Outside Inn

We have named the exhibition Outside Inn as it ties in nicely with the location of a bar and obviously the outdoors theme we have been given. As part of our marketing James has set up a twitter account for the exhibition while I have set up a Facebook page.

Team Roles

Today we allocated team roles for each of us, as follows:

Marketing- Nathan (design), James (print), Sophie (promotion)
Health and Safety (Gill)
Intro, Plaques and feedback (Josh)
Scale Model of the venue (Simon)
Logo (Olly)
Catering (kirsty)

This should help us get the ball moving on our exhibition.

We have also discussed names for the exhibition, such as, Graphic Goose, Hatched or my personal favourite Vincent Van Goose.

Chosen.

We have chosen The Snow Goose as the venue for our exhibition for a number of reasons. Such as the opening times, it is a bar so it will be open late possibly meaning that more people will be able to come, also we would have flexible times to go into the venue and start setting up our exhibition. I think the main reason The Snow Goose was a popular choice for our group was the fact that we would be provided with a theme for our exhibition by the owner of the bar, which is 'Outdoors'. This is a great theme as it provides focus for us, but by no means limits us.

Decisions...

Although I had a positive meeting with Dave from The Art Yard, it will not be the venue for our exhibition. We decided this as a class, and it is because of the cost that we have decided not to use his gallery. I let him know by email:

Hi David,

Thanks again for the meeting the other day, We are very fond of The Art Yard and what it has to offer. However as a group we have chosen an alternate venue for our exhibition. But around May next year we will be looking to exhibit our Final Major Project. Myself, the team and Macclesfield College are keen to build a relationship with The Art Yard for the future.

Best wishes, 

Josh Jackson.

Although I was fond of The Art Yard and what it had to offer, it all came down to cost. We have now narrowed down to our final 3 choices for our exhibition venue, as follows; The Snow Goose, G-fine art and Cherry Blossom Bakery. I like all three as they each offer unique opportunities. But I think that the best choice would be The Snow Goose thanks to its size, as G-fine art and Cherry Blossom Bakery are quite limited in terms of space, and this could limit our final pieces.

Gallery Research : Macclesfield.

On thursday myself and the rest of the class went into Macclesfield town centre to have a look at some different gallery spaces, We wanted to get a broad scope of different spaces ranging from coffee shops to high end bars and restaurants. Walking round Macclesfield town centre I was definitely surprised at just how many places had gallery spaces, over all I got Pictures from 13 different potential gallery spaces plus a couple of others that I did not get a chance to photograph.

"TONIC"

"Tonic" was the first place to grab my attention as I thought it looked like a trendy bar that would possibly welcome the idea of exhibiting our work. Inside looked ideal, with plain walls and plenty of space for hanging our work.

"fresh"

"Fresh" is a club that looks quite nice from the outside, but the trouble is the fact it is a club, although we did not look inside we decided that a club would not be the best place for us to exhibit our work as any work on the walls could easily get knocked down and damaged.

"The Art Yard"

The Art Yard is a very cool little place which is located down a quirky little ally way that leads to a small cafe area and then a little 'bits and bobs' sort of shop. But it is the upstairs of this little cafe/shop that impressed me, there is a really nice gallery space which has plenty of room to hang up a few pieces of work each.

"Macclesfield Library" 

We first found out that Macclesfield Library had an exhibition on thanks to the numerous posters around the town centre, so we definitely thought it was worth a look. The work inside was of mixed quality and other parts of the gallery space were better presented than others, giving parts of the exhibition rushed looked. While the gallery space itself was very good, the size of it may cause an issue, it is a lot of space for just 8 people to exhibit work, the gallery was also booked out until April 2012 so this is not a viable option for us.

"Treacle Tap"

This is a very petit little bar in the centre of town but it is a place that I think bursts with character and quirkiness. Inside has very intimate feel and there is not much on display on the walls, apart from a few pieces of art which are for sale. I think this could potentially be a very interesting place to exhibit and it would throw up lots of challenges regarding layout, but also could provide some interesting themes to base our exhibition on, such as personal space or the Treacle Market.

"g Fine Art Gallery"

"g Fine Art Gallert" is an interesting venue as it what one would expect from and exhibition space. It is appealing to us as Sophie works here so it may be the case that we may be able to get a better deal through using this gallery thanks to its connections with the class.

Meeting with Dave from The Art Yard

Just got back from a meeting I had arranged with Dave last week at The Art Yard. It was a very positive meet and Dave seemed very keen to work with us and establish relations with the college. If we were to use The Art Yard as our final exhibition space we would have use of his main gallery which would be an excellent place for us to exhibit. Although the Art Yard mainly exhibits works of fine art, Dave was keen to allow us to exhibit our more graphical work. One downfall of using The Art Yard as our exhibition space is that there would be a charge of "around £200", which would work out at around £25 each, although we have been told that the college could pay for use of the gallery on our behalf. I do think it is a reasonable amount for such a nice exhibition space. I now have his email and I will feedback to the class and hopefully we will decide on a final exhibition space.
( this is a repost as I accidentally deleted the last one!)

Day No.1

On our first day back we have received our first Brief, which I am looking forward to as it requires us all to work together as a team, we have been tasked with creating our own gallery. Where, when and what our gallery will be is up to us to make a decision on, and we must now start researching other galleries and possible themes we could use. Our gallery does not have to be in a conventional space, it can be anywhere we think would be possible, from a cafe to a train station.

Next week we are going to a pub/bar in Macclesfield town centre, 'The Snow Goose' has apparently had exhibitions on before and it seems like the ideal place to start our research, while in the town centre we will be looking at other possible venues to see if they would be suitable for a gallery. The following week (14th October) we intend to head to Manchester to look at more galleries, today we spent some time researching galleries in the city and we have a list of places we would like to visit which we all decided on as a group, the galleries we intend to visit are:

The Corner House

Manchester Craft and Design Centre

Richard Goodall Gallery

Generation Pop

Cube Gallery

Chinese Arts Centre

The Holden Gallery

Whitworth Gallery

Defusion (Piccadilly Station)

This sounds like a lot of places to visit but they are all very different and it will be good to get a wide range of galleries to draw inspiration from and will provide a variety of primary research.

In the evening we visited an exhibition down the road from the college which was set up in a solicitors, it was good to go to this as it not considered a place where exhibitions can be set up, and therefore was very relevant to our needs. While there I spoke to Janet Grimes who owns a cafe in Lymm which exhibits, I now have her email and I can speak to the rest of the class and see if it might be worth going to visit.