Pulling in the right direction

So this New Opportunities Award adventure really began when I moved to Bridport in 2009. One of the things I noticed fairly quickly was that the town was referred to with righteous pride as a ‘working town’, as distinct from being a ‘second home’ or ‘tourist’ town. However, the live and serious industry of my new home remained a mystery to me up until my work on this commission. Although I’d spent five years getting familiar with Bridport Museum’s exhibits, and the town’s critical links to rope and netmaking, I hadn’t experienced any of this history in the making in my local community.

But I knew I wanted to discover more about the twists, the fibres, the knots and the people who made it happen. Since I began working freelance with Emily Hicks, Curator at Bridport Museum, over three years ago, I’ve been expressing an interest in working with the Museum’s rope/net Collection, and then this year, suddenly we’d submitted our New Expressions application and had it successfully selected for the national programme.

Bridport has a great allies in the Museum. Emily as its Curator, has an ambitious vision for the organisation and its visitors, which is backed up not only with her own hard work, great skills and warm sense of humour but that of the whole team too . So it’s not surprising that, undeterred by being in the middle of a huge funding bid, Emily was still keen to support me with my ideas. I’m still not sure if this was despite, or because I’d already roped her into delivering pop-up, classroom based exhibitions with me during Hutliving Here & There, which explored the historic and contemporary state of Dorset’s shepherds’ hut industry. Few things can be more instantly team-building or hilarious than a fresh classroom of primary children interrogating visitors as to which of them is due to marry the teacher (Reader, neither of us.).

Since Bridport Knots was selected by the New Expressions panel back in the spring, Emily and her team have welcomed and accommodated me in the History Centre and at the Museum. I’ve been allowed not  only to explore boxes, antiques ledgers and string vests, but also to share in the volunteers’ discoveries, and the gloriously civilised elevenses. Complete with biscuits. Really good biscuits.

Although I haven’t begun my blog until after spending months researching, thinking, discussing, evaluating and sifting ideas for the work which will be made for public exhibition May 2015, I’ve gathered a tome’s worth of incisive ponderings which I’ll share with you over the next few months. But only if your biscuits can keep me in the luxury to which I’ve become accustomed.