What have we been up to? - We are Frilly

What haven't we done?!? It's been so long since we've told you anything!

Kirsty Hillyer — Wed, 13 Jun 2018 15:58:33 +0000

We're really bad at shouting about ourselves! Since we acquired a laser cutter back in 2014 we've been busy:

establishing a networked maker community in Birmingham, called Birmingham Originals,
embedding ourselves in our Jewellery Quarter community as Quartermasters,
running maker markets and peer-led professional development
all whilst building a jewellery brand through our new self-taught laser cutting skills, check out our shiny things at Frilly Industries

Our global wanderer range of snow globe necklaces!

You may think this will have kept us pretty busy but we've still been doing good at We Are Frilly too!

Since our last update we have been:

delivering creative evaluation training for Arts Connect in partnership with Morris Hargreaves McIntyre and Dr. Sue Challis

working with Birmingham Playcare Network to delivery recycled scrap workshops for everyone from BMW, to devising programmes with healthy eating agendas for after-school clubs and developing an early years Arts Award pilot.

most importantly we've been busy creating innovative peer-led research models to understand the creative and cultural journeys of children and young people across the West Midlands for Arts Connect in partnership with Morris Hargreaves McIntyre.

Peer researcher feedback from the Arts Connect commissioned Young Culutral Journeys Research

we were commissioned by Staffordshire University's Creative Communities Unit to develop and design a consultation tool kit for the Stoke City of Culture bid

delivering social media training to a Library consortium delviering a large scale Arts Council funded arts project

finally we also made two 1/3 scale minis out of scrap with families, an 8ft pink gorilla, a collaborative gorilla picture and as many gorilla related things as we could, if you have no idea why then google the Birmingham Gorilla

Sometimes when you're this busy doing all of the things you forget to tell the world too!

Gorilla head outside the Municipal Bank; location of our first Bimringham Originals Winters Maker Market in 2016

Whilst we are just about to share the findings from our big research project we are embarking on new self initiated work that sees the world of We Are Frllly and Frilly Industries collide even further. We are now member of Steamhouse with plans of plastic domination. We'll be building some exciting plastic recycling machines that have long been on our project wish list. This will see us make new materials for our jewellery ranges and address STEAM learning in secondary schools. We're pretty excited about this new venture!

Steamhouse, Digbeth, Birmingham

bzzzzzzt... ZAP!

Adrienne Frances — Wed, 24 Sep 2014 15:07:18 +0000

Bertha is the newest Frilly addition..

(frustrated) NEWSFLASH

Adrienne Frances — Tue, 17 Jun 2014 12:52:02 +0000

So.. we don't have a phone line currently - if you try calling us for any reason, it'll simply ring out. We don't know who or where that is calling, but we know it's not us. Nor can we ring out. We're getting BT onto it.. but in the meantime, email us!

NEWSFLASH!

Adrienne Frances — Fri, 06 Jun 2014 13:24:21 +0000

Our new phone line is now up and running, so for those of you who've been itching to get in touch, you now can on: 0121 236 7111

Hooray!

Dashing all over the place

Adrienne Frances — Thu, 05 Jun 2014 11:02:01 +0000

So it would appear all has been quiet on the Frilly front.. but really, we've been pulling out our hair with busy-ness because of a few new developments.

Shortly, we'll be FINALLY moving into our new office premises, which are all of 4 doors down from our current office, but which is bigger and airier, with a nicer view, and fibre optic broadband. We've got exciting plans for the space, but it's been a long time coming, and we're still not quite ready to fully unveil details.. but it DOES mean that we no longer have our old phone number because, despite massive leaps in technology, it's not possible to move our phone number 4 doors down a street. Sigh. So if you need us, EMAIL US - and watch this space for contact detail updates imminently!

yellows and greys - with holes to patch, and edges to neaten

Other news - we're embarking on an exciting project with The Lace Guild, who are based not far from us in Stourbridge. We're looking at using exciting new technology in subtle ways with them to enable their collections and their work to reach new audiences across the country. Kirsty and I are also hoping to pick up some lace making skills along the way, and Simon is extremely excited about making the magical technology work!

