All Points North

We hit Newcastle Upon Tyne last week to check in with the Turning Point Network team. Whilst there we took some time out to interview Julia Bell about All Points North, a project that bring together arts organisations across the North of England to profile some extraodrinary events happening throughout the autumn.

The video of the interview is above, and a copy of the official Press Release for All Points North is below:

This Autumn, the stars align in the contemporary art world of the North of England to produce a unique set of national and international exhibitions and events that present the whole spectrum of contemporary art practice, that tells the full story of artists’ careers from ‘emerging’ to ‘making it’ and ‘arriving’.

All Points North (APN) is an initiative set up to profile the strength of contemporary art events and festivals happening in the North East, North West and Yorkshire and Humber regions this Autumn, alongside promoting the major contemporary art venues that surround them.

APN is centred around six satellite festivals, exhibitions and prizes, highlighting the different stages in an artist’s working life and the internationalism and experimentalism shown by contemporary artists working today.

The progression of an artist’s career from graduation to ‘making it’ is explored via Bloomberg New Contemporaries which offers emerging artists a platform to be thrust into the art scene and the Northern Art Prize which profiles artists based in the North at all career stages. In addition, the Turner Prize 2011 will be presented at BALTIC in association with Tate – the first time this prestigious award will take place beyond Tate.

In contrast to these, the Abandon Normal Devices festival (AND) focuses on how contemporary artists, new, emerging and established are working experimentally across new media whilst the International Print Biennale is the UK’s only event dedicated to contemporary printmaking. Asia Triennial Manchester 11 (ATM11) is a showcase of current contemporary art from Asia and the UK and a partner of The Manchester Weekender 2011 which completes the APN event line-up, revealing the international aspect of contemporary art practice today.

Alongside the events, APN brings to the fore some of the UK’s leading art institutions that are based in the North. These include BALTIC, mima Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, The Hepworth Wakefield, Manchester Art Gallery and the Whitworth Art Gallery, Site Gallery, Tate Liverpool and Yorkshire Sculpture Park, spaces that consistently show innovative programmes of contemporary art.

With this spectrum of high profile national and international events and exhibitions, prizes, festivals and world-class contemporary art venues, APN alerts audiences to the excellence of the contemporary art offer in the North this Autumn, all of which are in feasible travelling distance of one another.

The All Points North website developed by Axis (axisweb.org) will be launched alongside the project, providing detailed information on all events and venues involved in the project.

For more information please visit www.allpointsnorth.info

Checking in with Hyper Island Manchester

Hyper Island has launched a new, postgraduate level program at the school we helped them to launch in Manchester. Subject to validation in December, Interactive Media Management will be Hyper Island's first MA award and will be accredited by the award winning Teesside University. It builds on the immense success of the NESTA funded pilot, which saw students working on real briefs for the likes of Coke, Google, Sony Games, Oxfam, Nokia and Sky.

We checked in with David McCall, Director of the UK school and interviewed him for the Hyper Island blog, captured in the above video. In it, David reflects on the highlights of the journey so far including the day that Hyper Island students presented their work to the global Head of Creative Excellence for Coke; and talks about plans for the new Interactive Media Management MA.

For those interested in learning more about Hyper Island, there is a great article in Contagious Magazine about their recent weekend Master Class with LBi.

For anyone interested in Interactive Media Management application are due to close on 30 November 2011, but you need to get you skates on as the sort-after places are filling up. If you are not sure if Hyper Island is for you, here are two further videos to give you a sense of the journey:

The Hebe Week In Pics

Hebe X Leeds International Film FestivalLast night we saw Wuthering Heights and met the castDid a bit of presenting too ;)Botega Milanese guys at LIFFWe also hit the launch of Leeds Digital Festival @ Munro HouseSpotted this on Briggate, all the way from Whitby!@LDF launch there were games...And yes, Shang Ting and I were on them! :)

Calling all film makers - the 2.8 Days Later film challenge is on!

Poster by Jay Cover (www.jaycover.co.uk) of Nous Vous (www.nousvous.eu)

Every single member of the Hebe team is mad about the movies. Our combined film collection makes for an impressive library, ranging from blockbuster classics, to obscure indies, to world cinema... mostly Chinese and Spanish, we have to admit. We're all in some kind of film rental club, and besides me (nearly Christmas - hint, hint) everyone has an unlimited cinema card. We're as close to being film geeks as it's possible to get without feeling compelled to sit in the cinema reciting lines in harmony with the actors.

