Meet the Artists: Hydra Arts and Clifftop Projects
Remembering Together: West Dunbartonshire have appointed their artist to co-create memorials with communities. Meet Hydra Arts (Nic Green and Peter McMaster) and Clifftop Projects (Lottie Barker ).
Hydra Arts and Clifftop Projects are two arts organisations based in West Dunbartonshire. Working across art forms their community centered practices tailor specific projects to the needs and wants of the people they work with while still retaining an ambition and drive as professional artists. From regular art classes for young people in Dumbarton West and an Intergenerational Dance Company, to ceramics workshops and fully staged village pantomimes, their collective works combine professional and international arts experience with hyper-local practice.
Image credit: Brian Hartley (L-R Peter McMaster Nic Green and Lottie Barker)
This collaboration focusses on community-centred practice which responds to the want and need of the people they work with. Their collective works combine professional and international arts experience with hyper-local practice, ranging from regular art classes for young people to fully staged village pantomimes, an intergenerational dance company to ceramics workshops. You can find out more about each artist/organisation by searching for them individually.
Nic, Lottie and Peter say: “As art organisations who work locally in West Dunbartonshire we feel it would be an honour and exciting opportunity to be part of the process of realising a concept for a possible covid community memorial. It would allow us to continue engaging with local communities - some of which were formed during the pandemic- reinforcing and deepening these creative connections we have come to know and value. We are also excited to finally collaborate on a substantial project, having worked alongside each other for a number of years. We are excited to see how our combined energies might increase the scope of what we do, and allow for a greater impact in our work in West Dunbartonshire.”
“Together we will be hosting open and accessible workshops and conversations around West Dunbartonshire, allowing members of the public as well as pre-existing groups to get together to begin (or continue) to process their experience of the covid-19 pandemic. Utilising our skill sets of facilitation, arts practice and community engagement, we will be offering a range of creative experiences to make what we are calling Small Memorials as a means of beginning to question what a memorial could be for the covid-19 pandemic, and what a memorial should do. A Small Memorial is both a sculpture and a reflective space of creative flow, in which the person making their sculpture can also reflect on the questions posed above.”