Hannah Nicklin

#SOTAflash Needs You!

Hurrah! I can finally reveal one of the exciting things I’ve been frustratingly opaque about on Twitter for the past week or so. This Thursday alongside Andy Field and Laura McDermott I shall be convening a Flash Conference as part of the ACE/RSA State of the Arts conference. Here’s a taste of what that means:

The Flash Conference is an imaginative new project designed to create brief but electrifying bursts of thinking and conversation amidst the main State of the Arts programme. Harnessing the spontaneity and collective energy of a flash mob, we hope to bring people together to create a flood of brief but provocative responses to the following questions.

How can art of all kinds play a more meaningful role in mass protest and popular resistance?

What makes a good home for art (and for artists), and how can we ensure there are more of them?

In an environment in which success is too often only measured by perpetual growth, how do we ensure that small remains beautiful?

(How) Can art make more people’s lives better?

Whilst recognising the absolute importance of large scale events like State of the Arts, we also wanted to acknowledge the complex ecology of our sector, an in a space that much more resembles the way we communicate and collaborate in the contemporary world. Hence our conception of the Flash Conference, and, much credit to ACE and the RSA, their inclusion of it in the main conference programme. The Flash Conference (from flashmob) will centre around the above four question, we aim to create a buzz of provocation and debate in the body of the conference, and online, to in fact create a space for dialogue between the two for all those voices who might not have access to the opportunity to speak at, or even attend State of the Arts.

And because of this, we need you. If you have something to say in response to the above statements, now is the time to say it. If you’re on Twitter, you can use and follow the #SOTAflash hashtag, and anybody with an internet connection can access http://flashconference.co.uk where you can simply go to ‘submit’ and post any text, image, audio, or video (audio and video will have to be hosted elsewhere – i.e. Youtube or Audioboo) of anything you have to say. There’s also lots more information about our plans, and 3-4 potential people per question that we’re inviting to offer a one-minute response to get people’s ideas flowing.

We’re going to endeavour to post these provocations, if not live-streamed, minutes after they’re given, and we also intend to continually feed back online content into the room, and vice versa. And there’s absolutely no time limit on submissions, if you have something to say, a statement of intent, your own one minute manifesto in relation to one of the above questions, an image, a video, please do post it. Simply head over to flashconference.co.uk/submit and follow the instructions. Or if you’re coming to the conference, head up to the Thames Room where you’ll find a bank of laptops for you to post your on-the-day reactions, and three large screens following the #SOTAflash hashtag, and displaying content submitted by others.

Laura, Andy and I are really excited about the potential of this in opening up a trad conference format, so please, if you do have something to say about the state of the arts, follow the hashtag and the site, and do contribute.

(The Flash Conference was conceived by Andy Field, Hannah Nicklin and Laura McDermott in association with Arts Council England and the RSA.)

D&D write-ups

A quick upload for those who might be interested, but missed my posterous postings, these are the write-ups from the two sessions I suggested at Devoted and Disgruntled this weekend just gone. Full reflective blog post to follow, hopefully, but suffice to say a brilliant experience, such a thrill to be in the same room as so many of the theatre folk I’d only before now known on Twitter, and to meet so many brilliant, effervescent people in general. Open space is also totally the way to go for conferences. I still don’t quite understand why tech and lefty political conferences are still run in the top-down speaker/panel format… But yes, more posts to follow as soon as I have the chance, including exciting announcements.

Devoted and Disgruntled Report – Theatre and Video Games

Devoted and Disgruntled Report – STS

2010: A Year in Art (Mine and Other People’s)

Me mid-June, with my freshly broken arm and super-attractive cast protector.

Mandatory end-of-year reflective blog post ENGAGE.

So, yep, here we are. And what the heck could you want more than my reflections on My Life in Art 2010 Edition? Exactly. This is going to be meandering and will probably miss things out, but is a rough account of art wot I have done, and art wot I enjoyed this 2010…

So, apparently I’ve actually done quite a bit of art stuff this year, despite the full-time PhD (and I managed to deliver two papers this year without having anything thrown at me, or getting thrown out) plus a broken arm in June… which still hurts actually. Half a year more and it should stop. Anyway, art!

In March I had my first full proper-play production at Theatre503 with Box of Tricks Theatre’s Word:Play – Awake was a short 15 minute conversation between a dying gamer and her avatar. It was an interesting experience, but I don’t really rate it as a piece of writing, I think I’d found a story but not really the right form; so I next moved from the stage to the street… In May I released my first experiment in sound-based pervasive work – Walk With Me, a 10 minute soundwalk for one to be done anywhere in the rain. I got some lovely feedback, handwritten notes, posted found items, and twitpics and photo albums from people who went on the walk. I then got to develop to 30 minutes worth of sound-walking for The Smell of Rain Reminds Me of You in July, which although admittedly breathed it’s first breath out of Walk With Me, was this time built out of memories collected from people online. It was commissioned by the Green Room as part of the Hazard Festival, and I fell slightly in love with Manchester as well as learning a lot about working with a group audience, not just a single person. APPARENTLY YOU CAN’T HERD THEM. Who knew. Then Fierce‘s Interrobang allowed me to push my practice beyond the soundwalk (which I didn’t want to get stuck in as a form) into a 4 minute piece of live art called ‘Home’… OK it still used recorded sound. And was pretty damn authored. But it was a step, and I learnt a lot more about live art as a form. A brief art/academia mashup occurred for the TaPRA conference with A Soundwalk without Organs - a soundwalk done as part of a paper delivered which described the contemporary academic conference as completely useless in representing either academic thought or arts practice. FUN. Then it got to Autumn, and I got to make a soundwalk with a piece of entirely new music from the brilliant Lantern Music, Nightwalk York happened as part of the Take Over and Illuminating York Festivals in October/November. Finally towards the end of November Hibernate! a game for Larkin’ About took to the streets of Manchester, and I was at least able to push my practice a little bit further in terms of pervasive stuff… Continue reading…

Pecha Kucha Coventry

I am currently squirrelling away at a redraft of Nightwalk, York, so in the meantime and for your delectation; the video of my presentation at the Coventry Pecha Kucha Night – Theatre in the Age of the First Person.

For those of you on non-flash devices, try here.