“What we really need is a real big sponsor”
What Steven asked Kevin Grist and Janet Moore, directors of Electric Medway
Digital arts festival Electric Medway is celebrating its fifth year, so Steven sat down with directors Janet Moore and Kevin Grist to learn more. Meeting at Mrs Sourdough Bakery, they discuss how Electric Medway came to be, what they need to keep going, and what led them onto a submarine in the river.
What is Electric Medway?
Kevin Grist: Electric Medway is an arts organisation that is all about getting communities in Medway creative with new tech.
Janet Moore: Our strapline is that we're all digital storytellers. We particularly love helping communities tell their unheard stories. Things that people might not necessarily know about Medway and their existence.
How do you go about doing that?
KG: I guess there's three main pillars to our work. One is the festival, which gives people a chance to showcase work that they've made locally. The other one is through our learning program. We have things like Hack, and now Young Hack, which is getting people learning technical skills and software skills, which they can use in their work. Then there's kind of community neighbourhood work.
JM: That's working with local residents and artists to pick out those stories and using the technology as a tool to bring them to life in interesting, creative ways. It might not be high-tech interventions we're doing with residents. For example, it could be creating an interactive zine using augmented reality, using QR codes in a booklet, or depicting a story of their local high street, for example. It's just playful ways of using the tech to bring those stories to life.
How did you come to launch Electric Medway?
KG: The original conception was the company was called Sparked Echo. It was me as a freelancer.
JM: For the first year.
KG: After I left Arts Council England, I wanted to go into music education consultancy, and it was about delivering innovation in that sector, particularly about digital technology, because there wasn't happening in the classroom and the music education hub space. That did start to work. I was traveling around the country, and then at one point I started taking on production work. We did Sound Hack at the University of Kent, which was bringing together digital practitioners to do a hack day. That sparked my interest about doing events. Then we took on some work with an opera maker called Tania Holland Williams, who runs Fat Lady Opera, and she bought me in as a producer and I just started to love the idea of putting on events. Then we set it up as a not-for-profit, limited company, and then later it became a Community Interest Company, so we've had done this transition. But it wasn't until the pandemic and the festival, Electric Medway, that we then changed the name after that because we became more known for that kind of work.
What particular skills base do you both bring?
JM: I'm the Community Director of Electric Medway. My specialism is working with our team of artists and our core team here at Electric Medway. We've got ten members of the team currently, and I would definitely say I'm a people-focused manager. Also, I oversee the neighbourhood project work and the young people provision for Electric Medway's work. Just as an example, this year, the Paul Hamlin Foundation kindly funded us to work on a project called XR Schools. A delivery team of artists from Electric Medway and myself were in residence in two Leigh Academy Trust schools between January and July. We were testing out using different modes of immersive technologies, virtual reality and digital photography methods to bring their curriculum to life. I oversee anything that relates to young people programming and working with those community groups.
KG: My role is Creative Director. My background is in music production predominantly. I did a lot of work in and grew up in Brighton. I worked at Arts Council England for a bit. Worked mostly in music education and formal spaces, such as youth provision. I guess all that experience has come into play here when we set up Electric Medway almost ten years ago. I think what I've learnt in the last ten years is pretty much what you see now. Curatorial skills for the festival and both Janet and I have skills as teachers. I think both of us are learning a lot as we go along, like all of us are, because stuff's constantly changing. Tech's changing. If you told me five years ago we'd be putting robotics on a tree or doing a live performance on the submarine in Strood, I'd say, ‘Go home, that's not happening.’ But every year we've tried to do something different. The skill set I think I bring is particularly about risk-taking and just saying, ‘Yes, we'll make it happen.’
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