Award Holders' Reports

The format of Award Holders’ Reports has not previously been designed for inclusion in the website, but this will be part of the conditions of Awards in the future extracts. Extracts from Press releases at the time announcing previous Awards, are therefore given here

David Power's Executive Summary

Liam Robinson’s Executive Summary

Commissioning Award for theatre writing partnership

The St Hugh’s Foundation’s Commissioning Award for 2006, advertised earlier this year, has now been announced. Out of a strong shortlist of applicants from Lincolnshire and the Humber, the successful proposal came from a partnership of Lincolnshire County Council’s Community Services, the Theatre Writing Partnership, the University of Lincoln and arts centres and services in South Holland, Boston and North Kesteven.

The Foundation’s award of £13,000 will support the commissioning of a writer in residence at four Lincolnshire arts centres. The writer, to be selected, will run programmes of playwriting workshops for young people, so that each participant can produce an original play. There will be links to other services for people of all ages, including mentoring and script appraisal opportunities.

The Foundation’s Trustees were impressed by the strategic approach, joining up the existing county-wide work of arts providers and services, and building a new partnership with the Theatre Writing Partnership – a regional organisation with proven experience of developing script writing for the theatre as an artform. All the partners will be helping to finance this ambitious project.

They also hope to continue to support the work of the best young writers who emerge from the residency programme, creating later opportunities to commission work for performance or rehearsed readings at the four centres.

St Hugh's Fellowship

Painting the New Deans Eye, Alan Parker.

Dear Chairman and Committee

Below is the final report regarding my Fellowship Award for 2006. May I take this opportunity to thank you all again for the confidence you inspired in me to undertake and complete the work. The large painting is finished and up in the Cathedral, and a collection of 19 paintings and drawings that describe the men and women who worked on the Deans Eye, or who work ‘behind the scenes’ in the Cathedral.

I was delighted with the chairmans’ suggestion that I should donate this work – in part or in whole – to the Usher Gallery, who are just as delighted to accept it.

The very kind additional payment was very welcome, and I am happy to hand over all of the extra work so that it stays together as a body for the future.

I am particularly pleased with the three small paintings a la prima - especially the one of Paul Ellis, the master carver, at work with his mallet and chisel summoning-up a bear wrestling with a flautist from a huge stone block.

Final Report

The painting is complete, 10 months after I ordered the panel – a panel which I know some members of the committee were concerned about – and which has indeed caused me problems, although not in the way you may imagine, and of which more later!

Firstly though, the painting itself. I was very pleased that the committee saw to include a sort of reverse caveat that the picture need not be entirely in tempera. In fact the final image has on it tempera, oil paint, car spray paint, a bit of ink, some wax crayon and even a little biro in places, though you would be hard pushed to find it. The difficulty with the painting started when it was finished. When the whole image is complete, and all of the white, high-toned gesso is gone and the tonal values begin to be ‘true’, then the real business of sorting out the colour and tone really begin. This business – called ‘snagging’ in the building trade – is something indefinable. Titian, it was said, when taking over a painting that his production line of master painter, painters and apprentices had put before him for his final work is said to have proclaimed ‘…. fifty glazes are still not enough!’ I take it that he meant the subtleties required to make it right, and the fine tuning that comes from an instinct that develops over years, is a huge task in itself.

In my case, the real dilemma was about whether or not to have the people on the gantries that I had originally envisaged. I tried a roughly sketched-out workman, but they seemed in someway to intrude into the work, rather than add to it. Then, as luck would have it, a very good friend of mine reminded me of the Canaletto painting of Westminster bridge, in which the activity of the bustling river is indicated by a single swinging bucket under the arches.
On the basis that ‘good art borrows, great art steals’ I admit that I simply stole the idea and have a big black plastic bucket swinging beneath the Deans Eye on a bright orange nylon rope. It works perfectly, and my problems with populating the image dissolved immediately.
I had been thinking too about the time of day that the picture occupies. Many great paintings are very specific about time – such as Vermeers view of Delft after a rain shower where we know it was a spring afternoon, and indeed the clock on the church indicates exactly the time, and is – we are assured by experts – exactly the type of crazy sky and clear opalescent light that one would expect form a Dutch Springtime at dusk.

