Taking the Happy.

All
Shifting spaces
Bring the happy is an installation in the heart of Leeds attempting to collect, map and share the memories of the residents and visitors to the city. It has now been open to the public for just over a week and I wanted to write a bit about my feelings on the project and its developments.
There has been a steady flow of people passing through the shop, lots responding positively wanting to add their story to the map then and there, some saying they want to have a think and return later and plenty wanting to see the aptly named `appy feet’ fish next door. No matter how thoroughly you plan how a participatory piece is going to work it never performs the way you expected it to and it is only when the thing is up that you realise really what is at the projects heart and how to move it on in new directions. It is this movement of the work that I feel is most difficult but crucial to its success, to fight the urge to push it back into the pretty image of it you had in your head but to let it become the thing it becomes once functioning. I am incredibly lucky to have the opportunity to run a public installation of this scale for two months, as it is something new to me and to develop it all throughout the process, to not be precious about what it becomes is an invaluable challenge.
We launched on light night to an unexpected packed shop (at one point the room looked like a gig not an installation), it was beautiful to see people finding their houses and children sitting in the forest but also banging on the middle of the maps and adults sloshing around sangria, someone closing the digital map and instead watching a pre loaded video of a seal. It never fails to re-surprise me that once the work is handed over, as soon as people interact with it, it is no longer yours but its own entity. When we first came up with the concept we talked of making a user-generated installation to a high quality and I feel we have succeeded in the prior perhaps more than we accounted for and I have had to stop myself wincing as children make a b-line for the rods and as people run their fingers down the streets they recognise. Of course children will come in and pull all the shiny things off the map and actually that means the piece is working that it is tactile and approachable enough that it is treated in such a way.
Over the week other people have engaged by not wanting to hear about it at all or making their own snap judgements; how much does this cost? what do you get out of it? it all seems very corporate etc. and when I have responded some listen, some do not and every response actually in a project like this is valid, no matter if I agree with them or not. We have a phone box installation that works very much the same, it asks you to leave an answer for a left question or to leave a question of your own. What people define as a question is very interesting from someone reciting a piece of poetry to the Nigerian saying I hope you are feeling fine today? Children tend to pick up the phone and talk for about 20mins (who they are talking to I am not sure) we have had them shut their parents out screaming `I am on the phone’, even clicking and re-clicking the audio so it repeats hello, hello, hello. People make it what they want and even if it is not what we initially made there’s something that really excites me about this.  I am interested when people start to change the piece, and when the piece can accommodate that and become something else. In fact we aim for this in a lot of our practice. In The Agency, a performance board game, the players can if they desire make up new rules and in our pervasive game Follow the bird strangers have formed teams of their own accord and chosen not to follow the predetermined route through the game but craft their own way through it. Often in our game-based work, these are the people that win.
But back to BTH. On Friday we received a call at 5pm telling us that we had been evicted from the shop and needed to be out by Tuesday. Although we had an agreement with the shopping centre the landlord pushed through a contract anyway, knowing what the project was about and that it had only been up a week. As it was Friday night there was little we could do to problem solve and we were actually at a festival in Derby with the phone box. On retrospect this may have been the best place to be. After an initial bit of heartbreak we relaxed into the fact that there was always a chance of this happening with a letting shop space and although I’m not pretending that I’m not really angry about the way it was handled and that someone along the line knew what we were doing and said `fuck them do it anyway’, this is a research project into working with business’s and working in different spaces. Whilst the light was a lovely space to make and launch the project and it is a shame we have only been open here a week, we have an opportunity to spread across more than one space and to reach another kind of audience somewhere else. We had become too attached, to fixed, forgetting that the project has always been designed to be mobile; the map modular, the computers on plinths. In all honesty we were looking forward to a week of casual traffic in the light, best for us, but not necessarily for the project.
The phone box will remain in The Light, collecting left memories as audios and the map will sit in two lets in old Leeds market a very bright, loud and more chaotic environment. We are looking to host the touch screens somewhere different entirely, spreading the piece across the city and hopefully uniting various spaces. It is our hope that the people who went away to think about their happy memory are successfully redirected to the Market or can access the project online. That people visit the new clothes store and mention they preferred the changing room when it was a forest. That perhaps the project made a little impact to the space in the short time it existed there. I feel that sometimes something difficult and frustrating needs to happen for you remember why you were doing it in the first place and the project is a response to things closing down and although I don’t agree with cut throat business actually Rich was right in saying who are we to suppose that the public prefer art in these spaces than new clothes stores (although I hope they would).
Bring the Happy is not about the space it sits within, it is about happiness and a celebration and sharing of memories across the whole city. It is about children grabbing hold of the rods, people showing each other where they live and the old couple who came in the day we were closing to leave a memory of the first time they met, on the dance floor in 1958.
Free on Saturday from 7pm-9pm non zero one will be performing Hold hands/lock horns in the now empty shop in the Light. The performance is for one person every 6 minutes and is about following paths and making choices in the space, come down and try it out and then a month later come do it amongst the rails of clothes and tell us which one you prefer, we would honestly like to know.

happy front page web

Here’s a guest post from Victoria Pratt from Invisible Flock, who are doing the Bring the Happy project . . . which I was going to say was in The Light . . . I’ll let Victoria explain. Terrific idea though, everyone should go and see them, wherever they may be. (Check out some earlier musings around Bring the Happy here)

Shifting spaces

Bring the happy is an installation in the heart of Leeds attempting to collect, map and share the memories of the residents and visitors to the city. It has now been open to the public for just over a week and I wanted to write a bit about my feelings on the project and its developments.