We're still doing work around ZA, and will be revisiting our questions later on this year. We're also doing lots of work with children and young people this year, some is still secret, and once underway will give us lots of shiny pretty content to blog about. Hurrah!

Connect / ZA - Joburg: a Kfrilly view

Kirsty Hillyer — Fri, 01 Nov 2013 15:07:45 +0000

Adrienne finally managed to get me blog about South Africa, she's already told you why we were there and so I'll give you my wide eyed newbie perspective on Joburg. Admittedly that will be mainly through a lens, as it gives you a glimpse of the things that caught my magpie eyes.

Adrienne has already hit you up with one of my favourite pieces of public art, Pigeon Place with its giant origami pigeons, but it was these points of unexpected humour and art that stood out amongst the many beautiful abandoned buildings.

Joburg is a city where the creatives are taking it back, reclaiming the spaces and challenging the perceptions of what can happen here. The creative people here are beguiling yet cocky, drawing you into debates and unexpected conversations. It is an exciting city to be a part of, a place where you can stand out and make things happen and has a great vibe. Yes, I used that word, you can't help but use it in the context of the city and after a week of hearing people describe the atmosphere of anywhere as a vibe it just seems right.

Most importantly it is a city with incredible independent coffee that helped us survive the long and turbulent flight straight into work mode!

Someone is ready for our flight!

Inspiration is everwhere

Best outdoor lighting #greatdane #joberg

No pop up fruit stalls allowed #joberg #braamfontein

Joberg conference set ups are much more homely than in the UK

People watching @daleahs yesterday

The best shops have cats #melville #joberg

I'm watching you #feral #melville #joberg

Art at #assemblage #guns #joberg #newtown

#Newtown in #joberg feels like Brum's Eastside

Recycling sorting in #joberg

Customise your bike and finish this sentence #newtown #joberg

Best cash and carry name ever #joberg

In #Joberg you learn to drive calling traffic lights robots. I am so using that

Cab views in #joberg

Love at the top of africa

Looking south #atthetopofafrica #joberg

I wanna make this place the #joberg office of @we_are_frilly @wearefrilly

Clearly there is no longer a market for this shop #joberg #cbd

Coolest inroad bus stops in #joberg

Denied #randclub #closed

The most expensive coffee we are likely to drink #skhotado @father_coffee it was utterly delicious and smooth, with a redbull chaser

If the awesome coffee wasn't enough of a reason to visit @father_coffee

Buying painkillers in #joberg #za is a mission. Registered me deets, given drugs in secured cable tied wire basket, off to check out to pay. Crazy times

No longer in America. Finding #zohan #adamsandler #joberg #rosebankmall

Leaving #rosebank mall @redannie spotted this sign. Not sure what the danger is in leaving the car park #funsigns

Who needs expensive tourism booths built? #storagecontainer #maboneng #joberg #information

Chipped away #streetart #maboneng #joberg

Where else would you park a car? #artsonmain #maboneng #joberg #classiccar

Oldest bar in #joberg

Early morning tai chi #newtown #joberg #taichi

Alphabet letter sweets typography #CBD #joberg #typography

The birds know it all #pigeon #divorce #joberg #pigeonplace

Concrete can be pretty #joberg #architecture #publicrealm

Bradley/Zulu had the most impressionable catch phrases #kitcheners

A stylist with great philosophies on fashion and life #kitcheners

Independent coffee shops in #joberg kill UK ones @chuckragan vinyl and vintage record player #braamfontein

Not all public art needs to big, tiny turtles on the pavement in #braamfontein #joberg #publicart #turtles #small

@we_are_frilly @wearefrilly walking in #joberg #newtown #walkingtour

There were more pictures and there was more that I should have documented but was just having too much fun experiencing the city and chatting to new people. Joburg shouldn't just be the overnight stay before a safari, it is a vibrant city that you won't be able to help but fall in love with and want to return to again and again.

