Midwest documentation

Welcome to the Midwest

I few days ago I stumbled across some documentation for the Midwest programme on the a-n website:

Midwest (2003-2008) was a visual arts project developed by Jason E Bowman, Rachel Bradley and Julie Crawshaw – with many contributions from artists, curators and thinkers – to complement the development of artistic practices within the visual arts.

Midwest aimed to develop regional, national and international dialogue and partnerships within the visual arts profession to:

* Develop the ambitions and capacity of artists and artist-curators within the West Midlands
* Develop a critical mass of nationally and internationally active practitioners
* Support the development of the West Midlands region as a European centre for artist-led activity and debate.

Midwest developed a web-based global community and an on the ground programme in the West Midlands and throughout the UK including: talks, project development events, research and development trips and a graduate showcase exhibition.

Thank you to Rachel Bradley for providing the following pdfs for publication and wider dissemination. The reports offer insights into Midwest’s development work and expose vital thinking around artist-led activity and culture.

Midwest – Overview

This document provides an overview of the work, activities and programmes of Midwest – a catalyst for creative thought and action to complement the development of artistic practice within the visual arts.
Download as PDF

Midwest – Word of Mouth

‘Word of Mouth’ was a programme of activity designed to build capacity for the development of (inter)national projects in the West Midlands region, UK. The programme involved a series of three evening workshops at VIVID (a project space for Media Arts in Birmingham) and a weekend of workshops at 22 Green Street (an artist-led project space in Birmingham).
Download report as PDF

Midwest – Know your Place

‘Know Your Place’ was a programme that examined the potential for artist-led policy intervention in cultural strategy and development. It profiled the environments and contexts of both cultural developers and artist-led initiatives, examining top-down and bottom-up approaches to policy development.
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Midwest – Up, Up and Away

Dr Pete Mann was invited to facilitate the demise of Midwest through a final two-day workshop called ‘Up, Up and Away’, in February 2008. Pete contributes to international and cross-cultural programmes of innovatory learning and research practice. His research interests in action learning and action research, experiential learning, tacit knowledge and organisation and management development gave him a global learning perspective to make sense of Midwest. Pete was invited to find out how the participants experienced and valued Midwest as a ‘learning initiative’.
Download report as PDF

I graduated from my art degree in 2006, so Midwest was going on just as I was starting to do stuff for real. I attended a few of the later events and they hugeley shaped my thinking and my practical skills for things like project planning. Self Service always said it was spawned from the early Midwest events, so all in all I owe a lot to Midwest for my early professional development.

Thanks to Jason, Rachel and Julie for putting it all together, and for everyone else who was part of the various events and meetings.

I’m off now to wield my Project Planning Matrix.