Multistory in association with The Public present Martin Parr’s unique look at life in the Black Country. After spending a year documenting modern day society and culture, The Public are preparing to unveil this collection of over 750 photographs.

Parr’s process of documenting and recording is fuelled by his passion and a curiosity, taking inspiration from his surroundings.  His intimate approach, photographing his subjects in their own environment, gives him space to explore their lives and values in ways that often involve inadvertent humour.

Running alongside this will be an exhibition of photographs by students and staff of Sandwell College Photography Department. ‘Show Me A Secret’ will explore and display their own interpretations of Black Country life following Martin Parr’s mentoring.

Both exhibitions run from Thursday 11 November 2010 to Sunday 23 January 2011; opening daily, 10am – 6pm, and have free entry.

The standout point from the presentation for me is this bit:

… despite the significant efforts of arts organisations and the Arts Council to broaden audiences – and there has been, and is, some really excellent work going on – our statistics show that there has been no significant shift in the profile of people who engage with the arts over the past three years.

This means that we can’t simply continue doing more of the same; it’s not working. We need a new approach

You can read the presentation to see how this is to be achieved (and from the tone of language used, it has to be achieved), but in a nutshell there’ll be:

• a programme of arts engagement activity
• a large-scale broadcast, media and marketing campaign
• targeting of an identified group of 12.8 million people who currently have some interest in the arts but have expressed an inclination/desire to do or see more
• a new national arts web portal

Locally, the programme is being coordinated by Audiences Central. Each region has been asked to pick a hot-spot to focus their activity on and in the West Mids it’ll be the Black Country. It’s hoped that the rest of the region will benefit from a ‘halo effect’ from this activity and from the national media campaign.

On this last point, the idea is to develop a brand and kitemark that venues, promoters, organisations, etc will want to apply to their work in the same way that many food producers have voluntarily taken up the 5-a-day brand.

Success will be measured via the national Taking Part survey and the Active Peoples survey (for local authorities that use an indicator called NI11 – hopefully that’ll mean something to someone).

I’m not sure what the budget for the national campaign is but, after much talk of ‘limited resources’, it transpired that the amount of cash available for the West Mids (and therefore the Black Country) is £200,000 over two years. Consequently there was much talk about partnership working and the reliance on organisations finding a benefit in piggybacking on the national campaign.

In the meantime, the Arts Council have set up a website at Hello Art where you can find out a little more and sign up for future updates. It’d be also be worth following Audiences Central for updates about the West Mids focus.

Finally (and because someone asked me to keep count):

• Mentions of The Big Picture – 7
• Mentions of the 5-a-day campaign – 7