Cut Piece Cut!

Recently, MK Festival Fringe put out a call in which they would fund a proposal by an artist or arts organisation to create an unique installation in a vacant retail unit in the Theatre District, in Central Milton Keynes. The installation built by the winner of this small grant will form part of a three day Fringe programme of performance, dance, music and visual arts, that will take place between 19th -21st July 2013, within the Theatre District

I submitted a proposal on behalf of All Saints’ Loughton and the local community, to take about fifty of our scarecrows that had been offered for auction, to the shop in order to build an installation that would have reinterpreted the scarecrows, en mass, into a fascinating and colourful narrative about scarecrows. 

Visitors to the installation would have encountered a multi-sensory experience that included viewing the scarecrows, touching some of them and/or the materials from which they were constructed, and listening to a soundscape, produced specially to accompany the exhibition. The installation could also have included demonstrations of scarecrow making and storytelling on scarecrow-related themes.

The 'piece de resistance' would have been to facilitate visitors to the shop in joining in the performance by embellishing a large scarecrow figure with pieces of fabric and other unique, hand made decorations – the opposite process to Yoko Ono’s famous 1960’s art performance, ‘Cut Piece’.

Unfortunately, I was not successful with my application. So that’s less work for me, then!