The New Fringe - Text Art - Sacha Gray
“The project is about experimenting with ways The New Fringe can help stimulate creativity within the community, in our homes during the isolation of Covid 19. How we can reach and engage people who don’t normally engage with art or creative activity and get a message across to the Doncaster public that ‘art’ is actually accessible and worth getting involved with.
It’s about connecting people through simple collaborations.
My role in the New Fringe focuses on how art activity is distributed within Doncaster, how art is viewed and engaged with by the general public as well as how we as artists work within Doncaster.
The idea of Text Art originated from artist Anton Hetch who predominantly works in the realms of participatory art and Doncaster Creates Mike Stubbs. Text can be less ambiguous and feel more familiar to work with for people who are not used to art activity so it’s a great inroad into art.
We started by inviting members of the New Fringe to think about how they could involve people they knew, who wouldn’t normally do art activity. To collaborate with them, even if that just meant providing words for the artist to work. Then the artist extended to working together on ideas or the ‘non artist’ making their own art for the project.
All of these communications were either by phone or with the magic of technology. I think artists reaching out to the general public for their creative input in projects will have an impact in terms of how art is perceived by non artists. I really hope that this project will have made the public curious and wonder how they can have art in their lives. I also hope to have sent a message out to Doncaster that art can be as playful and as easy as people want it to be. Doncaster art organisations are friendly, approachable places and safe to engage with without fear.”
