1. Sea Dog by planktn

2. #6 by Dirty Laundry

3. humour by Matt Saunders

4. Hank by Simon Peplow

5. The Family by Nuala Herron

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These artworks were all selected from our Cargo followers. We want to see & promote your work – connect with us on Cargo here.
See more Top 5s selected from the network here.

FutureEverything is an annual festival of art, music and ideas hosted in Manchester, UK. Listed as one of the ten best ideas festivals in the world by The Guardian, and ranked as a must see by Resident Advisor, the festival is held over four days at venues across the city and includes a conference at MOSI Museum of Science and Industry.

We scan the horizon of art, innovation, society and the environment to create a two-day conference of international speakers with the latest thinking on the hottest topics. The art exhibition pushes the boundaries of contemporary digital art from international platforms alongside a digital craft fair at Victoria Baths. And continuing the festival into the night, the music strand is a celebration of sonic pioneers, from the best emerging talent to established musicians who continue to innovate and inspire.

FutureEverything 2012 takes place Wed 16–Sat 19 May 2012 in Manchester city centre. It features 52 artists, 45 musicians and 70 speakers across 11 venues over three main days with exhibitions and partner events extending over 3 weeks.

FutureEverything Art

The FutureEverything Art Exhibition, FutureEverybody, is hosted at the MOSI 1830 Warehouse between 16 May-10 June, with participatory art happening across Manchester 16-19 May. Over 18 international and UK artists will exhibit work from the cutting edge of sculpture, video and new media art.

Highlights include – immersive theatre group Blast Theory premiere a new work ‘I’d Hide You’, a game that connects virtual worlds, video streaming and performers on the streets of Manchester; ceramicist Lawrence Epps & Sykey Collective distribute 8000 handmade little clay men into secret city locations for commuters to use in online artworks; and Ollie Palmer displays the world’s first ballet to feature computer controlled ants.

Admission is free, the exhibition preview takes place on Weds 16 May.

Handmade at Victoria Baths

Handmade is a digital DIY craft fair hosted at the recently restored Manchester heritage site, Victoria Baths. This exciting event includes a craft fair, talks, events, Fab* Manchester, Victoria Baths Fanzine Convention, and a vegan cafe. Collaborators include Manchester Craft and Design Centre, Manchester FabLab, Salford Zine Library and an array of jewellers, ceramicists and sculptors. Handmade is hosted on Saturday 19 May. Admission is £2 and free to conference ticket holders.

FutureEverything Music

In collaboration with venues and promoters including Salford’s Islington Mill & St Phillip’s Church, Instituto Cervantes, RNCM, Manchester Cathedral, Contact, Quay House Spinningfields and Manchester Academy – FutureEverything hosts live music and DJ/Club events across Manchester between 16-20 May 2012.
Confirmed music acts include Amon Tobin ISAM (Live), Matthew Herbert One Pig, Dieter Moebius, Polinski, Tim Hecker, Forest Swords, The Haxan Cloak, DJ Cheeba, Alt J, Shabazz Palaces, John Talabot, Falty DL, Deadbeat, Andy Stott, No Ceremony, Money, Marcel Dettmann, and Holy Other. Tickets can be purchased via our music website pages.

FutureEverything Conference

The FutureEverything Conference, panels and workshops will be hosted at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester on Thurs 17 & Fri 18 May. Confirmed speakers include Birgitta Jonsdottir, Bilal Randeree (Al Jazeera), Cesar A. Hidalgo,  Carlo Ratti, Rohan Gunatillake, Dr. Ian Brown, Loz Kaye, Sanaz Raji, Moritz Stefaner, Juha van’t Zelfde, and Andy Miah.

Festival Locations

FutureEverything 2012 offers a festival footprint around MOSI and the city centre. Our venues have been carefully chosen to allow a natural progression from daytime event to evening show to late night events. We will be re-using venues across each night, to allow a festival ‘feel’ and will combine large scale venues (Manchester Academy and RNCM) with smaller, underground venues such as Islington Mill, St Philip’s Church and Quay House, Spinningfields. A free bus is available on Saturday when events take place at Victoria Baths and MediaCityUK.

