Raffle Tickets and Midges: A Visual Arts in Rural Communities Residency

Abstract

Visual Arts in Rural Communities (VARC) is based in Tarset, a remote location, 40 miles north-west of Newcastle, UK. The moorland landscape is beautiful and bleak, dominated by hill-farming and forestry. Tarset doesn't appear on any Ordnance Survey map, but describes a large area; the parish of Tarset and Greystead is the largest and least populated in England. The community amounts to no more than 100 scattered households. Despite this, it is alive, makes its own entertainment and celebrates the richness of its past whilst actively seeking ways of adapting to a new economic and environmental climate. Tarset is probably the opposite of most people's idea of a western community and place, especially in overcrowded England. Each year VARC invites an artist to spend a year living and working in Tarset and has two aims: to provide the artist in residence with the opportunity to make new work in response to the place and for the artist to engage with the community and visiting groups for a contracted number of days during the year. It is dependent on the artist as to how involved or integrated in the community they become. Imi Maufe, artist in residence 2007/2008, is one artist who combined the two aims, engaging the community in several projects and creating a body of work that documented and interacted with the calendar of events during the year. This presentation looks at the impact of this style of engagement on the community and on the artist and her work.