In my image I wanted to capture an exact feeling and I got that only towards the end of the painting. Almost exactly on cue the component parts of the picture came together as I walked into the Cathedral very early one May morning and saw the light streaming in directly behind the window. This is something that rarely happens – and must have given Cathedral-goers a real lift over the years as Summer comes in. The light was so bright as to obscure the grisaille work on the lower windows and too the architectural bosses above the glass on the Eye proper. The whole thing glowed through the scaffolding gantry and I knew that I had my ‘time’ for the finished work.

I set to making the window dissolve into light as it moved towards the top. The tightness of the image loosened, the infusion of white light increased and the architectural mouldings became less important. Indeed, some of the dogtooth arches are completely gone – sacrificed for the greater good of the painting. Sometimes it seems a shame to lose work that took weeks to make, but I believe that all of this underpainting points the way to the final result anyway, and without it there would be no thrill in the business of adding and subtracting in the painting. No painterly ‘tension’ that I hope makes the whole painting taut and worth looking at.

When I brought the painting down from my studio in the Triforium to the Cathedral nave the duty priest said ‘…when will it be finished?’. I told her that it was finished, and rather than feel cheesed-off I was actually rather pleased that it had the feeling of something being fizzled-out by light at is neared the top.

I certainly don’t think it looks unfinished – but it does have that (I feel) essential prerequisite that, for instance, all good landscape paintings should have, namely that there should be room in it; space for the observers’ eye to wander around and explore. Too much modern painting is so full – often with the ego of its maker – to allow the thing to achieve that symbiotic relationship with the viewer that accounts for a rewarding exchange. The writer Gore Vidal says “It’s not that there aren’t any great books anymore, but that there no great readers” I certainly don’t make claims of greatness for my picture, but I do feel that I’ve left enough room for You.

The moving of the picture and its reception of the Cathedral have been difficult. I am sorry to report that at a certain level there has been a wave of apathy regarding my tenure. Perhaps it is true in most walks of life, but it has definitely been the case that the people ‘on the ground’ have been my friends and advocates there.
On that basis I am pleased that the additional work celebrates these people. There are pictures of the stonemason team, the glaziers and the vergers.
When I was a student I was dumbstruck by an exhibition of drawings by Holbein of the characters in the Tudor court. Politicians, schemers, religious zealots –all exposed by the masters scalpel like pencil.

Commissioning Award

Hull Central Library

Awarded to Hull City Libraries for an innovative proposal that will use creative images as part of the new fabric of Hull Central Library.

The ground floor of the library has undergone major refurbishment, and in order to engage a wider sector of the community in the visual arts, library and arts staff intend to incorporate new photographic imagery into the functional interior design of the refurbished area, allowing library visitors and staff to use the artwork as a guide to locate sections within the library.

The imagery, which will be informed by interaction with the public, will be photographically based and transferred onto various materials and surfaces, starting in the entrance area and continuing through the ground floor to the children’s library, making use of columns and bookstands as well as wall spaces.

Michelle Alford, who has recently managed the City Library refurbishment programme, said “Although mainly functional, the work by artists Sarah Daniels and Ian Killen will be highly visual, and is expected to have a vibrant and invigorating impact on the public space.”

Fellowship

Sarah Daniels

Sarah Daniels is a photographer with extensive experience of working in community settings, with schools, hospitals and health services, and who has carried out collaborative projects with creative writers and poets, leading to innovative public art projects and teaching packs. She holds a degree in documentary communications, and an MA in fine art and critical theory.

The Fellowship will enable her to embark on research into ways of placing photographic images within the fabric of the living and built environment, incorporating photographs into the design and manufacturing processes, by establishing partnerships with architects, engineers and interior designers.

