Public Consultation and Community Involvement

The nature of our work, both subject matter and presentation, makes it uniquely accessible to an extremely diverse audience. The Caravan Gallery as a venue has an undeniable novelty factor that attracts curious passers by as well as appealing to the art cognoscenti. Sometimes it feels like a mini social club on wheels bringing together people who would never normally connect. The scope for interaction with individuals from all walks of life is enormous, the inevitable feedback (including enthusiastic recommendations and opinions) making a valuable contribution to the project. We have put on hundreds of exhibitions and welcomed thousands of visitors since our first outing in 2000.

We work with galleries and arts organisations, festivals, social enterprises, community groups and professional associations, schools, colleges and universites; sometimes we escape the confines of the caravan and show work in empty shops, village halls and main stream gallery spaces.

On several occasions arts organisations have used us as ‘art missionaries’ to engage with new audiences and encourage people to visit their galleries. Wolverhampton Art Gallery, for example, commissioned us to produce an exhibition while their gallery was closed for refurbishment. Other organisations have been interested in our research methods and public interaction.

As a result we have reached a far more diverse audience than many galleries and have become a catalyst for interaction with people in a large information gathering and sharing exercise using memories, images, surveys, film and conversation. Our approach is based around the concept of Psychogeography which explores the relationship of place to its social and cultural history, past, present and future.

Our flexibility and accessiblility enable us to meet the requirements of the most demanding projects in the UK and abroad.

Cliff outside Golden Boy Green Community Centre, South Bank, Middlesborough