Download brochure and timetables here.
Buy tickets here.

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See more festivals we’ve featured here.

Grab your calendar and take notes as we bring you our Top 5 Central Station during GI2012:

Everything Flows
Patricial Fleming Projects
Patricia Fleming Projects presents ‘Everything Flows‘ Glasgow Artists/Musicians. Their Art and Recordings 1990 – 2010. This limited edition EP will comprise a selection of the outstanding ‘experimental art into music and performance’ scene growing from the Glasgow visual art sector over the last twenty years. The EP will present artists, their music and musical influences together for the first time.
20 Apr – 5 May | Tue – Sun, 2.30 – 6.30pm | Queens Park Railway Club

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The Mutual Charter
A campaign-style build up of events and online content as marked the progress of 14 simultaneous international projects created by members of The Mutual: an artists’ co-operative comprised of more than 150 early career creative practitioners. These projects will surface throughout the festival at various public and private venues and will be united in a publication launched at the end of the festival.
20 Apr – 7 May | see site for details

Keep an eye out for Packing And Mourning, a project by Penny Anderson, Eija Hirvonen, Shelton Walker and Youngjoo Yoo, previously featured on the site. You can see it at St Judes Hotel. Here’s the listing.

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RECORD STORE
For World Record Store Day 2012 (21st April) and to coincide with GI (Glasgow International Festival of Visual Arts), Monorail Records will be hosting an exhibition curated by visual artists Chris Biddlecombe and Janie Nicoll. This installation is the result of a collaborative project involving the creation of approximately twenty record cover artworks created by a wide range of Scottish artists, each of whom have a strong interest in or connection to music making; artists who have been in bands, who DJ, or who use music as a theme in their art making practice.
20 Apr -  May | Monorail Records
[Preview: 19 April | 6 - 8pm | Monorail Records]

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Field Office
An exhibition by first year Masters students from Valand School of Fine Arts, Gothenburg, Sweden. Field Office combines a space for showing work and a place for doing work. With an understanding of a field office functioning as an outpost for a series of explorations, conducted as fieldwork within the city, it serves as platform for a series of individual and collaborative art works and events, surveying, passing through and engaging with Glasgow. Coinciding with the Glasgow International Festival, the project connects with this event while also extending into Glasgow’s local art scene.
26th Apr – 7 May | see site for times | Repositioned
[Opening night 25 April - DJ set from Belle and Sebastian]

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Nothing About Us Without Us Is For Us
A public art event using obsolete technology to hurl language across Glasgow’s river Clyde. Led by Matt Baker & t s Beall, as part of Glasgow International Festival Visual Art 2012. It’s described as a sort of action / happening / community celebration / anti-festival. It is preceded by lots of workshops and tours that involve different groups of folk and institutions in and around Govan. There are around 20 workshops and events in total – some of which are organised for specific groups, and others which are open to the public. See the individual event listings here.
20 Apr – 1 May | See site for specific events | Around Govan

Tell us about any shows, exhibitions, gigs, things of interest that you have on during GI 2012. It doesn’t have to be on the “official” GI2012 programme to grab our attention.

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See more Top 5′s selected from the network here.

There are a few ways to be included in our Weekly Event Bulletin (updated every Friday):

1. Post it on our Facebook wall
2. Tell us about it on Twitter
3. E-mail us hello@thisiscentralstation.com

Please give us your event information in the following format:

Date | Venue
Title
One sentence about your event
URL

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Here are some places you can upload your events online for free:

Facebook
[the easiest way to post an event online]

The List
[consumer arts and entertainment magazine]

Eventbee
[sell tickets, post events]

Central Station was launched in September 2009. It began life as an ambitious digital project that could be used as a tool to facilitate creative works, as well as a place to make connections. The birth of the project can be read in full here in the opening pages of the Central Station book (it’s an interesting read, you should have a look).