Creative Pie

Adrienne Frances — Thu, 24 Oct 2013 09:43:19 +0000

Last week I found myself sat on a panel, discussing "big data", as part of Creative Pie. I used a PDF presentation as a crutch, as I was pretty convinced I had nothing of any real note to contribute - after all, what IS "big data", particularly in the context of creative enterprise - and more specifically, within an arts context?

It turns out I actually had loads to say - especially when I began to think of it all as lots of "little data" - the really interesting stuff collected over the course of a project, programme of work, or event. Who was involved, why they were involved, what they did, what they thought of it, what others thought of it. We collect all of this STUFF and rarely do anything interesting with it. Which, as a visual person, is a MASSIVE FRUSTRATION!

So, my part of the presentation mostly descended into me speaking really really quickly and passionately about how all of this stuff, this data, collected through projects is INTERESTING and USEFUL - but only if you do something with it. And with tools like Issuu and Piktochart, there's no reason to have boring reports ever again.

Connect / ZA - travelling internationally

Adrienne Frances — Tue, 17 Sep 2013 14:23:56 +0000

Over the course of the next year, we're working with the British Council on their Connect / ZA work - British creatives will share their work in South Africa, and South African creatives will share their work in the UK. A lot of activity will focus on London, and Glasgow (linking to the 2014 Commonwealth Games). ZA activity will focus on Johannesburg and Cape Town. We will be doing a range of different activities and interventions to capture perceptions, opinions and insight into the work that is shared as part of Connect / ZA, and also more general opinions about the two countries.

Our knowledge of ZA was minimal at best - and so we suggested an orientation-style reconnaissance mission to help us better understand the contrasts - and the unexpected similarities! - between the two countries. Below are some of the snapshots we took during our visit in August. Kirsty took quite a few images and posted them on Instagram. I'm going to coerce her into embedding them into another blog post at a later date!

Having been warned by concerned friends and family (and even some strangers!) about crime and safety when visiting, we were prepared for the WORST CASE SCENARIO.

And then we arrived.

And we were met with nothing but friendly helpful LOVELY people everywhere!

Yes there is crime, as there is in any city anywhere.. We were more cautious than we would otherwise be with a camera (hence the limited shots, mostly indoors or when streets were deserted) which was my only real disappointment during the whole trip - the landscape is stunning, and the architecture is incredible - I just wish I'd been able to capture more of it!

Biggest surprise were the VIBRANT pockets of creative industry dotted around:

independent markets
designer-makers
artisan food producers
INCREDIBLE COFFEE (actually, the food generally was just DELICIOUS!)
fashionistas & hipsters

.. and a really awesome energy to the place. I don't want to rant endlessly about how awesome it was - instead I'll just post a list of links to some of the places we visited whilst there that we'd recommend to anyone thinking of visiting!

Skhotado at Father Coffee

Skhotskhotskhot! 2 skhotados for two lovely ladies from the UK @kfrilly @redannie

COFFEE

BARS

Great Dane

Kitcheners

Jo'Anna Melt Bar

FOOD

Daleahs

Eat Your Heart Out

'86 Public (THE BEST PIZZA ANYWHERE!)

Cafe Picobella

SHOPPING

Blue Collar White Collar

Art & Misc.

Assemblage / NewARC - Artists studios/network

Johann Louw - artist who opened an exhibition at FADA whilst we were there (ZA KNOWS how to do a private view!)

David Krut Projects - printmaking and exhibitions in Maboneng and beyond

Sober and Lonely Institute for Contemporary Art - an artists' collective

iwasshot in Joburg :) - "Providing a platform for youth at risk to learn skills and generate an income."

Play Braamfontein (highlighting the most exciting creative companies in Braam)

Maboneng Precinct - with maps of the area and info on cafes, bars etc.

