Building Festival 10

From The Star And Shadow Cinema Wiki

STAR AND SHADOW BUILDING FESTIVAL III

The Star and Shadow is seeking funding assistance for the third biannual building festival. The building festival is a two week event focused on skill sharing and cultural networking while individuals are involved with improving the facilities of The Star and Shadow. The Building Festival has become on of the core events held at the Star and Shadow, linking the venue and organisation both practically and symbolically, while also providing a platform for introduction of new members with the ethos and philosophy of the organization. Returning to the organizations origins, The Star and Shadow was built almost entirely by volunteers, renovated from near a state of dereliction to a fully equipped multi-media arts centre of international significance. From this position the cinema had a pioneering role in the establishment of Kino Climates European network of independent and alternative cinemas.

The Building Festival at the Star and Shadow characterizes the participant-led, independent minded, collaborative approach to culture that infuses this organization with purpose and relevance. As such the Building Festival forms the keystone of these ideals. It is both an ongoing socially-engaged art project and a way of upgrading and improving the physical resource of our venue that are avaliable to the entire community of Gateshead, Newcastle, Byker, Usbern and the surrounding area, the Building Festival is a critical part of the Star and Shadow. Being an open, audience driven project is critical to the success of this festival as though participation the organization is able to adjust to fit the needs and desires of the audience and continue to provide a necessary and desired space in the city.

In a reversal of the notion of cctv as something used for surveying threat, we want to install a 4 CCTV cameras within the space to both document and celebrate the various ways the Star and Shadow are used and altered by the community. The footage from these cameras will be streamed live via the star and Shadow website (www.sharandshadow.org.uk) and will also be avaliable via a twitter plugin.

The Star and Shadow has an enormous amount of experience of working with and as volunteers, being an organization entirely run by volunteers with no paid labour involved in the day to day operation of the organization. To date the work completed during the building festival has not only satisfied the licensing and fire authorities, it has also been approved to be covered under our public liability insurance. The routine of the Building Festival is as follows; each morning volunteer hold a meeting to discuss and plan the order and priority of work to be completed and to select the lead volunteers how will oversea the days efforts in each project. The role of lead volunteers to take on the production of specific jobs, sharing skills with those who are new.

For this year the jobs selected at the open meetings for considereation were specific jobs designed to improve the health and safety of the bar including re-flooring of the event space, projects designed to increase energy efficiency of the building such as partitioning the ceiling of the long hallway and to develop our economic self-sufficiency through upgrading space to consider subletting, finally improved public presentation of the cinema by renovating the box office and entrance hallway. For further details please see the attached plans included with this request for funding.

The timing of this festival is particularly apposite because we are at the final stages of renewing our lease with the building owners. The finalization of the new lease will mean the Star and Shadow will be at the current location until at least 2014. As the current lease runs out in June 2010 and there was a degree of uncertainty surrounding the continued ability of The Star and Shadow to remain in this building and for that reason we have held off doing larger scale works. Having now achieved a degree of stability offered by the 4 year lease renewal we are now seeking to renewal of the physical facilities. This leas agreement is a testimonial to the landlord's confidence in our sustainability. We are now committed to improving the space to make the next four years as exciting in terms of development, programming and community relevance as the last four.

BUILDING FESTIVAL III BUDGET: AUGUST 2010

EXPENDITURE

EQUIPMENT scaff tower 100

   skips        240   
   van rental        100   
   Tools & tool hire        750   
   TOTAL        1190   
              

MATERIALS timber 1500

   fixings        150   
   plasterboard        500   
   plywood        500   
   paint     250   
   plaster        50   
   Bar Flooring        1500   
   Hallway Electrics    400   
   TOTAL        4850   
              

FOOD/TRANSPORT food 500

   travel        250   
   TOTAL        750   
              

LABOUR 15 per day @ £75 p.d 9000 CONTINGENCY 710

   GRAND TOTAL    16500   
              

INCOME

FUNDERS Arts Council 3000 unconfirmed

   Co-operative Society    1000    unconfirmed
   Community Foundation    2000   
              

IN KIND Labour 9000

S&S RESERVES 1500

   GRAND TOTAL    13510