So if you haven’t already heard of this programme, read on, because artists this sounds Amazing (yes, it deserves a capital).
Extra Special People (ESP) is a membership programme run by Eastside Projects, for anyone who would benefit from engaging with a dynamic, ambitious, artist-led environment.
ESP members are offered a range of opportunities to develop their practice and career through critical group discussions, practical support and guidance, exhibition and residency opportunities, networking events and one-to-one support from established arts professionals and ESP staff. Dialogue between members is generated through a weekly programme of informal and formal event including seminars, talks, film screenings and visits to projects, exhibitions and events in other UK cities.
There are a number of opportunities currently available, visit the website to read more and apply, along with a rundown of this months programme of events.
For more information on attending events and joining ESP, contact info@extraspecialpeople.org.
This sounds like the sort of thing that doesn’t stand a cat in hell’s chance of surviving next month’s Government spending bloodbath.
Maybe it’s my inner Tory surfacing as I get older, but this looks to me like my taxes being spent for no obvious societal benefit?
It’s a paid membership thing, so guess it would depend on how many people they could get signed up to it/how much it relies on subsidy.
Anyone been and fancy reporting back?
For the first 18months ESP was run by the staff and directors at Eastside Projects and other artists/visitors connected to the programme (mostly giving their time for free). We have a little funding from ACE for one year but also have a growing membership – currently over 80 – who pay a small amount each month. So if the funding did go we would be able to run the programme – though we can be more ambitious with it.
I guess it depends on how you define ‘societal benefit’. ESP has supported new projects like An Endless Supply and The Lombard Method as they developed, as well as giving various emerging artists opportunities to show work, and access networks – mostly outside the region – which has helped them to begin to develop their careers.
Eastside Projects is led by artists. We recognised we could use the gallery and its contacts and networks to benefit other people and help them to get a foothold in the world of contemporary art. I guess we figure its a long game. Personally I benefitted a lot from similar projects at an early stage in my career and that support enabled me to get to a point where I am being commissioned and included in public exhibitions and projects in the UK and Internationally. In purely economic terms this means I pay more tax so am effectively paying back that ‘subsidy’. Hopefully the work I make also has some harder to quantify cultural value also.
Dialogue, practical and critical help and peer support can be vital when you are trying to develop as an artist/curator/writer and presumably Rob you would agree that society benefits from having at least some of them around?
“Dialogue, practical and critical help and peer support can be vital when you are trying to develop as an artist/curator/writer and presumably Rob you would agree that society benefits from having at least some of them around?”
Certainly, although I’m not sure what a curator actually does.
My comments on the project’s funding were based on a brief trawl through the Eastside Projects and ESP websites, which seem to suggest (at least if the proliferation of logos of publicly-funded organisations is to be believed) that October could be a month of complete meltdown for any number of these bodies.
To be fair Rob three logos is hardly a proliferation and one of them is the Paul Hamlyn foundation (which is not publicly funded). Maybe you should come down to the next show – Jennifer Tee – or to one of the Thursday evening ESP events to see what we do.
If I can, I will. Thank you for the invitation.