Faces: A Bill Viola Experiment

Adrienne Frances — Tue, 10 Sep 2013 10:58:46 +0000

The last twelve months

Kirsty Hillyer — Tue, 10 Sep 2013 10:21:30 +0000

As Adrienne said 'our site was looking old' and I never blogged. The last time you really heard from us we were busy installing our piece for Junction Festival. So what have we been up to in the last 12 months?

CTW2012 - Contact Theatre, Manchester

After that first foray for Frilly in using wheat pastes we went into evaluation report writing overload for CTW2012. That was an intensive period of downloading, analysing and interpretation that kept us busy. To find out more about this amazing youth theatre festival from the words and experiences of the participants then check out the summary of our report.

Le Truc - Eye Candy Festival

Le Truc, in conjunction with Fused Magazine's Eye Candy Festival, commissioned us to collaborate with Birmingham based street artist Gent48 to create site specific artwork. This French restaurant in the heart of Southside was looking for a visual response to their Gainsbourg and Bourdin back story and the feel of the interior design of their space. A tattooed, scantily clad lady, collaged Serge and Bridget with neon writing and papier-mache dogs heads resulted. If you are looking for an exciting place to dine with great food and scrumptious cocktails then be sure to visit.

Secret City - Unique in Birmingham

With our site specific creative minds in action we designed a response to Retail Birmingham's window dressing competition. As participatory artists we didn't want to dictate what made Birmingham unique and so we sought the help of Le Truc's patrons to find out truths and lies about the city. Inspired by the responses we collected we created a new, secret, version of the city to act as our backdrop in a Mailbox retail space. A series of hanging illustrations were made to get caught up amidst the cats cradle of creation and industry that reflects the diversity of industry in Birmingham, as well as the fun that is Spaghetti Junction. Our installation was chose as the winner by a panel of media, retail and art professionals, which meant we had a chance to spoil ourselves with shopping vouchers. YAY!

To find out more about all of the other awesome entries click here, or watch the film below!

Dear Dudley - Sexual Health Website

We were commissioned by Dudley Public Health to work with a group of peer sex mentors to develop the structure and design for a sexual health website for young people in Dudley. With the peer mentors we reflected upon the questions young people have about sex, the challenges they face in accessing information and the topics that the site needed to cover from STI's and sexuality to contraceptive methods. Reviewing current websites we worked with the mentors to develop a brand identity for the site from typefaces, characters, background images and the name. The site is currently under construction by a local web developer.

We have been up to more stuff but we are still busy with some of it so keep an eye out for more updates.

New website

Adrienne Frances — Tue, 03 Sep 2013 10:22:00 +0000

Woo! Excitement overload! New website! Etc!

It got to the point where we didn't want to add any new content to the old site because it just felt... so old. And so I've spent the past few weeks tweaking a new site, ready to be more user friendly (so that Kirsty can easily blog here too!) and something that fits with our aesthetics and ideas more seamlessly.

I think I've managed it, and hopefully this will see a more regular update of content showcasing the various different projects we're working on.

Time will tell!

Junction Festival - in the blink of an eye - process!

Adrienne Frances — Wed, 08 Aug 2012 15:33:37 +0000

So we took part in the second Junction Festival - a festival of contemporary art in Chapel Ash, Wolverhampton on the first weekend of August 2012. It made a change for us to be making our own work, rather than participatory / collaborative / community work. Our original plan had been to more heavily embed some oral history into the process, but because of other projects going horribly awry timewise we made the decision to base the piece around one pub visit and my own memories of working at the Clarendon Hotel - a pub directly opposite the site for our installation.

