Brunel 200 Arts Projects

The following projects have been awarded grants by Bristol Cultural Development Partnership to undertake arts projects as part of the celebration of the life and work of Isambard Kingdom Brunel in 2006. These activities will take place mostly in Bristol.

Name / Project Title /

Description

Ashlee Taylor / Brunel Exposed / A small exhibition of photographs of Brunel’s sites in Bristol aiming to interest the younger generation of today in Brunel’s work. The exhibition will be shown in one of Brunel’s buildings and will be accompanied by workshops to introduce young people to pinhole photography and digital photography.
Avon Industrial Buildings Trust / Brunel through the Lens / An exploration of the impact of Brunel on the city of Bristol, encouraging a wide cross section of people, groups and communities from the area to celebrate, learn and interpret the legacy of Brunel through photographic images. Workshops will be held linking improvement of camera techniques together with widening awareness of Brunel and his works. The resulting photographs by participants will be utilised both in a photo competition but also to mount an exhibition examining the thoughts and ideas of the participants on the subject of Brunel.
Bob Walton / Triangulation / Site-specific educational and artists’ celebration of three of Brunel’s lesser-known achievements in Bristol, The Cumberland Basin Southside Entrance, Swing bridge on Cumberland Basin and the Underfall Yard sluices. Pupils from schools in Ashton and Hotwells will have field visits to explore sonic and visual environments using digital technology. The sonic postcards that the children will help to create will be emailed to over 50 schools throughout the UK. Community walk and workshops will be held to generate poetry from adults. Also a multi media free public event will be held at Brunel Lock. Work will be displayed and performed, featuring a newly formed ensemble of eight new-music musicians. The performance will take place on the Brunel birthday weekend, 8/9 April 2006.
Bristol Architecture Centre / The Spirit of Brunel / A series of illustrated talks from engineers of national and international eminence who will be asked to address a range of topics appropriate to their particular speciality but dealing specifically with innovation, technology, creativity and collaboration.
Bristol Dance / Defy or Dawn / The creation of a 15 minute boys’ youth dance piece resulting from education and artist workshops, to take place during Brunel’s birthday weekend 8/9 April 2006.
Bristol Libraries / Brunel Writes / A short story competition on the theme of Brunel. This will be supported by 18 workshops run by professional creative-writing tutors who will mentor and edit the contributor’s work. Two of these workshops will take place in Horfield Prison.
Three graphic novel workshops for young adults will also be held, focussing on the Brunel graphic biography.
Bristol Old Vic / Around the World in Eighty Days: a new production / A new adaptation of Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days to link with the 2006 South West Great Reading Adventure aimed at younger and family audiences. There will be 35 performances.
Bristol Old Vic Theatre School / Brunel: a drama for schools / Two simultaneous theatre-in-education tours in primary and secondary schools, with over 40 performances, for audiences between 200 and 400 (total participants will number 12,000). The play, written by Toby Hulse, is an exciting and colourful dramatisation involving the audience in the life and innovative work of Isambard Kingdom Brunel with particular emphasis on his impact on the City of Bristol and the West Country - the suspension bridge, the docks, the Great Western Railway, the Great Western and Great Britain steamships and the dynamic vision of the future with which he placed Bristol at the cutting edge of the Industrial Revolution.
C&M Associates / Fizzimbard Kingdom Brunel: Innovations in Iron and Steel – Drinks cans / C&M Associates will create a souvenir/ commemorative drink can for Brunel 200. The visual design brings together images of Brunel and some of his achievements. The text on the can stresses and brings together works such as engineering, iron, steel innovator and imagination. The text invites the reader to ‘find out more’ and has links to websites. The reader is also invited to place Brunel within a context of continuous engineering innovation and offer the humble drinks can as a worthy example of how these technologies deliver benefits to lives today.
David White / ‘Deserving of Wonder’ - The Triumphs of Brunel / A series of photographs of Brunel’s greatest engineering triumphs across the British Isles, using the same unique 19th century camera and lens combination as Robert Howlett used for the classic chains shot of Brunel. To be exhibited at Temple Meads Station.