So, imagine our delight when the team at Trinity Leeds revealed to us that one of the coolest boutique cinema brand in the UK, Everyman, intends to open its first out-of-London venue in the heart of the scheme; and, in order to introduce Everyman to the people of Leeds they wanted us to dream up a project to support grassroots, independent film making in the city. Our gut instinct was to call Matt Maude at Left Eye Blind to see whether we could work together, and the 2.8 Days Later film challenge is the outcome:

So, it’s lights, camera and action for this new project, which challenges aspiring filmmakers to write, shoot and finish a film in less than three days. Registration for 2.8 Days Later opened this week and the main event will take place in Leeds on 18th, 19th and 20th November 2011.

Over the course of three days as many as 150 people, working in small teams, will take up the challenge working from Left Eye Blind’s base in Holbeck, Leeds. Industry professionals will lead workshops covering different aspects of the filmmaking process, and will mentor participants as they create a brand new short film.

“This is adrenaline filmmaking at its best”, says Matt Maude of Left Eye Blind, himself one of twelve finalists in this year’s Virgin Media Shorts competition. “We piloted the project back in June 2011 with brilliant results, we even had filmmakers taking part in the US and Germany. This time we are focusing our efforts on supporting Northern talent in and around Leeds. It’s great to be working with Trinity Leeds and Everyman Cinema, both of whom we see playing a vital role in the future of film in Leeds and the surrounding area. It’s no secret that the future of funding for British film is uncertain at the moment and this is a great example of how private business can support and is supporting grassroots independent filmmaking.”

Film will share centre stage in the Trinity Leeds scheme, which will be home to Everyman Cinema’s first venue outside London. Everyman’s chain of boutique cinemas is widely known for screening independent film and world cinema, alongside major releases.

“Leeds is the birthplace of film and this project is all about tracking down today’s undiscovered talent” says Claire Reynolds, Marketing Manager for Land Securities, the developers of the Trinity Leeds scheme. “We hope to find people who have the potential to rock the future of British film and want to help them reach the big screen. We’re proud to be working with Left Eye Blind and look forward to viewing all the final cuts.”

All the 2.8 Days Later films will be entered into a new Trinity Leeds film prize. Three awards are up for grabs and the public, the media and a panel of industry experts will pick the winners. The awards winners will each receive a prize ranging from free cinema passes, to support towards a further film, to the opportunity to showcase their entry at an Everyman venue in London – as a trailer at the start of a major movie! The winners will be announced at a special, public screening event in Leeds during spring 2012.

2.8 Days Later is open to anyone over the age of sixteen, and thanks to support from Trinity Leeds it is totally free to enter. There are only 150 places up for grabs and registration closes on 15 November 2011. Visit the Trinity Leeds page on Facebook to register your place now: www.facebook.com/TrinityLeeds

The whole team will be heading down there on the day. The only thing to confirm is whether we form a team or go head-to-head in a quest for glory on the big screen - the film challenge is on!

Hebe x The Thing

We are delighted to announce that we are sponsoring the screening of The Thing at Leeds International Film Festival on Saturday. This is part of our media partnership with the festival.

We are really excited about this for a couple of reasons. First of all we love the film festival and the venue for the screening is amazing. Also from a personal point of view, we are really looking forward to seeing this film. The original 1982 The Thing by John Carpenter is a firm favourite among Team Hebe. You will often hear Lee raving about the soundtrack and the special effects. It is definitely right up there in our 'favourite films' list. 

It was a great decision to make the 2011 version a prequel rather then a sequel. The original is near-perfect and to try and drag that out and potentially do a diservice to the fantastic ending would have been the wrong move in our view. It looks from the trailer and stuff we have read online that the team working on the new version have tried to keep things as close to the orginal as possible. Recreating the Norwegian camp seen at the begining of the 1982 film and generally staying along the same lines in terms of colours, shots, props etc. 

Although it would be an amazing achievment to even get close to the original, we have high hopes for this film and for one night on Saturday we can kick back, chill and then get the hell scared out of us for a couple of hours, sounds fun :)