About Art Beyond Belief
About Art Beyond Belief
Art Beyond Belief was formed in 2005 with a project that looked at the Christian Stations of the Cross – the Via Dolorosa project. This project was designed to see whether an art-based interpretation could deliver the same impact as a traditional liturgical version. Within a week of the project conception, we had added another challenge – what if the artists who took part in this project were of different faiths? With these two elements established we developed the project idea into what became the project realisation, a set of fifteen stations, each interpreted as a multimedia presentation lasting around four minutes each. We received funding totalling £40,000 the majority from Arts Council England, with some from the Diocese of Oxford, and were able to present the work via five impressive large-screen monitors that kept the physical journey that represents the spiritual journey that all our artists had found fascinating. In 2006 the Via Dolorosa project was shown for four months at Christ Church Cathedral Oxford, where it was seen by around 47,000 people (the Cathedral’s own estimate). In summer 2006 the Via Dolorosa project was awarded the Mayor of Slough’s Best Arts Project 2006.
In summer 2005 we ran a pilot project to take live music into the geriatric wards of Slough’s Upton Hospital. The venture was a huge success and led to the implementation of a further development, with a musician working with the Chief Physiotherapist and a small group of Parkinson’s patients to see whether an anticipatory musician could improve the gait and walking pattern of these patients. This project won the Physiotherapy team at Upton Hospital the Extra Mile award at a ceremony hosted by Berkshire PCT. The project was competing with many more expensive programmes and won because of its combination of creativity and simplicity.
Next, we took a look at stigmatised communities; refugees, young offenders, those on probation, the out of work over-50’s, and those with mental health problems, and devised a project in which teams of two people from one stigmatised community video-interviewed members of a different stigmatised community, about matters of outlook and employment. My Story was funded by the Berkshire Community Foundation.
The lessons learned from My Story were of immense value when we started our next project in March 2006 with a £23,000 grant from the Community Development Foundation. Faith Junction took teams of two people from one faith and asked them to interview two members of a different faith. The funding enabled us to cover the four major faiths represented in the Slough area; Christianity, Hinduism, Islam and Sikhism and used ordinary lay people from each faith for a total of twenty five interviews, each lasting around half an hour. With My Story we taught the teams some interview techniques, and some video camera techniques. For Faith Junction we used an experienced video cameraman, so that the interviewers could concentrate entirely on the questions (we also avoided the variable quality of novice video-operators). Editing was done in-house. Training workshops in interviewing techniques were set up for all those taking part, and included important essentials such as not interrupting, and how to help the editing process by remaining silent and using head movements to signal encouragement to interviewees. Important confidence-building was also built into the course, which used much BBC content by courtesy of our Secretary of the Board of Trustees, who was working for the BBC at the time. The ten questions posed by Faith Junction were formulated by the Slough Faith Partnership. Many of the outcomes from Faith Junction were surprising. During the interview recording sessions, we realised that we had something very special, and the editing sessions confirmed this. Outcomes were often about faith in the community, and many issues were raised that could be earmarked for future discussion.
This led directly to a successful application to the Equality and Human Rights Commission for funding (£27,000) for a Festival of Dialogue, a series of round table discussions on outcomes from Faith Junction culminating in a Conference in February 2009. Novel touches to the Festival include a fortnight of “borrow a person” from the central library.
Finally, the last two years have seen the development of our Art Monitor series of programmes. Using digital imaging techniques, these programmes were eighteen months in development, and use colour, perspective, and comic strip as part of their components. Funded at £30,000 by Arts Council England, with a further £13,000 from others, programme delivery commenced in March this year and has already achieved extraordinary results. Take-up by the local PCT is currently being negotiated. Work with autism is an interesting development for September.
In October 2008, we ran a community programme called Our Stories, which was funded by the European Commission in London. During this year Art Beyond Belief became a company limited by guarantee, and was awarded registered charity status in July.
As the Festival of Dialogue comes to an end in February 2009, we are working on the development of our Insight interfaith training programme for the Diocese of Oxford and Guildford, funded by Halley Stewart Trust, and on Rucksack, which focuses on development and delivery of Art Monitor programmes to the siblings of children with autism, funded by LankellyChase Foundation. We have a number of other projects in the pipeline – visit our website – www.art-beyond-belief.com for news and latest developments.
Art Beyond Belief: February 2009
