This will be the third time The Eloquent Fold, aka Carole Miles and I have been working with Transported providing them with a variety of creative engagement opportunities for the lovely people of Lincolnshire.
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| A completed book with blanks pages ready to fill with ideas aplenty |
Transported is a strategic, community-focused programme which aims to get more people in the area of Boston and South Holland Borough to enjoy and participate in arts activities. It is overseen by a Management Group, a sub committee of Leisure in the Community, along with artsNK as its lead organisation. It is funded by the Creative People and Places fund from Arts Council England.
In the first year we were involved with the consultancy offering short bites sizes making sessions, engaging with locals, trying to find out what they would like to do.
Last year we were part of the Open Book project in a variety of libraries around the borough, our spin was a
Flock of Words and
Crumbs from the Word Table. Being in a library it is always permissible to play with words and we certainly did. We listened to stories from the locals of Lincolnshire the why and how they came to be there.
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| This book called "BangTap" is a joint venture with George and his Mum |
And this year we are back with our Small Library of Big Ideas to do some more creative workshops. We started with Boston Library and were delighted to be greeted with a many eager faces. We arrived a little late due to Sat Nav says, "No" routine, as it was desperately tried to navigate us to Mablethorpe.
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| Some of the Transported team |
The lovely team from Transported were on standby to help us get unpacked as I quickly took the group on a guided tour of the glass cabinet and showed them what they would be making and what we were hoping to achieve with our small library of big ideas.
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| The process of making the book has many folds |
We split the tables and divided the group up to enable some to make the book structures and some to start creating pages to fill their complete books.
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| ...and the ideas flowed |
We want the small library to be filled with handmade books crammed with lots of ideas, information and projects; the hows and where's of starting a group or a mini project, a tutorial, or who can teach you something you'd like to learn.
My group of book folding initiates this week looked on with trepidation at the book structure I presented them, but once each of them had completed their book there were looks of pure pride.
On the other table Carole glided and swooped around the table stirring up the energy and enthusiastically talking about the project, the noise of chatter gradually rose and people started sharing their thoughts, their hopes and dreams. Some of these were captured on their pages ready to be included in the books. I think the hardest thing for people was to leave their books behind.
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| ...and a good selection of stamps to express those ideas |
We wanted people to make one for the Small Library and Take one home to fill.
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| A finished book ready to receive pages of ideas |
Next week we'll be returning to Boston Library and Carole will be bringing her portable printing press so people can explore their own print adventure.
Photographs: Carole Miles
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