Toynbee Studios, London 15th September 2007

On 15 September, New Work Network (NWN) celebrated its tenth birthday. One of very few artist-led programmes to receive regular funding from the Arts Council, NWN has been a behind-the-scenes partner in many exciting live art events and cross-disciplinary projects, including the DIY peer-to-peer professional development scheme; ‘Everything You Wanted to Know about Live Art But Were Afraid to Ask’ around the UK; the Darkside at the Arnolfini, Bristol; and this summer’s Spill Festival in London.

NWN’s primary activity is facilitating networking among artists and providing ways to share information and resources, build collaborations, and promote events. It does this primarily through its website which, like Facebook and Myspace, is designed around social networking principles. Due for a revamp later this year, the website has grown along with the membership; this year alone has seen a 100% increase in membership, there are currently over 500 NWN members.

NWN’s major programme in the past few years has been Networked Bodies, a unique awards scheme in which proposals were evaluated and selected by artists themselves, rather than by a centralised panel. This scheme has evolved into two complementary programmes: the ‘Activator’ cultural leadership programme currently involving ten artist/producers around the UK, and the forthcoming ‘Associates’ scheme which will forge links with artistic and non-artistic organisations to raise the profile of the network and its artists.

As an artist-led organisation, NWN must necessarily value openness and transparency, and its projects tend to be more easily available to early-career artists than some of the producing organisations – though of course, this means that is up to artists themselves to produce their work. It is also a truly national organisation with representation and activity from around the UK. There are a handful of international members, and NWN coordinator Philippa Barr has announced her intention to grow the network’s global connections.

NWN also know how to throw a wicked birthday party by drawing on their strengths to get artists involved in running it. Robert Pacitti made souvenir badges. Bobbie Baker, in her wonderfully hapless and reassuringly maternal performance persona, doused Toynbee Hall with copious amounts of sauces and spices. Eilidh (rhymes with ‘daily’) MacAskill led us in a Scottish Ceilidh (rhymes with, well, ‘Eilidh’) folk-dance. Eilidh provides accompaniment on her ukulele, and has been doing this in some form every day, making it – you guessed it – ‘Eilidh's Daily Ukulele Ceilidh’. Later on in the evening, Richard Dedominici hosted internet-based karaoke, which he called ‘crapaoke’, and made decidedly not-crap cocktails.

Throughout the evening, party conversation was both stimulated and subverted as part of a work by FrenchMottershead. Reprising an earlier project of theirs called ‘The People Series’, a set of cards were secretly distributed, each containing a provocative instruction and a cluster of tiny numbered stickers. Each time you carried out the instruction, you were to place the sticker on your ‘victim’. This resulted in some moments of disappointment, as having a sticker placed on your shirt revealed that your conversation partner had only been ‘lying to impress’, or that the person who just asked you to kiss him or her wasn’t necessarily doing so spontaneously. There was also a great deal of embarrassment around the direction ‘ask someone how much they earn’; apparently, this just isn’t a topic that artists like to talk about, seeming ashamed both of earning money and of working for free. And this, perhaps, is one of the points of an artist-led network: artists need to make a living, not just work, and this becomes easier through networking and sharing information.

Written by Theron Schmidt

To find out more or to become a member, visit http://www.newworknetwork.org.uk