Getting involved – Friction Arts work towards bringing the Eastside artistic community and local Digbeth and Highgate residents closer together, because let’s face it, they often feel miles apart at the moment. It seems it’s time for some great, practical action:
So we’ve come up with some opportunities for others to get involved in their local community. On September the 4th we are running ‘Highgate Funday’, in Highgate park next to the Paragon hotel (or the Rowton house, as older members of the community call it). The funday is intended to be an event where ‘Royston Vasey meets the Bouncy Castle’ – if you get the picture, and we’re working with community groups and individuals in the area to showcase some of their skills alongside artists that live or work in the area. The idea is to create links between Highgate and their neighbours working in Eastside – at present there may as well be a twenty foot wall between them. So we’ll be having the usual funday stuff like face painting, food stalls, etc, but there’ll also be some art interventions and displays as well.
This will be followed, over the next couple of weekends, by the ‘Inside Out Festival’, where we’ll be making a series of exhibitions, interventions, film screenings and the like, leading from Highgate into deepest Eastside – bringing Highgate residents across to Eastside and Eastside denizens across to Highgate. So, if you are an artist who lives or works in the area and you’d like an opportunity to put something back into the community you inhabit, please get in touch and we’ll find a way for you to be included – we have a small budget for this, but all the actual work is being done on a voluntary basis, so we can only offer to cover expenses. We promise it’ll be fun, and you’ll get that nice, warm glow from doing something unselfish – and who knows, you might get to develop friendships with your neighbours. Now wouldn’t that be great?