We commissioned projects with professional partners and organisations, such as: Sound Image Art with Roddy Buchanan & Savalas; White Bikes with NVA; Phil Kay does GI; Social Landscape with David Zarah & Patricia Fleming Projects; Shadow Screen with Paul Kerlaff; Art/Roc/Doc to name just a few. We had pop-up events in Glasgow & in Dundee and, on top of this, we gave away £1500 a month to projects within our community. You can read all of these in the Member Fund blog.

It was a self contained community where members were showcased and encouraged to promote and discuss their work and methods. Fast forward to September 2011, and the Central Station community on Facebook & Twitter are just as vocal and active as the membership on the site. Somewhere in the past 2 years artists and creatives have embraced social networks as a form of promotion and audience building. We liked what we saw and got to work on finding ways to shift our methods to better suit the changing environment.

Cut to the new – improved – Central Station.

Our ethos stays the same – we aim to support, showcase and make accessible creative work from Scotland, the UK and beyond. How we go about doing it has changed slightly. With progression in technology comes some brilliant advancements in how creatives can engage online. All of our content is an amalgamation of this engagement.

We’ve selected a handful of networks where we will have a presence. These were chosen carefully from investigating where our site members were uploading their work and from talking to the community. That isn’t to say that we won’t add to them later – we love a social network and are always open to suggestion – we just wanted to stay contained for the moment until we all have a chance to work together in this new wider network.

We’ve divided our networks into two ways of communicating: Creative platforms [such as Vimeo & Behance] to build a database of creatives who want to share their work and find others to work with; and Social platforms [like Twitter & StumbleUpon] to showcase these members of our creative community. It’s more a networks of networks, if you like.

So there you have it. Supported by Creative Scotland and engineered by ISO, Central Station Mark II is just what it says on the tin – The Creative Social Network.

“A mix of college / art school transitional positions…

01_ Weekend teller at my local Co-Op bank. Was wearing the mode du jour mohican, shaved on one side of my head which led to some cunning Bobby Charlton type comb overs every Saturday morning.

02_ Medical model. Involved stripping to my undies for a room full of trainee doctors in hotel conference suites whilst they pushed and prodded joints and musculature. They said they were doctors…

03_ Beach seller – Canet Plage, Perpignan. To the cries of “ Chouchous, beignets, boissons fraîches”, long, sticky days traipsing up and down the beach with a pair of refrigerated coolboxes punting drinks and funny little caramalised nuts to the locals and confused 18-30 types. Couldn’t afford the anglo campsite so reduced to sleeping on the roof of the lifeguards hut every night. Happy days.

04_ Parky, Saltdean Lido. Brighton. Dream job as a park keeper rising early to walk to work along the Brighton Coast. Morning spent dragging tennis courts and then a quick spin on the petrol driven mower before an afternoon keeping watch on the sunbathers at the modernistic masterpiece that is Saltdean’s 1930′s open air swimming pool. Get orf my grass!

05_The List street seller, Edinburgh Festival. First job out of Art School. After being told by my course head I was unemployable I grabbed the prime patch at the Assembly Rooms and set out to prove him wrong. 6 weeks later crowned top seller, given a big bottle of Morgans Spiced and free tickets to see Dennis Leary’s first UK gigs off comedy legend Tommy Cockles.

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We’ve asked professionals in creative industries what jobs they have had in the past to get their foot through the door (or at least pay the rent). For more in the “My First 5 Jobs” series look here.

Radius 2012?

January 2011 I was invited to blog about the NON-Festival in Bergen Norway. The largest performance festival in Bergen to date initiated by artist, Agnes Nedregard who was supported by a team of dedicated artists, sponsors, and volunteers.

This project was inspiring and what I want to touch on was the spirit of the festival. A group of international artists were invited to Bergen to work in residence for a week and then perform within the three-day festival. The artists had total artistic freedom and had no pre-conceived product of what their performance would be.

There was a lot of risk involved because there were no restrictions, nor were the artist’s asked to report, propose, or identify what they were going to do before they did it. This was the exciting bit, not spontaneous art but there was only an invitation to show their work….

