At the end of today, after our first and only trip off-site, for a dinner in the nearby market town, we’re reflecting on what’s been very much the pivotal day in the Ideas Factory process. In the process we are following, four projects were developed and subjected to a kind of internal peer review. We did a lot of rethinking about the shape of the projects that were being developed and the boundaries between them, and the spread of skills needed for them. We finished the day with some concrete, yet rich and challenging, areas, to go forward. The task tomorrow is to make these into well-defined proposals, which the research council can feel comfortable about funding.
One consequence of the time it took to get through all this, was that the mysterious activities involving the theatre director had to be dropped for lack of time. We did, though, finish the day with another kind of lateral thought – sculptor Tom Grimsey, who’s been a full participant in the process, talked to us about his reflections and showed us some short films.
Some malleable sculptures by Tom Grimsey
Richard Jones
It is heartening to note that the title of this post is not ‘Pass the Crux’. Despite all the wrangling and clanging of agendas that must be going on, it is good to see there has been some progress towards a common goal[s].
I hope the body of work will become available for all of us to look at.
Note to Tom Grimsey – take a look at the comment under your ‘Sculpture Table
Please excuse my second note. I made an error in my Email and Website, Corrected Now
Having taken part in another sandpit I recognise that the seemingly constant breaking and rebuilding of projects is an integral part of the early stages of the sandpit process. It is not easy to go through. From the (pseudo) outside i.e. in the room but not in the process, it is amazing to see how quickly people can identify with and almost “own” a new idea. Making sure that people can let go of ideas and embrace new ones leads to a very open response to the growing stream of new ideas.
The ecology is also worth commenting on. Everything we have done is stored on large sheets of paper (and the obligatory post-its!) and we are definitely re-using parts of the earlier projects discussed. Nothing will be wasted!!
We have also learnt to be more careful about our nomenclature. The early projects had short, almost off-hand names. When we discussed them, we all realised that we had meant different things by those titles. Needless to say the later projects are more distinctly named!!
David