Banner photograph by Pamela Wells, somewhere near Skaggerak
This site is a snapshot of what I’m up to - projects, stories, cartoons, art stuff… You can contact me at: brendanjack@gmail.com or read one hundred and thirty six words about me in Biographia. This web site is due an overhaul in early 2010…

April 7th and 8th, 2010
The Drum, Birmingham, UK

Further information and booking: www.the-drum.org.uk/event/interchat

Featuring Airan Berg, Linz 2009 European Capital of Culture (Austria); François Matarasso (UK); Fundacja Pogranicze (Poland); Laundry (UK); Nova Kultura (Bulgaria).

Wednesday 7th April, 2pm - 8pm
Artist-led sessions to explore good practice in community engagement projects, with local and international examples from Birmingham, Bulgaria, Crete and Poland, aimed at artists and practitioners wishing to develop their community practice with an international perspective.

Thursday 8th April, 10am – 4pm
A dialogue with Airan Berg and François Matarasso, exploring European approaches to artistic practices that invite social engagement, followed by case studies and interactive sessions led by Birmingham arts organisations. This day will be of interest to artists and agencies addressing cross-cutting agendas through the arts.

The trans-pennine express left Leeds on time, despite the ice and fog
and utter and complete disruption in the whole of the country. Just the foreboding of snow, you understand. BIG FREEZE ON THE WAY! announced news placards outside the station.

They drank coffee and stared intently at their i-phones. At first, for what seemed an eternity, reception was not good, lost in the tunnels through the granite hillsides outside the city. The train soon passed Dewsbury, where most people departed, and then Huddersfield, which had a station façade once called the most splendid in all of England.

Outside, the sky a gun-metal grey, the sleet spitting down, dirty cream coloured stone houses along the valleys emerging from the mist then disappearing again, and tall windows of the old mill factories still lit with electric light, though who knows what they contain these days.

I can access the wi-fi now, she said finally. She let out a long sigh of relief.

Mine’s still struggling, he said.

Cape Town, 21 degrees, Adelaide, 18 degrees. Singapore, 28 degrees. She reeled them off. Each destination, a shake of his head, eyes down, fixed on his screen. Moscow, minus 21. I don’t think we’ll be going there.

He asked, How about Hong Kong?

I haven’t got Hong Kong, love. Only Singapore. It’s coming up random. Brunei’s 29 degrees. Borneo’s near enough isn’t it? And Bangkok’s 33 degrees. Shanghai, only 7 degrees there. Rio De Janiero, 30 degrees.

Wrong side of the world, he said. He shook his phone, as if that would
cure it.

Singapore would be nice, don’t you think? It’s supposed to be very clean. And it’s an island, like Hong Kong.

Ah, he said. At bloody last! Now I’ve got Singapore. Friday 28 degrees, Saturday 27, Sunday 28. Scattered thunderstorms.

They were not young and perhaps had generous pensions. They both wore the same brand of pristine white trainers with a gold logo. They explored meteorologic conditions around the world together, as the train slowed on its approach to Manchester Piccadilly, steady at 2 degrees, passing avenues of red and orange shipping containers, stacked high, and no doubt bound for similar destinations, weather conditions permitting.

Creative Laboratory participants photographed on top of Mount Vodno, which overlooks the city of Skopje, Macedonia. Skopje, home to nearly half of the country’s population, was the location for an artist residency in association with cultural centre CK, as part of the Intercultural Dialogue project. Some photo galleries posted here…

Once upon a time, I co-ordinated a series of projects for a community arts organisation called Jubilee Arts, under the banner of ‘The People’s Portrait of Sandwell’. This was a series of exhibitions made with local participants – using photography and text – which challenged many of the prevalent negative stereotypes of the Black Country. One exhibition was called ‘The Golden Mile’, made by young people interested in learning photographic skills – it documented lives along length of West Bromwich high street, which at one point was the longest high street in the country, once prosperous but now, in the late 80’s, much fallen into disappear, partly pedestrianised, severed in two by an inner ring road and a nondescript 70’s indoor shopping mall. The exhibition was first shown in a specially customised ground floor of a former shop on the southern end of the high street. Many years later, when Los Angeles based artist Kim Abeles visited West Bromwich (how we came to meet is too long a story), she was inspired to make a photographic piece about the high street. The final piece consists of two panoramic photographs (over 120 feet long) of each side of the High Street – taken over a period of years, in rain and sun, in different seasons, with remarkable detail composited from some 1500 digital images. The prints have been made in a limited edition of 10, with one set due for exhibition of her work in Bejiing. The panoramas are currently on show at The Public in September and October. You’ll find an online interview with Kim Abeles here at studio-online.com

There are cafes and there then there are caffs. Caffs from memory, by the old Bull Ring underpasses and the coach station, where various members of  Dexy’s Midnight Runners would hang out, or The Hawks, or TV Eye, or The Prefects or any number of groups  with punkish attitudes, sitting glumly on a cold summers day, nursing  large chipped mugs of builders tea, a brown tea almost thick as hot chocolate. Everything was a shade of beige, or grey or a dirty industrial grime.  There are still some of these places left, which pre-date the invention of the cappuccino.

But now, we wander around Stara Ochota, and come across a new favourite cafe, near to the Filtry waterworks. In the shade, a near perfect place as you can find to plan a creative laboratory for Macedonia in September. The plans take shape, the delicious pastries are consumed…

New postings on the Intercultural Dialogue project in the July News section of the project web site.

Image: Stephen Duffy in one of those caffs near the old Bull Ring….