Dr Richard Hollinshead

Richard Hollinshead’s work as a sculptor has been widely exhibited in the region, in the UK and abroad, through group projects and solo exhibitions, and he has carried out overseas research projects including studying sculpture parks in the USA (for which he received a St Hugh’s travel award in 1999). He holds a degree in fine art and an MA in sculpture, and his PhD in 2000 was on sculptors and sculpture parks.

His current work involves practical research into contemporary understanding of nature and the impact of bio-engineering and genetics on our relationship with the natural world. The Fellowship will enable him to carry out a major sculpture project, provisionally entitled ‘winged rat’.

Henrietta Bowder Memorial Bursary

Kayla Dougan

Kayla Dougan has worked in San Francisco, Lincolnshire and Humberside as a performer, teacher, facilitator and community dance worker. She is currently a freelance dance worker, coordinating ‘Artsplay’ in Lincoln, and engaging with Converse Theatre on the Grounding Project in Lincolnshire. She holds a degree in dance and an MA in theatre and contemporary arts practice.

The Memorial Bursary will enable her to attend the Winter Melt dance festival at the Movement Research Centre in New York in January. The festival will provide an opportunity to work with some contemporary pioneers of improvisation, new dance technique, and choreography – experiences which she hopes to contribute to future dance development initiatives in the region.

Commissioning Award

20-21 Visual Arts Centre, Scunthorpe

At a time when many museums and galleries throughout the country are trying to attract teenage visitors into their venues, 20-21 visual arts centre in Scunthorpe already has a significant teenage audience from their successful first eighteen months programme. This new venture will give young people the opportunity to work in a creative partnership with professional artists, to devise and develop public works in different locations during the next two years.

The St Hugh’s Foundation’s new Commissioning Award programme was launched during 2002, to encourage organisations in either Lincolnshire or the former Humberside to commission new public work in any artform for performance or permanent location in the region. The aim is to support and promote the work of arts practitioners, and to make the arts accessible and available to the public by engaging communities in the process. The Foundation’s Trustees were impressed by 20-21’s early achievements in creating the visual arts centre from the former St John’s Church, and their determination to include teenagers in building and developing their programme of work.

Simultaneously with their successful bid to the Foundation for £14,000, North Lincolnshire Council has secured a grant from the Arts Council to appoint a part-time Arts Youth Worker, whose role will include involving local young people in the commissioning projects.

Fellowship

Carol Chambers

Awarded to Carol Chambers of Reepham, Lincolnshire, a music therapist who is developing the use of song as a form of self-expression for women with mental health needs.

Henrietta Bowder Memorial Bursary

Megan Kyte

Awarded to Megan Kyte of Lincoln, a signwriter, who also works with sandblasted glass, to study decorative Islamic arts and architecture in North Africa and Spain.

The St Hugh’s Celebration Commission

The Firebird Trust

The St Hugh’s Foundation, the charitable trust which supports innovative arts projects throughout Lincolnshire and the former county of Humberside, is celebrating ten years of grant-giving with a region-wide project which links the generations through music-making.

The Foundation has commissioned the Firebird Trust to design and manage a major music commission. This will involve five different composers working with five different communities in five different parts of the region. The theme of the commission is inter-generational work.

The project begins with a residency in June by Gloucestershire-based jazz composer and performer Pete Rosser who will spend a week at The Lindsey School & Community College working with students at the school, members of the Grimsby & Cleethorpes Youth Orchestra/Swing Band and with a group of older jazz musicians from Cleethorpes and Grimsby.

Other composers will include Jane Wells from Norfolk who will work with children and their parents from a village school in Lincolnshire, song-writer Sally Goldsmith from Sheffield who will work with a group of older local historians and young people in Gainsborough; internationally-known composer Duncan Chapman who will work in Beverley and playwright Peter Spafford and composer Hugh Nankivell who will work together with a group of people in Scunthorpe. The five pieces will be performed but will also form a CD which will be a legacy to what will be an exciting and innovative project - and a fitting tribute to the work of the Foundation which has played an important role in the lives of arts organisations and individual artists in Lincolnshire and the former Humberside over the past ten years.