Lots of people have asked us about our plans for Artsfest so we thought it was high time we documented them.  It’s going to be a great weekend – and we hope that you’ll come along and be part of it.

CONCEPT – what’s it about?

Inspired by the likes of Richard Avedon’s The Family (a series of 69 photos taken of ‘the establishment’ in the US in 1976) and Obama’s People (a series of portraits by Nadav Kandler currently showing in Birmingham), we wanted to take a look at Birmingham’s people and how they see each other. We plan to take a series of portraits over the course of the Artsfest weekend involving the sitters in portraits of their fellow citizens.

HOW?

The good folks at Artsfest have given us some prime locations for setting up our portrait studio and for displaying our prints.  We will have a marquee just off Victoria Square where we will be making the portraits, and some room in Paradise Forum to display portraits – like with Flashswap, we’ll be creating a Photospace over the weekend.

Calumet have kindly agreed to support us during the weekend, so we’ll be using some of their professional kit, and together with our small team of talented photographers we’ll be inviting people enjoying Artsfest to come in, have their portraits taken and talk to us about themselves and photography.

We’d also like the subjects of our photos to take part in the creative process – by doing some art direction of the next subject in line.

ART DIRECTION – sounds complex?

Here’s an example of how it’ll work.  Say Liz comes in to have her portrait taken.  Once she’s had her image taken, she’ll be invited to suggest how she may like Matt (who is next in line) to pose. (She may ask him to smile, to frown, to stand or slouch, to display the object he bought earlier from Artsfest. She’s limited only by her imagination (and the laws of decency!))  The photographer will take a few frames, and then Liz will get to choose which one she would like to exhibit.

EXHIBIT, you say?

Yes – we’ll be having our photos processed in batches, then our creative curators will be hanging them in Paradise Forum so we create a Photospace for Birmingham for the duration of the festival.

We’re also planning a major exhibition at The Drum later in the year – so after the event we’ll be selecting, printing and framing the portraits, then devising an exhibition.  We’ll be displaying some of the interviews too, as part of the exhibition.

INTERVIEWS?

Didn’t I mention the interviews?  Oh dear.  We’re hoping to interview subjects during the day, making short video clips and some short audio interviews for later transcription.

HOW CAN I HELP?

Are you a organisation who could sponsor us?  We have one sponsor already, but we need more.  Could you offer us free or discounted photo printing?  Could you help us with promotional materials? – as ever, we’ll be trying to raise understanding of our aims – that is to build a world class venue for photography in Birmingham.  We need badges and postcards and other promo things.

Are you a photographer or a supporter of Photospace (or both!)?

We need creative, committed, hardworking folk who work well as part of a team to help us with the following tasks:

• Curation of portrait photospace in Paradise Forum
• Production of images – working with our suppliers to deliver high quality portrait images from digital files
• Photoshop operators – making our images look as good as they can
• Interviewing – taking video or making audio interviews of the subjects of the portraits
• Reception and marketing – meeting and greeting – handing out promo material – discussing photospace- inviting people to sign up to mailing list
• Orderbook – our subjects may wish to purchase their portraits – this role takes money and records details so we can send portraits out

We need volunteers for the whole weekend.  We’d be grateful if you would commit for one whole day please.

In return we can offer you a great day out, lots of fun, the knowledge that you’re supporting the arts in our great city and a drink (probably!).

GET IN TOUCH

either via the contact pages or to hello@birminghamphotospace.co.uk

Tags: artsfest, birmingham's people, join us, photography, tweet