Go Furness

Maddi by Name!

Maddi is a dynamic whirlwind travelling at the speed of light and bubbling with brilliant ideas. She describes her self as an artist and a thinker and what she does for a living as a business woman. She is a woman of substance, who is not afraid to explore new territory and turn her hand to almost anything. If she had a motto it might be “see everything as an opportunity”. She has learned how to market her skills, diversify their application and she has become somewhat of a professional funding application completer!

She did her initial degree in Textiles but through hard work and lots of creativity has transferred her skills to many other areas of work. She produces work of national and international significance and her work has graced the walls of castles, London Tower Blocks, town halls and vehicles. She is also well known for her use of large inflatable plastic sculptures, long before the plastic family were hanging on the outside of the Lanternhouse! It is no surprise that Maddi was awarded the first Artists Fellowship for English Heritage. She clapped her hands with glee as she described an experience in Tokyo where Manchester was referred to as a city near Barrow in international art circles! Her workroom is full of the strangest objects, all plastic and I had a feeling that they might just come to life at night when no one was looking! With the bizarre combinations of toys with swapped heads peeping out at me from shelves around the room, I knew I was in the company of an extraordinary woman.

Although Maddi works largely in the third sector, she has not stopped challenging people with bold statements, innovation and artwork that is very definitely on the edge. She established Art Gene in 2002 with Stuart Bastik, her business partner, and Julie Hammerton of the Barracudas. It is located in the Nan Tait Centre in Barrow. The company works with, and brings to Barrow artists and architects from all over the world. In March they will be hosting a collaborative residency with an artist from Poland, and over the past year have brought artists and architects from Brazil, Peru and Japan as well as the UK. ?

In fact, she has created many opportunities for professionals in the creative sector. It is much more than a gallery, the primary focus is design led regeneration and they are achieving this in many ways such as: creating an outdoor classroom at Sacred Heart School, an Eco Centre at Ormsgill Primary and working on the development of Hindpool Urban Park. The Hindpool Park project involved taking the residents of Hindpool on bus trips to see design in cities to inform their choices about creating the park in Barrow. Of course she provided boiled sweets (no doubt highly coloured) for the journey. Art Gene has some other very exciting ideas in the pipeline, including producing a handbook for Barrow residents with ideas for giving your townhouse a mad design makeover. The intention is to raise the level of people’s aspirations and empower people. It will include ideas that are simple and affordable to more complex architectural ones. I can’t wait to see what happens, I felt like I was holding court with the Gok of the art/design/architecture world! Other ideas include sketching up the buildings of Barrow for the Google 3 D animation programme that will equal the sketching up of cities like Manhattan and developing a design cafe (without an accent over the e)!

Maddi gets out there and engages with other artists, with people in the community and networks with other businesses. She says: “You’ve just got to get on people’s radar”. She started out her working life in a man’s knicker factory, as ‘quality control’ and learned much more than how to examine Y-Fronts. She learned diplomacy skills (as you would), assertion skills and how to manage a team of women who were much longer in the tooth than she was then. Although she is not afraid to call a spade a shovel, and she does challenge you to think about things in a new way, she is good fun, warm, down-to-earth and easy to be around. She has a special ability to make people feel important. She cares, and this is at the heart of her work with Art Gene and probably one of the big reasons for her success.

The gallery itself is a work of art, used to hold exhibitions and can also be hired out. Currently, they are preparing for the launch of the newly refurbished gallery with a programme of outside events called ‘It’s Not As Rough As It Used To Be’ running up to the launch. Events will be held on Sat 31st of Jan, Sat 7th Feb, Sat 14th Feb at outdoor locations to be confirmed. All events will be at 3.30–6.00pm and booking is essential. Email; artgenemichelle@btconnect.com

The programme is the result of a collaborative residency with an art collective known as Ultimate Holding Company (UHC) and are designed to reinvent the dead end as the beginning of the line instead of the end of it. I wonder how they will do that?

While chatting with Maddi, I asked her to share some of her secrets to success. They are, in no particular order:

• Resilience (she said that if an artist isn’t prepared for it to be hard, they won’t make it)
• Meet as many people as possible
• Network, go to everything you possibly can
• Find confidence to speak to people
• Be adaptable
• Find ways of marketing your skills
• Find the stuff inside yourself to make it work!
• We also discussed some of the challenges:
• Money! Not a day goes by when the word ‘funding’ doesn’t come up in conversation between Maddi and Stuart
• The time taken to complete funding applications, she spends at least a third of her time doing these

I dare say challenges to Maddi actually mean opportunities to develop more skills or to think even more creatively. It was a fantastic visit that left me feeling quite expansive. Check out the website for more information about previous projects and up and coming events. Put the 26th of Feb in your diary for the grand opening of the gallery and exhibition ‘Welcome to Paradise’ and if you are interested in the outdoor events, give them a ring. Tel; 01229 825085 You won’t be disappointed!

---

Posted by Kay Hebbourn on 27th January.