Last year Radius was the collection of events and exhibitions that happened during GI 2010 that shared similar elements.  Artists that live and work in Glasgow were invited to share their event or exhibition as part of Radius; existing in small venues, in-between official GI places, spaces and activity. It was supported by Central Station and the Skinny as well as working in collaboration with Atypical Root. There were no qualifications, just the goods and minimal effort to be included.

It happened because as an artist and director I didn’t meet the cut of the official festival but I was still so far into my planning, preparing and scheduling I was still determined to have it happen and let people know it was happening. I knew there would be others too so I set out trying to find them.

My experience as art director of Montgomery’s Café is this. Audience is powerful, and it’s everywhere. I have had many great experiences working with many different artists and I’ve had an international collector walk into the Montgomery’s Café and buy an entire show.  Things that make exhibitions happen are: a lot of work, commitment and belief, always on a minimal budget, some trading and a lot of community support.

It’s important to take risks and to take yourself and your audience seriously; these actions create knowledge, personal and professional. It also builds relationships, continuity and clarity. Each year I aspire to be an artist, and on the way I see myself five years ago in someone else, it means I have diversified my efforts.

Sometimes the best things come from the most restricted budget, things in the rough are incredibly interesting. I like thinking of myself as an independent voice; it gives me fuel, determination and freedom. To round it out, my point is that artists have a voice whether the funding bodies are able to support them or not, Radius was support in kind without expectation, but I wasn’t disappointed and I would welcome enquiries, suggestions and ideas if other independent voices wanted to contribute. It’s around the corner!!

Shadow Screen was an exploratory process. Central Station worked with product designer Paul Kerlaff to create new patterns for the Shadow Screen service produced by his company, With Kerlaff.

Participants from all creative disciplines were invited to submit not only design proposals but also critical feedback, suggestion and comment. The idea was that the doors to the competition process were thrown open, to promote critical engagement and hence offer value to all who participated. 

In contrast to traditional competition formats, a long ‘shortlist’ were invited to show their proposals, for feedback by an invited panel of luminaries and by interested observers. There was one ‘winner’, but 5 of the shortlisted entries were offered a licence agreement for their pattern, alongside valuable exposure and feedback. Viewers were invited not to ‘vote’ in an X-factor style format but instead to use their powers of articulate persuasion to sway critical opinion.

Paul blogged regularly, as did the short listed designers. Read what they had to say, see their designs and find out more about the project by browsing through these:

Thoughts from Paul [With Kerlaff]:
Cutting out the Flaws of Competitions
Process Makes Perfect
Waiter: Social Media for one please
Shadow Screen Shortlisting – fly on the wall
Shadow Screen Judging – the Juicy Bits
Shadow Screen Winner

Thoughts from the shortlisted creatives:
My Shadow Screen Got Shortlisted by nothing
Shadow Screen Shortlist by Stephen Cappello
My Shadow Screens: Is Pattern Primary? by Titas
Smog Shadow Screen by daisymacdonald
Shdw Scrn \ The Man in the Moon by Dele_Adeyemo
Sublime Shadows by daisymacdonald
Shadow Screens – Does variety win? by Titas
Electric Bird x Shadow Screen by KavanStudio

This week, we’re thrilled to announce a couple of projects we’re working on with two brilliant arts organisations. For the first time, NVA are collaborating with the rather brilliant arts collective 85A. And we’re re-kindling our partnership with Central Station following the success of White Bikes earlier in the year.

85A’s Herbaceous Barbershop

In the very fine words of 85A:

“A most idealistic and exciting (not to mention tasty!) experience awaits the patrons of 85A’s Herbaceous Barbershop at Glasgow Harvest this summer. Stroll on into our cozy little barbershop, settle yourself into our automated barber’s chair, and select a ‘punk herb cap’ of your choice for your new hair-do…which is both a wicked fashion accessory and most importantly, a darn decent way to maximise growing space in our increasingly over-crowded urban environment. Picture this: You could get your ‘cress Chelsea-cut’ fringe trimmed a little at the front…and then just let the zesty, fresh green clippings tumble right on into your home-grown garden salad!

