Dr Harry Meadley

Artist Harry Meadley likes to turn whole art galleries into artworks. Instead of just filling galleries with things he has created, he is interested in the potential of art spaces becoming sites of public discourse, and in this case, by offering the gallery spaces at Touchstones to the people of Rochdale - to become a site of self-led public activity. For everyone, by anyone. Following a call-out to the people of Rochdale community groups, artists, schools and, well... everybody, Free-for-All has blossomed into a programme of family events, crafts, film, wellbeing and more, all devised and delivered by you. You've brought the ideas, we've provided the space, time and the support of our team, and the result is a packed seven weeks of events, exhibitions and activities, celebrating the creativity and ambition of the borough of Rochdale. But it doesn't stop there... whilst the exhibition is on, we are still welcoming members of the public to talk to us about staging their own events, displaying their own artworks, arranging meet-ups, rehearsals, playing games, or using the galleries in other ways no one else has thought of. This is a very different type of exhibition where the boundaries between audience, artist, participant or performer have been purposefully broken down. Free-for-All is very much a trial, a starting point and a chance for Touchstones to begin making hundreds of new connections with people in the borough. The hope is that regular 'free-for-alls' can start to fit with in the wider Touchstones programme in the years to come, leading to the gallery becoming a new type of civic institution.

Castlefield Gallery and Venture Arts present Thumbs Up. The gallery will be reimagined by the four artists as a place of research and learning, conversation and exchange. Responding to the physical spaces of the gallery the artists have developed the scale, materials, and methods of their work over a seven month development period during which they worked alongside each other using Studio 53 at Venture Arts. Working closely with the University of Salford has also expanded the project to incorporate expert advice on topics including; botany, energy efficiency, psychology, and horticulture in the development of new work for the exhibition. The audience will activate the space and encounter works in new and unexpected ways. The artists have been working alongside each other and this time has helped them to find corresponding themes in their work such as connections in popular culture, travel, movement, and use of colour. These meeting points will shape way the works interact in the gallery, creating a welcoming and enveloping intervention in the depths of winter. Thumbs Up marks the latest development in a partnership between Castlefield Gallery and Venture Arts. One strand of the collaboration, alongside the Whitworth, was recognised by the 2019 Manchester Culture Awards winning the award for Inspiring Innovation. Both organisations are deeply invested in offering sustainable residency and professional development opportunities for early-career and learning-disabled artists in the North, and committed to improving inclusion and accessibility in the arts. Following the exhibition a selection of work developed by each of the artists will enter into the permanent collection of the University of Salford Art Collection.

‘But what if we tried?’ was an exhibition conceived in response to the common complaint made by visitors to Touchstones, Rochdale (and to many other municipal art galleries) that ‘not enough of the collection was on display’. As an artwork in itself—artist Harry Meadley challenged the public gallery to attempt present every artwork in their 1600+ collection within a single exhibition. An additional six-part docuseries filmed by Meadley followed the staff in the year leading up to and during the exhibition itself. Deemed an impossible task due to multiple factors, the focus was on the process of the attempt, rather than just the realisation, in an effort to expose and explore the many realities faced by the regional gallery—as well as the larger threats to public ownership. Prior to this exhibition Rochdale Borough Council was considering beginning to sell-off works from its publicly owned collection. As one of the most highly attended exhibitions in the gallery’s long history (17,966 visitors) ‘But what if we tried?’ challenged many of the gallery’s, as well as the sector’s, assumptions about the role their often underutilised public collections can play. Rochdale Borough Council rescinded these considerations during the exhibition. The exhibition was realised with £15,000 combined funding from Arts Council England and The Foyle Foundation. Harry Meadley received the civic ‘Artist of the Year’ 2019 Rochdale Borough Sports & Culture Award. Coverage included BBC1 North West Tonight (18 Feb 2019), The Guardian (2 March 2019), Art Monthly (April 2019) and Corridor8 (April 2019). Part 1 of the docuseries was exhibited at the Great Exhibition of The North, BALTIC39, Newcastle (June — October 2018). Harry Meadley and Bryan Beresford (Curatorial & Community Engagement Coordinator, Touchstones) gave a presentation at the UK Registrars Group conference ‘Magical Mystery Store’ at Tate Liverpool (10 May 2019).