Glen Eastman / Anchor Chain Soft Sculpture Installation / Artist Glen Eastman will work with 30 pupils from 10 schools to create a life size soft sculpture plus a composite photographic display of each individual piece of work before it is made up into the rings and chains of the classic Brunel picture. The artwork created will be based on life, ideas, problems, solutions, calculations, inspiration and approach of Brunel’s achievements.
Hotwells Community Organisation / Hats off to Brunel! / A celebration of the life and work of Brunel, especially in connection with the Hotwells area of Bristol, including an exhibition bringing together the work of local artists, musicians and writers and a competition to find innovative, intriguing and creative new uses for the stovepipe hat.
Left Coast Crime / A new crime story set in Brunel’s day, by Andrew Taylor / Andrew Taylor, award-winning and bestselling novelist, and one of the most recent Richard and Judy list, will write a 5,000-word story to celebrate Bristol and Brunel, to be given to all delegates at the Left Coast Crime convention (which takes place in Bristol 16-19 March 2006) and distributed wider. It will also be serialised in local newspapers, in which audiences will be invited to identify the criminal.
Live Design / Live Design -Bristol / A week-long exhibition celebrating historic and contemporary design, highlighting Brunel’s designs and design at the time of Brunel; how design improves lives; and provide a showcase for Bristol designers and their work.
Luke Jerram / Ghost Train / An artwork that acoustically recreates the atmospheric railway. Working with sound designer and composer Dan Jones the project will recreate the sound of a moving atmospheric train in three dimensions. Speakers will be placed either side of a disused train track. Viewers will arrive at dusk, providing a powerful, eerie and sublime atmosphere.
Martin Kiszko / A Radius of Curves / A contemporary cantata accompanied by a back-projected film which is a speeded up rail journey from Bristol to London from the driver’s point of view. The work uses an orchestra, soloist and singers to recount the building of the track. The soloist and singers’ words will include detail from the GWR’s budget and discussions about the gauge through to comment from the shareholders’ meetings alongside entries from Brunel’s diaries about his illnesses or personal affairs.
Multi-A / Travelling in Time: The Broad Gauge to Bristol / Multi A will commission a dancer and a poet, working with a local engineer and a sound artist, to create and perform a piece with year five children from two local primary schools, which explores the history and work of the GWR, to be performed at Bristol Temple Meads. Research will include all children travelling to London on the train, with a break at Swindon to see the railway village and visit STEAM, the museum that explores the GWR. A filmmaker will produce a film about the project.
Nick Hand / Brunel Limited / There are over 30 businesses in Bristol today that take the Brunel name, from the major car company Brunel Ford, through to the Brunel Buttery, the much loved dockside sandwich bar. Nick Hand will interview company directors and workers, as well as photograph them, to create an exhibition of these Brunels today.
Once / Brunel’s Billiard Table / A project to create poetic art interventions on trains running along the GWR line from London to the South West. Three artists will spend time ‘in residence’ on the train following the line, each looking at and absorbing the train and its route from difference perspectives: the passengers, the visual and aesthetic and the practical scientific aspects. The artists will develop material using poetry, imagery, dialogue and textures, which will be woven together to create one piece of work. The artwork will be printed onto paper bags, napkin or coffee cups to be handed out from the buffet or temporally transferred onto windows, tables and chairs.
Paralalia / Brunel 2206 – a radio adventure / A radio series, to be broadcast on BBC Radio Bristol, of ten five minute episodes about the adventures in space of the young Izzy Brunel, the great, great, great, great, great, great grandson of Isambard Kingdom Brunel. The series will be set 200 years into the future and Izzy has to grapple with futuristic technologies to solve problems he encounters as he travels the Universe. Izzy will have to call on his deceased relative’s help to get out of scrapes or solve problems, either through some form of technology yet to be discovered or through his spirit being present with the youngster as he travels.
Ralph Hoyte / Isambard – The Epic Poem / Ralph will write, display, distribute, broadcast, web cast and perform an epic poem interpreting Brunel’s life, work and legacy.