See you at the Barbershop on the 28th August for a herb-cut with a punk soundtrack and some top seasoning tips. How can one resist? After all, who hasn’t ever wanted a chive Mohawk? Punk appetite!”

You can see how the guys at 85A are getting on here, they’ve been busy uploading images.

For those of you who don’t know them, 85A Collective are an emerging, loose-knit brood of Glasgow based multidisciplinary artists that in recent years have been working alongside and/or supporting one another in various shows and collaborations. Some of these include: ‘The ORZEL Film Experience’ (2009); ‘Der Student von Prag’ (2008) and in August they will be programing the ‘Sonic Soak Festival’ at the Govanhill Baths. For more information see www.85a.org.uk.

Central Station’s twEATs

Apparently twEATs is what you get if you combine cookery and twitter. Of course it is. Central Station and NVA will be inviting all you tweeters to take part in a blind-cooking challenge, using nothing but the power of the Twitter newsfeed and crossed fingers. Central Station are revealing more details over the coming couple of weeks – including details about the chef they’re working with, the ingredients you’ll need to find, a date and a time.

For now, to let us know you’re interested in participating, follow NVA on Twitter and direct message us the word twEATS.

Central Station will be giving away a limited edition run of an illustrated twEATS recipe pamphlet at Harvest on the 28th August, designed by their members (designers: keep your eyes peeled for acall to submit.) First come, first served – make sure you’re at Harvest on the 28th August if you want to get your mitts on one of them.

Stay in touch

Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter
See us on Flickr

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To find out what Tasty twEATS & Harvest 2010, click here.

First up, we’re learning a little about Central Station.

[21:23] As regular readers of this blog & community will know, Central Station is an arts hub – a place to find creative people and inspiration. We’re being shown around some of the portfolios and site features.

[21:25] Central Station has been working with a number of projects. Art/Roc/Docx is a collaborative cross-disciplinary documentary featuring the band Isocele, a shooter, photographer, fixer, designers, curators, a producer and editor. At the beginning they didn’t know what they were making; ultimately they ended up with a 75 minute film that premiered at the Glasgow Short Film Festival. (I wish I’d been part of it. Sounds like fun. Who wants to make a film with me?)

[21:28] CenSta was also involved with the Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art. They’ve done a lot of work extending art in an interdisciplinary way using the Internet as both a communications and creative device; something I think more technologists should also be involved with. It doesn’t have to be all about extending XMPP and creating decentralized social networking protocols, you know; there’s a lot of human discovery and creativity that can be facilitated. Not just facilited – made. Technologists can be artists too!

InSpace is a beautiful space, by the way, but it’s a little echoey at the back. I’m straining to hear.

Central Station is being compared to WordPress and Facebook. It’s a community that involves people, says a representative of member organisation Savalas – but by implication it’s also a community about opportunities for creatives and creative organisations.

[21:34] We’re being shown a short film which links computer-generated animation and orgiinal composition in a really dynamic way. It’s like an iris reaffirming itself in a radar swoop, set to some arresting beats and atmospheric sound.

The last time I liveblogged anything, it was the Eurovision Song Contest. Alas, I don’t think the chances of anyone bursting out with a saxophone and avant garde sunglasses are anywhere near as great here.

[21:39] “Although it is global [...] There’s a tangible, physical community behind it.”

[21:43] Roderick Buchanan is talking about his soundtrack project. He’s talking about the freeing aspects of doing group shows (relatively little responsibility, the ability to see others’ work at the same time), and how independent shows are significantly more stressful. Central Station has been a useful community for him throughout the process of transitioning from one to the other, partially as a resource for help and advice.

[21:50] A discussion of the narcissism of social networking sites and how Roderick is on the “social networking rocks”. In particular, he has a problem with the terminology: calling people “friends”, for example. This is my day job, and my observation would be that it’s a cultural difference – not necessarily generational. I think people in California, where most of this technology comes from, are far happier with labelling strangers as friends than the Scots are. Generally, the most complaints I’ve heard about the wording on these sites come from Scotland; why is this, and what does it say about Scotland as a culture? (Or, indeed, California?)