A point, a period, or a step in a process, We Are Where We Are is a dark place for moving forward. Works will be in, underneath and between treated walls. This exhibition at BALTIC 39, Newcastle upon Tyne showcases new and existing works by Liverpool Biennial Associate Artists, 11 artists from the North of England. The show and programme are the culmination of a three-year initiative by Liverpool Biennial, in partnership with Independent Curators International, New York and CACTUS, Liverpool.

This publication is an attempt to share some of this learning that either informed, or has been informed by, a project / exhibition I did at Touchstones, Rochdale in the summer of 2022. Called Free-for-All, the idea was that it would essentially be that – a free-for-all. Anyone who lived in the Borough of Rochdale could approach the gallery to exhibit in, occupy, or use any of the four main (and quite large) gallery spaces however they want. It was a total unknown as to how this would be received, play out, be managed, or whether it would be a total disaster. The only real rule was that, whatever happened, it had to be free to attend.

This thesis accompanies the project Civic Skateboarding developed for Leeds 2023 Year of Culture that culminated in a mini-festival seeking to support the growing female and marginalised gender skateboard community in Leeds, UK. Starting from John Latham and Barbara Steveni’s conceptions of the ‘Incidental Person’ for the Artist Placement Group (1966–1979), this thesis considers what we might deem the incidental positionality of the contemporary artist working within socially engaged art practice and how this offers opportunity for increased inclusion and participation in the use of civic space. Intentionally adopting an incidental position between the local skateboard community, arts organisations, universities, and the local authority, the key question of this research is how the role of the artist can be utilised to establish mutually beneficial relationships in support of actively excluded groups, such as female and marginalised gender skateboarders, who are disproportionality affected by a lack of safety in public space. Seeking to be what Natalie Loveless might term ‘polydisciplinamorous’, there is an intention in both the production, dissemination and analysis of this practice-based research to simultaneously court the fields of socially engaged art practice and skateboard academia. This research attempts to align the prefigurative power of socially engaged skateboarding with artistic concepts such as Jeanne Van Heeswijk’s notion of the ‘not-yet’ and the practices of ‘gotong royong’ (mutual assistance) and ‘nongkrong’ (hanging out) employed by Indonesian artist collectives such as ruangrupa. In doing so, a range of concerns emerge: addressing gender exclusions within skateboard culture and skate urbanism; the leveraging of evolving arts funding policies; the adoption of agonistic or affable artistic approaches; strategic entitlement and the disambiguation of grey space; the moral right of the artist and what protections this may afford; as well as the resolution of deep disagreements, or what Jean-François Lyotard describes as ‘the differend’.

Caught between prohibitive policies, lack of public safety and exclusionary behaviours within the skate community, this film explores issues of safety concerning a group of female and marginalised gender skateboarders in Leeds, UK. Building on the work of Civic Skateboarding, a project attempting to make public spaces safer and more inclusive, this film seeks to offer further insight into the experiences, viewpoints and hopes from this often overlooked community.

Harry will discuss the project Civic Skateboarding developed and delivered as part of the Leeds 2023 Year of Culture. This co-created mini-festival and socially engaged artwork utilised a system of partnership and relationship building between cultural institutions and the female and marginalised gender skateboard community who are disproportionately affected by a lack of safety in public space. Through working with the skateboard community and aligning them with the community engagement remits of local arts organisations, this effort sought to engender a broader dialogue about the exclusions many female and marginalised gender skaters face within both urban spaces and skateboarding itself. Featuring excerpts from the accompanying documentary film Where Do You Want Us? (Dir. Harry Meadley & Sarah Oglesby) this keynote will shed light on an often-overlooked community who face extensive barriers to pursuing the sport that they love.

