We are pleased to announce the appointment of three exciting artists for our new project Take Part Queen’s Park! 

Artists, Caroline Wendling, Andy Holden and Mira Calix will be part of the first phase of a two-year action research project based within this Bedford community. 

Residents of all ages will be invited to collaborate with the artists on a series of artworks that explore culture and cultural capital in today’s diverse society. 

Through active investigation and collaboration, this commission explores how artists and communities can co-create together to develop meaningful and resonant artworks that speak of place, connection, and community. 

To deliver the first phase of the project, the artists will work with community groups, schools and residents to explore creativity and test models of participation, culminating in the production of a new artwork that will form part of the Take Part Queen’s Park project’s final public event. 

Throughout the first year, the artists will manage two commissions. The first – run by Caroline Wendling – is to develop a new artwork co-created with members of the Queen’s Park community responding to the theme “Community Blueprint: exploring what makes a community successful”. 

Caroline, who’s artistic practice explores ideas of place and belonging, will invite the public to explore what contemporary culture is in Queen’s Park. She says of the appointment: “I am interested in finding ways to communicate, to listening to people’s stories, to creating a relation of trust for the discovery and celebration of people’s creativity. I am also looking forward to questioning and discovering with the community what cultural capital is in Britain today.” 

Caroline’s workshops will include the use of walks as a format to meet and talk, as well as inviting participants to bring in and explore their own significant objects as a start to a conversation about identity and place. 

The second commission – with lead artists Andy Holden and Mira Calix – will see a process of recording and collecting the sounds of Queen’s Park to develop an archive of sound for a ‘sonic landscape of the area.’ 

Working together to create the audio landscape, Andy and Mira will work with local residents to record sounds that capture aural moments in time and place.  A series of workshops will be held, initially, to encourage the community to listen to their environment and consider such themes as: ‘sound does not obey borders’. And work together to consider how can we use this medium of sound to join communities that might not otherwise come into contact? 

The project will launch with the first of the workshops taking place on the 3rd March at Queen’s Park Community Centre.