[21:52] Indeed, Roderick says that when he was approached by Central Station to work on the “Composer wanted” project, he didn’t like the narcissistic aspects of his personality that the site drew out of his personality.

There does seem to be a very wide conversation that could be had here. As a half-American who lives in Edinburgh, I feel conflicted: should we all be getting used to promoting our personal brands? (This tends to be where I sit.) Or is it a worrying trend that really undermines something important in different cultures?

[21:54] Not everyone enjoys blogging. That’s absolutely true; what’s great about Central Station is that it allows for different forms. When I approached designing an open source social networking platform, back in 2004, our team made the same assumption: not everyone would be interested in writing text, or writing about themselves. Privacy and different media are crucial. CenSta has, in my opinion, made the right decisions here.

[21:56] Here’s a question (from me): do contemporary artists inherently need to be self promoters?

[21:59] Ultimately, Roderick says, his optimism has been restored thanks to the real-life community behind the site. “Giles [Lamb] and Savalas are the guys with the right trainers and haircuts on this project. I look forward to hearing what they have to say.”

[22:01] Roderick: “I was feeling all open and connective about collaborating with Central Station and Savalas on the production of a new artwork until I saw the streamed version of my video ‘Traffic’ online. Now I’m feeling naked and exposed.” But it’s surely good promotion? “Central Station is another set of opportunities, and we all try to make them work for us.” He doesn’t know if people are more connected to his practice thanks to his presence online, but feels that other people may see him (and the sountrack project) as an opportunity.

[22:04] “Technology is always making [promises] and not paying off.” I respectfully disagree, although, of course, I’m biased …

[22:05] We’re being shown a short film. I won’t describe it; hopefully it’s available to view online. Meanwhile, Sasha has uploaded some great photographs (aside from the one of me).

[22:08] Roderick: “the technology is still not there.” Technologists: opportunity! There are creatives out there dying for more tools, more infrastructure. Central Station is doing a fine job with the community – what else can you provide?

[22:10] The short film we’re being shown involves those awesome liquid-filled pen lids where little plastic characters float across the length. There was a bear. I always condone bears.

[22:12] The soundtrack project has received 41 responses; 2677 blog posts; 1641 group members; 2400 project pageviews. Much easier than trying to get that kind of participation offline.

[22:13] Those participants eventually boiled down to six shortlisted members developing soundtrack ideas for Roderick’s next piece of experimental filmmaking.

[22:15] Sasha has left us, but I’ll be liveblogging for the rest of the evening. Don’t forget to also check out the Central Station twitter account (and my own).

[22:17] We’re talking to Nils Mugel Meisel, who is one of the shortlisted musicians, and looking at some of the newly-soundtracked films. It’s inspiring stuff: original films seem to turn into completely new works when creative audio is independently applied. Makes you think about how much of a difference sound really makes, and also makes me want to get my hands dirty, or collar some of the musicians I know.

[22:27] Ultimately, Andy Sim and his team Fear Wasabi won the Central Station soundtrack competition, and went into production with Roderick and Savalas. Tonight’s event, at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, is the world premiere of the resulting film.

[22:40] Argh, we just lost 10 minutes of updates! In brief:

The standard filmmaking process can take years from inception to distribution. The process of making this film took between 6-8 weeks, which is revolutionary!

Furthermore, the team – in the end – found blogging useful. The reflection, far from being an act of narcissism, kept them focused; it ultimately ended up being an archive of their creative process.

There’s clearly a lot of work still to do in terms of creating a digital infrastructure for these kinds of activities, but this sounds like it’s been a successful project with a tangible outcome.

[22:43] We’re settling down to watch the films: Tattoo and Lament.

[22:49] Tattoo: centuries of deep conflict laid out on living flesh. Genuinely fascinating and – despite being essentially static – shot through with raw emotion.

[22:56] Lament: a shocking play on Paddy’s Lament that plays with expectations and ends like a lightning bolt.

[22:57] And that’s it – we’re closing down. Thanks to everyone who’s been following tonight, everyone who’s in the room, and to Central Station for making it all happen.