Whilst the Digital Test Commissions strand is about the process of testing new digital tools, methodologies and thinking that encourages discovery within artistic practice, we also encourage and support new experimental artistic works that engage with communities. This informs artist’s continued professional development (CPD), with support and mentorship from our digital programme lead, OGRE Studio.

Experiences of artists have ranged from overcoming technical hurdles, learning and experimenting with new software, media, tools and AI, This tests new ways of working and facilitates community-engagement and community-generated input - all with a focus on unlocking practice through digital means.

This is a summary of Beth’s experience.

• Beth’s work captures stories and social history moments of the lost Bingo Halls and night of County Durham through, playfully examining one of the last living memory instances of such a large-scale social activity of women.

• The result is a musical, lyrical celebration of found-images, local research, family anecdotes and nostalgic stories - from public engagement, taking the form of a lyric video, featuring animated elements of collective memory, early internet photography of Bingo halls and a range of the artists ‘Bingo Paintings’ [produced for each of the main Bingo Halls where stories have come from, produced in an abstract pointillism style using classic Bingo dabber pens]. These are synchronised and set to original music, by producers Tony Brown and Liam Huitson, featuring ‘Donna Summer vibes’ and live audio of a contemporary Bingo caller recorded by the artist.

• Calling out for place-based Bingo stories across many local Facebook groups, Beth’s work also made use of a real mixture of shared living memory. At one side of the community engagement experience people gave fond detailed memories, and on the other, the limitations of social media for older people perhaps played a part in the public engagement. Here, snippets of stories were shared with (seemingly) as few words as possible, or took the form of people tagging others who might have family Bingo-related stories, but often went unnoticed or never replied to. This in itself, was captured as part of Beth’s work.

Experience/Process: 

• Beth’s Test Commission is nearing completion. With her video finalised, the artist is now into the final phase responding to a Q&A interview, which will be added to this web-page. Check back in early December to read the interview.

• The artist has made fantastic progress with what was expected to be a difficult online participatory element relating to experiences of engagement levels of older people using social media. The artist has had over 20 participants providing valuable input so far, and final numbers will be shared here once an update is available.

• Beth also had an in-depth interview on BBC Radio Tees with the host doing a big shout out CTA to search the project on Facebook, but resulted in awareness rather than responses.