After measuring the site, and thinking long and hard about what we would want to create - street art in the loosest sense, but that stayed true to our love of DIY and craft and drawing and prettiness - we created a rough plan. We wanted to include a portrait of a regular, some of his words, and we wanted something big and bold and colourful, and hopefully unexpected. We'd been massively inspired by Mademoiselle Maurice recently, so wanted to use origami again in our work somehow. In the past we've waxed origami to make it more durable, but we simply didn't have the time to wax hundreds and hundreds of origami pieces, so we decided we would just keep an eye on the installation as it only had to last the weekend and if pieces melted off the wall we would make more and keep topping it up.

The three main elements to the installation were:

The regular - made of Black Country Bugles, and very black & white
The carpet - despite recent refurbishments and physical changes to the pub, the carpet remains the same - pattern created using bold origami colours
My hand / pint glass spilling - made of Grazia and Stylist magazines, all contemporary and feminine and colourful - from here will spill colourful origami that flows into the carpet and connecting to the words coming from the regular's mouth

It was a lot of hard work, but also a lot of fun. Installing something in such a public place led to immediate feedback from passersby. At first they were curious, and kept their distance, but as the piece progressed we had all kinds of people chatting to us or shouting out from across the street.

A group of young people shouted at us from the other side of the road 'Good job!' and stuck their thumbs up as they walked past.
A tiny little girl screamed 'SO PRETTY!!!!!' with her mum when she saw the origami. (I gave her and her sister a piece to take away)
An older man who'd come from the pub came and talked at length about how it brightened up the street and was significantly more pleasing to look at than the plain old hoardings that had been up for years now.
A visitor from 'up north' said 'if it'd been spraypaint then it would just have been graffiti - but THIS is art!'
A much older couple told us 'there'll always be people who don't like what you're doing, but we think it looks great!'.
A man on a bike stopped to chat a few times, and really liked what we were doing.
Two Jamaican guys were very curious about the piece, which led on to conversation about the festival as a whole.
Some of the other regulars in the pub came over to snap a photo of the regular we'd drawn - they all recognised him!

Deinstalling was a bit heartbreaking. I was surprised by how much I wanted it to stay up. The origami had lasted, but was never going to have any longevity - but the wheatpastes were all pristine and looked amazing. Nonetheless, after the festival was over we spent hours scraping away the artwork and eventually painting over it all. (LEARNING POINT: it's virtually impossible to scrape wheatpastes off an uneven bobbly surface. Don't waste your time, just paint over the lot!) This was also an interesting experience, as again we had passersby stopping to ask what we were doing - mostly in dismay.

'Is it the council making you take it down?! They always get rid of the things people love!'
'Why are you taking it down - it's amazing!'
'I'd leave it up if I were you - everyone loves it!'

Junction Festival... work in progress!

Adrienne Frances — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 15:24:04 +0000

In the background, we're still busily working away on projects and hammering out all the data we collected in various forms from CTW2012 - however we're also working on a small installation that is part of Junction Festival happening in Wolverhampton this weekend... no spoilers as such, as we're not hugely sure our strange ambitions will work as we've imagined - but here are two sneaky peeks, and we're not saying how these two are linked yet!

Contacting the World 2012 - super duper busy bees!

Adrienne Frances — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 10:12:50 +0000

We've finally unpacked the car from our incredible week in Manchester at Contact, working at Contacting the World 2012 - an international youth theatre festival. It was incredible, and our brains have been stretched beyond all recognition - though workshops and performances and discussions and visiting companies. All of this now needs to be filtered and our brains reformatted so that we can coherently create a report of everything that happened.

However, in the meantime, I'm slowly siphoning off images from the week. I wanted to capture movement and energy from the festival, and feel like this first set does a reasonably adequate job. It was a workshop run by Wordsmiths - a participating company from Trinidad and Tobago - and they got everybody moving with sticks.

(There's a lot more to come, but this will be a slow and steady process!)

rumblings of change

Adrienne Frances — Wed, 09 May 2012 17:47:27 +0000

Just a teeny tiny heads up - our site is currently on tenterhooks awaiting a few changes and overhauls to be made (it's starting to look a bit dusty after all.. :) and along with that, a few changes to the structure of Frilly itself... which will be revealed in time! As we're still just a two-girl front, these things take time and have to be juggled amongst other jobs, but we're getting there.

