Exciting times afoot with a major new project funded by the Arts Council: The Space. Committee member James Walker has the inside information:
What is The Space?
The Space is a project funded by the Arts Council in collaboration with the BBC. On 1 May, it will go live online at www.thespace.org until 30 October. It’s seeking creative output produced in a variety of formats that can be accessed via tablets, mobile phones or the red button on your TV. The aim of the project is to bring arts organisations into the 21st century so that they are equipped with the skills to reach a broader audience and to take advantage of the different possibilities offered by emerging technologies.
There were over 800 applicants for the project, of which 53 were granted funding. The Alan Sillitoe Committee was one of these for a project called ‘Sillitoe and the art of life cycle maintenance’. We were the only literature organisation outside of London to be selected and stand proudly next to Faber and Faber and the London Review of Books.
Sillitoe and the art of life cycle maintenance.
2012 is an important year for Nottingham. It marks the 125th anniversary of Raleigh as well as the 50th anniversary of Tony Richardson’s film adaptation of The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner. To celebrate this we will produce a mobile phone app of Sillitoe’s Nottingham that visits key locations from the novel Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. Users get to navigate the App from the perspective of the two squaddies chasing Arthur Seaton around town. Each location along the trail also has a particular theme to engage the reader. We’ve done this in the hope that it will attract new audiences to the novel who may have been put off by something too prescriptive.
We will also be producing an authentic, 1950s style Raleigh manual that details the literary trail. We’re calling it a ‘physical book with a digital heart’ as it will literally write itself as the project goes along, dependent upon content generated on The Space. We have graphic design students from New College Nottingham illustrating each location, five specially commissioned writers addressing key themes from the book, Confetti recording podcasts and many other forms of collaboration that are allowing this seminal text to re-imagined in the 21st century.
You can help support this project by visiting The Space and joining in the debate. These are changing times and we are in the fortunate position of being guinea pigs in a trial that will determine the future shape of broadcasting. You out for a good time with us?
https://twitter.com/#!/thespacelathe Arthur Seaton @ TheSpaceLathe
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