There has been a steady flow of people passing through the shop, lots responding positively wanting to add their story to the map then and there, some saying they want to have a think and return later and plenty wanting to see the aptly named `appy feet’ fish next door. No matter how thoroughly you plan how a participatory piece is going to work it never performs the way you expected it to and it is only when the thing is up that you realise really what is at the projects heart and how to move it on in new directions. It is this movement of the work that I feel is most difficult but crucial to its success, to fight the urge to push it back into the pretty image of it you had in your head but to let it become the thing it becomes once functioning. I am incredibly lucky to have the opportunity to run a public installation of this scale for two months, as it is something new to me and to develop it all throughout the process, to not be precious about what it becomes is an invaluable challenge.

We launched on light night to an unexpected packed shop (at one point the room looked like a gig not an installation), it was beautiful to see people finding their houses and children sitting in the forest but also banging on the middle of the maps and adults sloshing around sangria, someone closing the digital map and instead watching a pre loaded video of a seal. It never fails to re-surprise me that once the work is handed over, as soon as people interact with it, it is no longer yours but its own entity. When we first came up with the concept we talked of making a user-generated installation to a high quality and I feel we have succeeded in the prior perhaps more than we accounted for and I have had to stop myself wincing as children make a b-line for the rods and as people run their fingers down the streets they recognise. Of course children will come in and pull all the shiny things off the map and actually that means the piece is working that it is tactile and approachable enough that it is treated in such a way.

Over the week other people have engaged by not wanting to hear about it at all or making their own snap judgements; how much does this cost? what do you get out of it? it all seems very corporate etc. and when I have responded some listen, some do not and every response actually in a project like this is valid, no matter if I agree with them or not. We have a phone box installation that works very much the same, it asks you to leave an answer for a left question or to leave a question of your own. What people define as a question is very interesting from someone reciting a piece of poetry to the Nigerian saying I hope you are feeling fine today? Children tend to pick up the phone and talk for about 20mins (who they are talking to I am not sure) we have had them shut their parents out screaming `I am on the phone’, even clicking and re-clicking the audio so it repeats hello, hello, hello. People make it what they want and even if it is not what we initially made there’s something that really excites me about this.  I am interested when people start to change the piece, and when the piece can accommodate that and become something else. In fact we aim for this in a lot of our practice. In The Agency, a performance board game, the players can if they desire make up new rules and in our pervasive game Follow the bird strangers have formed teams of their own accord and chosen not to follow the predetermined route through the game but craft their own way through it. Often in our game-based work, these are the people that win.

But back to BTH. On Friday we received a call at 5pm telling us that we had been evicted from the shop and needed to be out by Tuesday. Although we had an agreement with the shopping centre the landlord pushed through a contract anyway, knowing what the project was about and that it had only been up a week. As it was Friday night there was little we could do to problem solve and we were actually at a festival in Derby with the phone box. On retrospect this may have been the best place to be. After an initial bit of heartbreak we relaxed into the fact that there was always a chance of this happening with a letting shop space and although I’m not pretending that I’m not really angry about the way it was handled and that someone along the line knew what we were doing and said `fuck them do it anyway’, this is a research project into working with business’s and working in different spaces. Whilst the light was a lovely space to make and launch the project and it is a shame we have only been open here a week, we have an opportunity to spread across more than one space and to reach another kind of audience somewhere else. We had become too attached, to fixed, forgetting that the project has always been designed to be mobile; the map modular, the computers on plinths. In all honesty we were looking forward to a week of casual traffic in the light, best for us, but not necessarily for the project.

The phone box will remain in The Light, collecting left memories as audios and the map will sit in two lets in old Leeds market a very bright, loud and more chaotic environment. We are looking to host the touch screens somewhere different entirely, spreading the piece across the city and hopefully uniting various spaces. It is our hope that the people who went away to think about their happy memory are successfully redirected to the Market or can access the project online. That people visit the new clothes store and mention they preferred the changing room when it was a forest. That perhaps the project made a little impact to the space in the short time it existed there. I feel that sometimes something difficult and frustrating needs to happen for you remember why you were doing it in the first place and the project is a response to things closing down and although I don’t agree with cut throat business actually Rich was right in saying who are we to suppose that the public prefer art in these spaces than new clothes stores (although I hope they would).

Bring the Happy is not about the space it sits within, it is about happiness and a celebration and sharing of memories across the whole city. It is about children grabbing hold of the rods, people showing each other where they live and the old couple who came in the day we were closing to leave a memory of the first time they met, on the dance floor in 1958.

Free on Saturday from 7pm-9pm non zero one will be performing Hold hands/lock horns in the now empty shop in the Light. The performance is for one person every 6 minutes and is about following paths and making choices in the space, come down and try it out and then a month later come do it amongst the rails of clothes and tell us which one you prefer, we would honestly like to know.