Winner of the Deutsche Bank Award for Art at the Royal College of Art 2010.
We were very looked after and we even have a dedicated page for photos and a video of the results of our workshop on the Chisenhale website here. Thanks Chisenhale!
We were part of the excellent Leeds International Film Festival which is truly a gem in the festival circuit and lasts for three weeks every year as a public (not industry) festival meaning the screenings are as inclusive and economical as possible. We were part of Cherry Kino's programme which is curated and run by our friend Martha Jurksaitis who previously was part of EXP24 with Mark, Jo and Chris and were given an excellent gallery space all to ourselves at Gallery 42 next to local haunts, North Bar and Sela Bar.
We were also aided by a great write up before the workshop by Leeds' culture blog theculturevulture.co.uk which certainly helped us in being so well attended. Readers of the invaluable cops and robbers messageboard were also high in attendence. Thanks to Claire Circuit for all her help in this!!!
Straight on to Bradford where we were part of the Bradford Animation Festival at the National Media Museum. We were able to get a great curry at Mumtaz (where the Queen has eaten don't you know!) and set up in the museum. We were pleased to find we were to be situated in a highly visible space by the Cubby Broccoli Cinema which allowed for many passers by to be interested enough to take part and also that we were working with an old friend from Leeds, Rose Borthwick. This day was amazingly productive and we had to stick down an entirely roll of film because the participants had used so much.
We met great local people as well as those who made it down specifically for the animation festival and finished the workshop with a full screen projection in the Cubby Broccoli Cinema that was nearly full to capacity with an audience full of the film's makers.
After this brilliant workshop we were able to roam around the musuem where, asides from enacting the skydives and a fist fights with Teletubbies by using the blue screen interactive exhibits and got all excitable about retro-cameras in the Kodak Gallery, we pictured ourselves with a giant map of Britain to illustrate our efforts to go from John O'Groats to Land's End. Thanks Bradford - this was another great day.
Chris, Kelvin and Jo ran this workshop that was put on by local enthusiast Russell D Hunter who had previously attended an OKO workshop in Bradford at the Impressions Gallery in June. His enthusiasm was very encouraging for us and we met great locals, including Russell's kids who sat and drew on the film for a couple of hours in Verve bar.
We made more film than we expected and even had a suprise visit from Chris's parents who drove over from Rotherham especially. Russell was a great host and even joined us two days later at our date in Leeds - thanks Russ, it was a pleasure!
Asides from our two workshops there were screenings of new work by Altermodern exhibitor Marcus Coates, and Blight by one of Chris's favorite film makers John Smith. If you've never heard of John Smith then you are really missing out on his humorous and enetertaining but pointedly sophisticated films that engage the viewer through conventional documentary or narrative formats but subvert them into deeply sophisticated investigations into the nature of the relationship between the viewer and the viewed. One of his most celebrated works The Girl Chewing Gum is viewable as an extract here but is also available on the Cinema 16 DVD and an anthology of his work is soon to be released on DVD by LUX.
Our workshop was set in Falmouth Art Gallery which became instantly exciting as we realised we were to be holding the workshop in the main gallery space - surrounded by works and prints by Picasso, Hockney, Gavin Turk, Henry Moore, and Roy Lichtenstein. The collection is fantastic, as is the gallery's curator Brian Stewart, who regularly rotates the works in the space to the extent that, after taking a like to chris's postcard of his video piece The world at your feet (III) he asked if he could aquire it into the Falmouth Art Gallery Collection which Chris agreed and was displayed immediately!
The final film was great and we were even given popcorn by Brian who was infectiously enthusiastic throughout the day.
Lye was a New Zealand born artist who pioneered some of the very first hand painted film techniques and was even employed by the G.P.O Film Unit of the Post Office during the 1930's and '40's under the tenure of John Grierson who also commisioned amazing short films like Harry Watt and Basil Wright's Night Mail and the hilarious The Fairy of the Phone by William Coldstream.
For the workshop we were positioned right by the front entrance to the Eden Court where hundreds of school kids on their way to see an educational event about the opera taking place there was held. We also met Georgina Coburn who wrote a great article about us and the whole festival here.
We were able to get an extra date in during our time in Edinburgh thanks to our very good friend and exceptional host for the next two nights, Rachel McCrum who is working for Craft Scotland - a great organisation who work with designer/makers, galleries and retail outlets to support them in building and sustaining audiences. Rachel has been one of our biggest supporters since we won the Deutsche Bank Award and it was great to hang out with her in her new neighborhood in Edinburgh.
So, under Rachel's suggestion, we approached the Forest Cafe an organisation that incorporates much of Edinburgh's rich cultural activity with a great vegan and vegetarian cafe and offers workshops, film nights, a huge gig venue, and a social centre for anyone and everyone. It was very easy going and we met some very interested and intersting individuals throughout the afternoon followed by a big screening before the night's acoustic gig. The Forest is currently under threat and there is an appeal to try and buy the venue, collectively, so as to maintain its activity. For more information click here. 