This talk provides an account of the ongoing art project Civic Skateboarding commissioned for the Leeds 2023 Year of Culture. Caught in the complex dynamic of essentially being tasked by Leeds City Council to deliver a socially engaged project with the city’s street skateboarding community, yet at the same time prohibited by council byelaws from using the city’s public spaces; what has emerged is a strategy to contextualise street skating within the arts and culture sector by building relationships with the art galleries, theatres and civic institutions that find themselves being popular skate spots. Due to a shift in arts funding policies in England to require publicly funded arts institutions and venues to provide greater social impact and inclusion, many are realising (or being made to realise through projects such as this) that the skateboarders they traditionally tried to remove from their facades are now a highly valuable resource for their public engagement aims. As a community that is widely diverse in terms of gender, ethnicity, sexuality, age, and as a culture that is inherently creative, can skateboarding’s cultural capital now be used to barter for improved safety, inclusion, and accessibility in the city’s public spaces? This project has paid particular attention to the growing number of female and gender minority skateboarders who are disproportionally affected by the lack of safety in public spaces and the policies that enable abuses of power. They have become central to its direction and even begun to provide official consultations on future city planning. Civic Skateboarding also serves to highlight the connection between skateboarding and art education, and the value in an artist working with a community they are themselves part of.

This paper provides an account of the ongoing art project Civic Skate boarding commissioned for the Leeds 2023 Year of Culture. Caught in the complex dynamic of being funded by Leeds City Council to deliver a socially engaged project with the city’s street skateboarding community, yet at the same time prohibited by council byelaws from using the city’s public spaces; what has emerged is a surprisingly successful strategy whereby contextualising street skating within the arts and culture sector has allowed for building relationships with the art galleries, theatres and civic institutions that find themselves being popular skate spots. These relationships then providing a short-cut to lobby the Council to consider making changes to policies and local byelaws. Due to a shift in arts funding policies in England to require publicly funded arts institutions and venues to provide greater social impact and inclusion, many are realising (or being made to realise through projects such as this) that the skateboarders they traditionally tried to remove from their facades are now a highly valuable resource for their public engagement aims. As a community that is widely diverse in terms of gender, ethnicity, sexuality, age, and as a culture is inherently creative, skateboarding’s cultural capital can now be used to barter for improved safety, inclusion, and accessibility in the city’s public spaces. This project has paid particular attention to the growing number of female and gender minority skateboarders who are disproportionally affected by the lack of safety in public spaces and the policies that enable abuses of power. They have become central to its direction and even begun to provide official consultations on future city planning. Civic Skateboarding also serves to highlight the connection between skateboarding and art education, and the value in an artist working with a community they are themselves part of.

In 2017 Leeds-based artist Harry Meadley was invited to participate in the Contemporary Forward programme at Touchstones Rochdale Art Gallery – a 2 year-long series of ambitious new contemporary commissions, projects and exhibitions closely aligned to the Gallery’s strategic vision and funded by the Arts Council England, Henry Moore Foundation, Foyle Foundation and others. Intrigued that visitors often question why the Gallery doesn’t show more of the over 1600 works in the fine art collection, Meadley set the small team the daunting challenge of displaying as much of it as possible in one single exhibition. Meadley and Curatorial & Community Engagement Assistant Bryan Beresford will share their experiences of working on this innovative project, and screen parts of the documentary film that accompanied it.

Publication accompanying the exhibition Case Studies as part of the Leeds Arts Research Centre.

This six-part docuseries accompanied the exhibition But what if we tried? at Touchstones, Rochdale, 2019, and follows the Touchstones staff as they endeavour to realise this impossible task of exhibiting as many artworks from their 1500+ collection in a single exhibition as possible.

Side-by-Side is a new annual community-led arts festival developed by Touchstones, Rochdale with Creative Lead Harry Meadley.

Presented as part of A Wheely Workshop, hosted by the Moving Bodies Lab, which explored research and creative practices engaging with a range of wheeled technologies.

Civic Skateboarding was a mini-festival about forming better relationships between skateboarders and Leeds’ civic and cultural institutions in order to better protect one another. It paid particular attention to the growing number of female and marginalised gender skateboarders who are disproportionally affected by the lack of safety in public spaces and was co-created, co-curated, and co-skated by many members of the Leeds skateboard community. Over the course of the "big weekend" (16-17 September 2023), there was an exhibition, film screening, audio artwork, skate-able public sculpture and a series of inclusive and supportive street skating sessions at different spots throughout the city centre. Everything was free, and designed to be inclusive of all abilities, genders and ages – a non-competitive skate event with the goal of everyone becoming a participant rather than just a spectator.