A Request for Proposal is now open for a much ballyhooed Our Town Grant. The RFP states the grant is…”one of inaugural creative placemaking, that magnifies the role the Arts play in Brattleboro, and should inspire the community towards the imagination and creation of public art.” To these ends, I hereby submit two entries to the readers of this site, for consideration, potential collaboration and probable comment.
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Tale of the Tape
Nothing says Placemaking as much as an outline, and no outline is as iconic and clearly delimitating as the police warning tape. Since the place in question is our town, and the question of place is both the implied and explicit boundaries of such- where art happens- why not take the literal step and make art of a marker denoting an active investigation in progress.
ART SCENE: DO NOT CRUSH is a town wide installation, where hundreds of artists, artistes, assistants, appreciators, and assorted avants stand as one, circumscribing the town in tape for all to see and know. At the appointed hour participants will unfurl the tape, each in a prescribed sector, and by evening’s end the entire town will be lined and contained within the boundary that warns such activity as artmaking has happened, is happening, and most likely will occur in the future.
As artists are ever resourceful, often forced to create under austere conditions, the wastefulness of purchasing such an inscribed tape for one time use would be both indulgent and anathema. In response, our tape will be milled and pressed in local paper factories, made of biodegradable pond-weed pulled from the Retreat Meadows. The print will be a carbon based ink compound made from ashes of local woodstoves. The product may lack the expected sheen, smell fishy and smudge a bit, but nobody ever said art must be immaculate. “What counts is what’s inside”. By this demonstration of containment there can be no doubt that Brattleboro is both an arts source and destination.
Our Our Town
The Our Town grant affirms Brattleboro as a place of art making. The classic play, ‘Our Town’, describes a similar municipality as a place where life is lived, in varying degrees of artfulness. It seems only fitting, even delightfully meta, for the our town grant to go towards mounting an Our Town production, borrowing the plot and characters from Thornton Wilder’s drama, and adapting it to Brattleboro’s denizens and locales.
The story will be driven by the town manager, playing the role of the stage manager, a semi-omniscient narrator, elucidator, and catalyst for change. In the course of the action, BUHS, the Offices of the Reformer, BMH, Morningside Cemetery, and Brown and Roberts Hardware will be used to replicate the spots where decisive moments from the narrative occur.
The players will be cast from real life, with actual students playing students, doctors playing doctors, reporters playing reporters, and tourists playing tourists. In a twist that is both meta and mega, at one point an intermission will be declared, all cameras turned off, and the arc of the story will give way to “real life”, with all players proceeding to do what they do normally, affirming that in Brattleboro, life imitates Art as much as Art imitates life.
another one
This is a competitive process, so to share ideas ahead of time is somewhat risky.
One idea I had came from the statement about the cultural district in one of the grant reports that Brattleboro Artists are in it for themselves.
If that is true a reflection of the community might be best demonstrated by placing a pile of 50,000 $1 bills, say, at the Common and at a prescribed time letting any and all run toward said pile to take whatever they can get.
A film of this performance piece, with original music, could be made.
Perhaps the police tape idea could be incorporated.
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I like the version of Our Town proposed above.
Art Contest
I don’t remember seeing criteria, but something tells me the conceptual and subversive side of Art will not be strong contenders for the bucks. I like how your idea lays bare the go-get-em side of fundracing.
With so many styles and traditions to choose from, what are the various committees and selectors angling towards? Will the winner be propagandist, in Russian constructivist spirit, extolling our virtues? Or some ‘inspirational’ ornamentation? Will new and fledgling artists be boosted or will the nod go to the tired and true?
Mix and Match
One immediate thought that I had was that $50k is a lot of money. I wondered if we could hire Paul McCartney to come perform downtown.
I did a bit of research and while Mac is out of our budget range, quite a few lower-level celebrities are available.
For under 10k, you get look-alike celebrities, but also Jonathan Richman, or Marty Balin.
For 10-20k, options open up a bit: Adrian Belew, Biz Markie, Blue Oyster Cult, Buster Poindexter, Coolio, Crash Test Dummies, DJ Jazzy Jeff, Erik Estrada, Gallagher, Gordie Howe, Graham Nash, Grandmaster Flash, Herman’s Hermits, Kate McKinnon, KRS-One, Miss Piggy and Kermit, Peaches & Herb, Ray Parker Jr., Soft Cell, Tommy Chong, or Urge Overkill.
At the 20-30k level: 10,000 Maniacs, Adam West, Albert Brooks, Bel Biv Devoe, Catherine O’Hara, Courtney Love, David Cassidy, Digible Planets, Juliana Hatfield, Keith Emerson and Greg Lake, Marilu Henner, Marshall Tucker band, Molly Ringwald, Morris Day and the Time, Naughty by Nature, Rupaul, Sharon Osborne, Shelia E., The Human League, The Ohio Players, Twyla Tharp, or Yakov Smirnov.
Let's Put On A Show
I too like Spinoza’s Our Town idea, but if we’re going to hire bands then I want to get my vote in early for Jonathan Richman, Grandmaster Flash, and 10,000 Maniacs. We would have to feed them of course. You could probably get away with barbecue for the first two but the Maniacs would want vegan tabouli or something like that…
I think the main thing we want to avoid is a Mother Canada scenario (see recent news for details). Otherwise, I’d like to see the cash spread around a little — maybe a production of some kind would be good because it would require a lot of participants, some of whom could be paid.
What Brattleboro really needs, more than a big piece of art, is a good midsized performance venue for lower level, indie, local, grassroots performances, films, and presentations. The Church is great but it’s too fragile for a rock crowd, and other spaces are either too formal or too expensive. But a good music venue that wouldn’t cost a fortune to run and that was accessible to actual starving artists and musicians would be great. Unfortunately, this grant only covers art so I guess, by way of prediction, we’ll be getting some art.