Exciting news to be told includes:

public art developments
our first arts & health resource nearing completion
organisational developments
ambitions ambitions ambitions
a forked prong approach to the future!

..and so that this isn't just text, I'll finish this brief update with a random photo of a donkey called Pascoe who we were lucky enough to meet in Sutton Park at the Elizabeth Svendsen Trust - he was born in *1979* and is amazing! I love organisations that do amazing things, like these guys do. :)

sneaky peek [work in progress..]

Adrienne Frances — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 10:24:36 +0000

wmpaf - direction of travel

Adrienne Frances — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 11:15:16 +0000

All has been quiet on the Frilly front - we've been keeping our heads down, applying for things like crazy to ensure we make it through the winter, and cracking on with existing projects like the papercut tests mentioned previously. (and, hopefully, we'll have more to show from that in the next couple of weeks!)

In the meantime - we've been continuing our involvement in WMPAF - West Midlands Participatory Arts Forum - which is a group of professionals from across the region meeting semi-regularly to discuss issues within the sector, share best practice, and have a bit of a natter over coffee. During these meetings, we decided to work towards an event to partially 'launch' the network, and to look at what shape it will take, and also to raise awareness of it. And so all of that has led towards the above event, 'Direction of Travel'.

More information can be found on the WMPAF site, and booking is essential as places are limited, but it's a free event and there's lunch and a lot of awesome people attending.. so it'll be worth it. And Frilly will be there - so what other reason do you need to attend?! :)

papercut tests - super-simplified

Adrienne Frances — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 12:26:43 +0000

Playing with vague compositional elements in advance of workshops. Colours are wrong, but it's just a first test.

"Long-Eared Furry Things"

Adrienne Frances — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 11:43:08 +0000

In the current climate, we find ourselves looking for opportunities further afield - but this often leads to random trains of thought. We do think that eventually these all magically link back into bigger things we're interested in pursuing - ideas and artforms and ways of working. But the problem with responding to adverts is you think of an idea in response to a prompt, then you write up your idea, then you talk about your idea - and by this point you think THIS IDEA IS AMAZING - I CAN'T WAIT TO MAKE IT! .... And then more often than not you're not selected. (recessions seem to ramp up the competition exponentially..)

So - this may be another one of those ideas, and because of that we don't want to say too much - other than we picked a rogue prompt: "Long-Eared Furry Things". Our idea was based around collecting 'sightings' of this mythical creature and then make them in 3D using a range of techniques.

To test the idea, we posed the question on Twitter, with about 2 hours worth of turnaround time for responses:

if you're bored this morning, could you draw a quick picture of a "long-eared furry thing" for me? i need any drawings before 11! rt please!

And here's the responses we collected! What would your Long-Eared Furry Thing look like?

Credits:

1) Ben Waddington - @falsedog

2) Jon Clarke - @goatboyuk

3) Kirsty Hillyer (my partner in crime!) - @kfrilly

4) Ben Waddington (again!) - @falsedog

5) Lee Allen - @leeallenphotos

6) Keith Bloomfield - @hardluck_hotel

7) Paul Gallear - @paulgallear

8) "Quirky Joe" - @QuirkyJoe_

Kingsfest 2011 - 16/07/11 - excited now!

Adrienne Frances — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 12:10:20 +0000

Superquick entry just to mention we've been working on an event happening next weekend in Kingstanding, Birmingham and we now have marketing material to show to help promote!

Everybody is welcome and the programme is just being finalised... and there's a LOT going on across the 5 sites - exhibitions, performances, donkey rides, competitions, amazing installations (including a knitted bull!), graffiti workshops, Zumba, and Hunt Emerson (Beano artist) is going to be exhibiting some work and chatting to visitors! Amazing!