A call out for help....

Yesterday was amazing... Sent this out to the team... Morning Concrete Dream Team, Working with Sal last night it is clear we don’t have enough footage of varied live performances from the QEH from the 80s to present day, for the finale, that we have permission to use. Currently Sal has mostly footage from The Hayward which is varied and exciting, but not enough footage from the last 40 years of music, spoken word, poetry and dance. We also need another 40 or so faces of performers ( hi res) ( with permissions) for the roll-call. This feels a little insurmountable... especially as everyone has been working so hard to get this footage already! Sal needs to make the finale piece on Monday. How can we make this happen? Thanks and sorry and we can do it! Karen x The response was amazing. We went into full power mode... we solved problems and found over a hundred faces of performers for the first room by sitting in the archive rummaging. It was great fun. Then two of the team hunted for live footage.... they stumbled across a box of dance dvds. A gold mine! Things moved on at great pace. A late night, we were bought beers and a taxi home. Marvellous!

The get-in has begun for Concrete Dreams

The get in has begun! We are in! We have so much help and support this is an incredible job. That’s the thing we say when we catch each other’s eye. Today we had a production meeting on the Purcell Room stage.... that felt decadent! Andrew Locke has a team of carpenters putting in the cabinets. The CNC’d wood makes us all thrilled, but think of a future without the need for chippies! The projectors and screens are arriving, the crt monitors are looking ace. The graphics are hitting deadlines and being produced. We are placing and measuring for exhibition text. Andrew revealed that he didn’t sleep for working a couple of days ago. ‘It wouldn’t get done otherwise’ he said, quite naturally. Last night I sat with Sal and we pushed through all the tear sheet texts til past midnight and then sorted monitor placements, to rise early to advise the techs and reassure the head tech that we are trying/working/ not incompetent. The meeting on stage is full of gratitude and acknowledgment that KlangHaus and Andrew were only employed in late January and have hit the ground running. A six meter beacon had also been designed/ imagined and building begins on Tuesday with help from Norwich colleagues... nice! This is a wonderful job, and the brilliant rep/ freelancer from the Heritage Lottery Fund expressed her joy in our involvement and our ideas and our sheer love of the building. We love the building. A first private event was happening in the QEH foyer this evening... it looked stunning and jazz played as it may have done in 1967. It was glorious, sparkling and inspiring.... we snuck through to use the loos and they, the loos, looked incredible... there’s even a concrete column in the loos against bright white tiles.... you have to have a look when it’s open.... stunning! Easter weekend is two days away... and we can’t wait to get in and work in the downtime of Easter. This could be my favourite Easter ever.

It’s ramped up...

It’s ramped up. The emails flow so fast I can’t keep up. Dozens and dozens of threads of conversation... the oil of Concrete Dreams. Monday I’m palpitating about the budget. It’s becoming plain that we are soaring over budget. With the production manager taking charge and ordering top dollar equipment, whereby we are usually wheeling/dealing/ borrowing. Tuesday I can barely think. Wednesday I request a budget meeting... we don’t solve the problem but at least we have said the problem out loud. We are all thinking of mates we know who can do carpentry/screen making/ sparkies. It’s like walking into the sea knowing we have a long hard swim to reach the next shore.

7 hour meetings

Challenging to make myself write as so busy. We are all trying to do our normal jobs at the same time, so reading emails about artistic content and discussing pork pie procedures, whilst the Mac Doctor tells me my iMac is dead. Our Thursday meeting last 7-8 hours followed by a site visit and a scheduling meeting. If something is funny,like Mark telling us about making chairs out of old RFH archive programmes... ( an HLF participation project)whereby a lot of gaffa was used and it was shit... we laughed and laughed til we could hardly breathe. That’s the upside of being over tired. Things are just starting to become impossible. The metronome will be 2 weeks late. The cabinet making is up to the wire.Sal and I are in Arup, structural engineers, re-taking the films of plans and quantities books. The meetings are multi faceted.. we blast through multi layer agendas. The live performer element was worrying for us as we know that a live musician will need direction and given context in order to connect and give a meaningful performance. Rachel, one of the leads had the wonderful idea of the performer being a dancer. It solves all the problems of ‘ stopping the music’ and they look wonderful even just walking. They can move to all the music and demonstrate highlight the architecture. More soon.

So much to do

Group emails, sharing, sharing, sharing...dropbox so full ...constantly up-dated. Grabbing info that is still resonating from previous articles read. Getting to the nub of info we need to relay/share/display. Alongside like a galloping horse is the tech requirements ...monitors, media players, the back end programming and brain of the exhibition. Then me and Sal scrabbling about on the floor, me being a hand model...photographing the archive....finding letters from the Queen's secretary about her coming to the opening...extraordinary language...'Dear Heart....' We are making art form the history....photocopying letters, programme amendments, PRS forms from 50 years ago so that people can touch them...read them like we are allowed to, but touching the letters will feel special...significant...we want to transfer the feeling of discovery.