’s Frontier Voices communicating their ideas inspired by the Roman Wall. This will be up until 23rd November and then it moves to the Sill for the final exhibition.
Then there was time for a quick catch-up with Barbara before I was off to the Sill Discovery Centre for the rest of the day.
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Friday. Back at Tullie House for the final day, or so I thought! Unfortunately the Tullie sewing machine hadn’t sewn the fabric to make the Wall background and the iron had problems with the dye sticks, so it was 2 steps back before we began. The team pulled together and we had a fantastic day! Perceptive postcards were written on the remaining ones from the Vindolanda recycling project, designs were embossed onto metal foil and assembled and we spent part of the day ironing - not something I particularly enjoy! By the end of the day we had the background fabric attached to the armature mesh and a box full of fantastic designs and words ready for assembly. We hope to have this up in the gallery by the end of 4th November and photographed ready to recreate this at the final exhibition at the Sill. Thank you so much Tullie Art Group - good work!
Exciting afternoon meeting with Park Matillo in Leiden. We were finalising the programme for their visit next week. They are going to explore Hadrian’s Wall and visit Frontier Voices artworks. We will spend time at Birdoswald, where I will share poetry from our workshops and they will make votive plaques using metal embossing techniques. I am look forward to finding out how they use art in their heritage, learning and engagement projects.
On Saturday it rained first thing, but Corbridge Roman Town looked fantastic in the warm sunshine. Frances and I talked to the visitors before the Scouts arrived and then we were involved in non-stop artefact handling and explanations. Unfortunately during this one of the Scout leaders was sent an SOS as the wind had demolished their 6 event shelters back at the camp. When I arrived sometime later they were working out how many they could put up because of damage. So 6 shelters were reduced to 4 and this was a real squeeze for everyone in the face-pot workshop. The rain began and it stated to get dark in the shelter (and the wind was cold)…….but Scouts are hardy and in spite of everything they still made good face-pots! A few of these will go on show at Corbridge museum and a then there will be a big display at the Sill in December. Once the exhibitions are over, the pots will be auctioned off to raise funds for the International Camp next summer - so the project is helping young people as well - I like that! Something else extra we are now achieving with this project. Friday was a tough day! I had to prepare for Saturday where we were running workshops for 60 young people throughout the day, so it is like running 2 workshop at the same time throughout the day! This required really good organisation and so I prepared for a session in Corbridge Museum with Dr Frances McIntosh where we inspired everyone with Roman face-pots in different sizes and designs. I also made a sample pot, weighing the wool, and then wrote step-by-step instructions. I then weighed out the wool into 60 separate bags - one for each person, to speed things up the next day. The camp consisted of older Scouts, Explorer Scouts and their leaders, who are going to Iceland next year. They came from all over the North East - Hexham, Whitley Bay, Morpeth, Newcastle and further afield and it was a great opportunity to involve young men and women from a wide area in our project - every one a modern Frontier Voice here at Hadrian’s Wall.
On Thursday it was off to Bavaria, on Zoom, to meet up with one of the German groups and review their giant poster design which is 6 metres by 2 metres and aims to make their town think about living on a former Roman frontier by posing questions to the people who live in Altmannstein area and the Upper Germanic - Raetian Limes. This project has been masterminded by local residents and the mayor and making something like this is a new way of sharing their heritage. I heard that this project had been discussed with their heritage minister as a great way of working and the first time they have worked transnationally in this way - great news!
The Haltwhistle Youth Club (Young and Sweet) worked so well with me and we completed the big artwork for the Roman Army Museum using the recycled materials that had been cut into mosaics, quickly and efficiently. I then shared metal embossing techniques with some of the group who enjoyed making the raised and engraved patterns on leaves for the installation I will be making at the Sill for the final exhibition.
We had a super meeting with the NIGRVM PVLLVM group in the Netherlands. Representatives of the group are coming to Hadrian’s Wall to deliver the Roman-inspired boat they have made for Frontier Voices and to attend our official opening. In the true spirit of the project they want to visit other Wall venues and meet up with participants and facilitators - excellent! They are also bringing someone who is making a film about it all. I am really looking forward to meeting our overseas collaborators.
here to edit. Clare and I had a very productive session at Haltwhistle Youth Club (Young and Sweet). We completed 2/5ths of the artwork in the first session, which was fantastic!
Beforehand I had sketched out a rough design onto black foamcore board. The artwork will be 5 x A1 boards portrait hung together. Discussion with the young people and Roman Army Museum suggested that mosaics were appropriate and I felt it was important to include some Roman ‘bling’! The other challenge was making the timescale, size of artwork and unknown art skills so we could create something that everyone had been part of and would look amazing. The design developed into using Cocceus Regulus’ name - he was a centurion responsible for overseeing this part of the Wall - and interpretation of the standard for Legio IX who were here at some point and both feature in the RAM exhibition giving us evidence of previous Frontier Voices. Then we will create an interpretation of the geophysical survey ( a different kind of Frontier Voice?) showing what is hidden under the ground beside the Roman Army Museum, Magna Fort on the other three boards, giving lots of scope for people to work simultaneously as the Wednesday numbers are large! Today’s Frontier Voices, the Youth Club, learned on their visit that because of the land drying out the buildings are now starting to appear as lumps and bumps on the ground, so we are showing them on our artwork as mosaics made of recycled objects (plastics, fabric, offcuts from other FV projects etc) because of the importance of looking after the planet to reduce climate change - important not only to today’s young people but also to prevent the loss of their heritage. The youth leaders and Anneke also cut out lots of recycled ‘mosaics’ ready for use next time - margarine tubs were a particular challenge! it is interesting how many of the young people were asking about the proposed dig so I think Anneke will be have some keen volunteers to go to Magna next year if the dig goes ahead! Evidence that projects like this get people talking and generating interest. Some people also made embossed metal leaves for the installation at the Sill in December and they loved the way you could create patterns on the metal. I am looking forward to being back with them all on Wednesday to complete the artwork! A really blustery day awaited us in Maryport at Senhouse Roman Museum and you could see why this was such a good spot to watch ship movements up and down the Solway - all part of the Roman Frontier defences. Girls and leaders came from Dearham Rainbows and from Maryport Rainbows, Brownies and Guides. They had already had some preparatory information for their unit meetings beforehand. They were expectant, enthusiastic and ready for a great day!
I shared my Frontier Voices presentation so everyone could see all the other projects and there was talk about some of the participants coming to the Sill in December to see the exhibition. I have promised some invitations to the opening! Jane Laskey ,the manager, had organised for us to visit the fort beside the museum and we walked the perimeter walls (they had seen lots of other forts in my presentation, so recognised the wall and gate bumps in the ground and the watchtower corners, which was excellent!). After lunch Jane gave a tour of the museum with particular emphasis on altars, preparing us to build our own in the gallery. Beforehand I had agreed a size and geometry with Jane. I brought an armature partially erected, and the Guides finished the job - many hands make light work! I had made a sleeve of hessian, sized for the armature and the Rainbows had fun working with Clare to close the back with cable ties. Then it was down to today’s Frontier Voices deciding what they wanted to include. We had four groups each designing a side and liaising with their opposite side so the designs worked together but were not the same. The front and back have elements of Roman altar design and throughout the patterns were chosen by the girls from museum exhibits. Everyone wrote their names up one side (signing the work) and as GirlGuiding is important to them a number of badges were chosen, along with vintage buttons and other decorative items to create the side designs. The Guides designed the top of the altar with some really good design and pattern work. The first line of the Promise was included on the altar as this used by all Guiding groups young and old. These Frontier Voices try to live by their promise and make the wold a better place! |
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