Severnside Railway Community and Art + Power / Mural at Bristol Temple Meads / To create a powerful and living memorial to Brunel in Temple Meads Station. The mural will be 16x4 metres. It will be sited at Bristol Temple Meads station on the wall opposite Platform 1.
Show of Strength / An Audience with Sarah Guppy / Sarah Guppy (1770-1852), a Bristol based designer, was an innovator ahead of her time. She patented a method for making safe piling for bridges in 1811, seven years before Telford’s Menai Bridge was creeated, and when Brunel was aged five. Other patents were for a tea and coffee urn (1812), an exercise bed (1831) and a method for caulking ships (1844). Although older than Brunel, she died just seven years before him and worked until at least 1844, when she was 74. Were Sarah Guppy and Brunel inventing today, they would almost certainly design on computer. An Audience with Sarah Guppy will be a lecture/theatre performance in which Guppy talks about her life and work, including her significant links with Brunel, illustrated with her designs. These will be recreated, in 3D, by CAD students working from Guppy’s original patents and drawings. The lecture will last 30-45 minutes, and be followed by a ‘Question and Answer’ Session with Sarah Guppy. The lecture will be at City of Bristol College and aimed at computing and engineering students, other students and guests.
Southville Community Centre / The Avon Cut Book / Production of 68-page book in full colour on the history, industry and heritage of the Avon Cut, highlighting the contributions that Brunel made to the Avon Cut’s effectiveness and its important role for the floating harbour. The book will reflect the extraordinary engineering skills involved in the design and construction of the cut, illustrating the importance of it today.
Teresa Dillon / Plan B / This will use contemporary performance, multimedia design and sound art to visualise new ways of seeing the history of transport and travel in the last 200 years. Plan B will create a site-specific, multimedia piece on the tubular swing bridge in Bristol’s Floating Harbour. The bridge, currently standing on the ground, underneath the fly over, will be brought to life using lighting and sound. The project will be developed with schools and others, though workshops.
Tyning Hengrove School / Tyning Hengrove Celebrates Brunel’s ‘Kingdom’ / Whole school, year-long project focusing on Victorian life: including visits to exhibitions, pantomimes, class projects, Victorian music hall events, and, in March 2006, a re-enactment of the dinner held for launch for SS Great Britain in 1843 in the school.
Val Steel / Eleven Minutes …(Lost Time-pieces) / Eleven minutes will be a collection of ‘time-pieces’ suggested by, and representing, the eleven minutes lost to Bristol when ‘Railway Time’ was introduced. They will be sculptures/ installations, varying in scale (up to 3m), incorporating a variety of media. Most will include some element of movement e.g. clockwork, pendulums, gears, automata; some based on ‘lost’ means of time-keeping e.g. sand, water. They will each run to their own time or not at all. They will be of ambiguous function, part time-piece, part unidentifiable scientific or navigational instrument. These ‘lost minutes’ will be sited in relatively obscure, ‘abandoned’ spaces, within the Brunel-linked landscape of the western Floating Harbour. The installations will embody the essence of the machines of the period in question (early 19th C), but will be ‘out-of-time’, enigmatic constructions. This spanning of eras will be enhanced by the use, in at least one case, of a solar PhotoVoltaic power source. Locations include: Underfall Yard (including the rear yard of No.16 Avon Crescent); Old Junction Lock (by the Nova Scotia Hotel/ Public House); Brunel’s historic tubular swing bridge (under Plimsoll Bridge); Western tip of Spike Island, with panoramic view of Suspension Bridge; wooden hut on ‘The Tongue’ (Cumberland Lock).
Valda Jackson and others / Other Stories – Making Waves / Research, writing and performance work looking at the impact of Brunel on communities today. Four community workshops, tours and seminars on the ss Great Britain, and performances in the dry dock at the ss Great Britain will complement message cards distributed to passengers on the GWR.
Watershed Media Centre / INNOVATE! Brunel Digital Stories / Over the past year Watershed has been working with the Bristol Museum service and other partners to develop a system of storytelling using sounds and images to capture an individual’s experience and memories of their city. This will now be extended to gather together people’s stories of Brunel including architects and engineers working in the city, and continuing the Brunel tradition today, and local people who use Brunel’s buildings in their daily life. We will encourage people to be both more aware of the heritage in the city and also to look to the future.

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