The Outside Inn

The National Trust at Glastonbury

2010-07-05T18:07:00.106+01:00

Take a tour of the Outside Inn (National Trust tent at Glastonbury Festival) from National Trust on Vimeo.
An amateur video with a brief overview of elements in the dome. Real footage by resident film maker to follow.

Created with flickr slideshow from softsea.

http://www.flickr.com/groups/ntdoesglasto/pool/

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For five beautiful summer days this June, the Outside Inn opened its doors and invited Glastonbury Festival attendees to kick off their shoes, relax and escape the hustle and bustle of the Festival's 40th Birthday. Manned by an ever enthusiasic team of volunteers from The National Trust and positioned on the busy route from the Bandstand to the Pyramid Stage (via the Cider Bus), we couldn't have asked for a more central position.The only thing we would have liked to have stopped was the growth of the surrounding trees which obscured our view of the Tor. The Tor was lit beautifully throughout the festival, making festival goers aware of the strong links between the festival site and the mount.

To read about the experience we designed and delivered please read our pre-festival walk through

To keep this short and sweet we have created a list of highlights below:
- Sir Peter Blake telling us that he loves the way we have used recycled materials to create this captivating installation.
- A note left in someone's shoe, proof that the experience was successful. See photo below.

- "Oh, it is the National Trust", a large number of visitors were pleasantly surprised.
- A book full of amazing comments by the hundreds of people who visited our experience
- A number of people cried after finishing the experience, which was beautiful and perfect (they were happy).
- Cocky lads who looked unimpressed at first, grunting "wots tis then?!" and who were transformed after the experience.
- Queues outside the dome.
- Visitors who kept coming back.
- The enthusiasm of the NT volunteers manning the dome.
- Sheer competition at the Tor marble run game.
- The fact that every piece in the dome was a conversation starter in real life too (it was intended).

Read the National Trust post-festival write up

So...what have we made?

2010-06-20T00:33:00.003+01:00

See below a rough walk through of what we are aiming to deliver to Glasto. Helen and I have had a complicated vision and with the pleasure of working with carefully selected people we seem to have done it. We have worked very hard on this but it would not have been possible without the help of the volunteers we have had in the last couple of weeks and the amazingly skilled crew we put together. What have we done and who has been involved? Well, read on.

Outside the beautiful white canvas geodesic dome you will see a sign with 'The Outside Inn', which has been illustrated by Alice Fletcher. Before you walk in you will be side tracked by two quirky photo opportunity boards (the types where your face will fit through and pose on top of a comedy body). You can choose to either be the strongest man in the world (including moustache), lifting a cider drinking Mike Eavis who is aided by large British butterflies or pose as a nudist surfer on Studland Beach. The bottoms of these gigantic postcards are a blackboard for people to leave comments on so that they can create personalised photo cards for their friends or as a memento. The designs have been interpreted by Ryan Orme.

When you step inside the dome onto lovely timber flooring you will see patches of large blue butterflies bursting out of the dome canvas. A wave shaped sky bar with lower ends for kids with tree stumps around to sit on. Our lovely Brody carpented this piece of beautiful furniture. The front of the bar looks like an unfinished wood tapestry. When you look closer you can see that people have decorated the pieces of wood with doodles and writing relating to what they experience when they spend time in the country side (the outdoors). Some people have carved, others have scribbled or drawn. Some of these messages were collected before the festival and expressed by artists. You will be invited to leave your own message and you can take place at the 'bar' to do this. A volunteer will give you a piece of wood and there is a box with a range of writing/drawing materials. Over the duration of the festival the wave shaped bar front will be cladded with people's memories, impressions and messages about what they feel when they experience the countryside.

You will also notice two standalone structures in the shape of rocks with a wooden box on top of each, these are sensory boxes, which have been carpented by Will Kinnell. The box is beautifully decorated with magical illustrations (Alice Fletcher) of landscapes overflowing into eachother when you walk round it. On either end you will see a small viser and below it another hole which reads 'sniff'. When you stick your nose in you will be pleasantly surprised. Natural curiosity will lead you to the viser and when you look in you will see a diorama based on a particular National Trust site. It will tell you above the viser which site it is an impression of. You want to smell again as it is now clear that the smell is also based on the real landscape. Amongst the sensory experiences is The Tor and Prawle Point.

If this is all a bit too subtle and low action for you, you can beat the top scorer in the two player Tor labyrinth marble run made by Helen Bentley.

However, if you are in real need to get away from the crowds, basslines and wet mud then this is for you: in exchange for your footwear you can get a pair of official Silent Disco headphones and a mud free path to the ultimate chill. A volunteer will take your mud caked wellies and slot them into a rack, a bit like a bowling lane shoe exchange (carpentry Ben Irwin). You can even clean your wellies in especially designed welly brushes (Malky Pantz). You can then walk through and hang your coat on the peg which corresponds with your welly slot (so you can keep an eye on it). You have been told that you can choose from two channels on your headphones . Look ahead and you will realise that you are standing in a soft pebble landscape, too inviting to be true. In the middle of these heaps of comfort (seamstress: Ruby Exley -Meyers and Sally Doxey) you can see a steel cable collumn with bits of wood sewn onto the cables forming a deconstructed tree trunk (R&D on entire tree Ben Irwin). There are bits of bark, plank,furniture, plie: wood in all stages of life. When you look up there are branches of real Ash coming out of a ring off the ceiling. Under the branches there is a landscape of all sorts of mini sculptures and pendants made out of mostly recycled materials, creating a deck of 'leaves'. When you lie down (max capacity is 20 people) and sink into the pebbles, listening to the soundscape, watching the canopy sofly swing you may just realise that the light is changing (light production Matt Jackson) with your soundscape. The soundscapes are inspired and created from the specific sonic qualities of two National Trust sites (audio artist Andrew Binnie). The first takes you on a journey through Lydford Gorge where you lie back, seemingly transported with the water to where the River Burn and River Lyd meet – and without getting your feet wet! On the second channel you are invited to experience the beautiful coastal Holnicote Estate and explore the Bossington Marshes, listening out for its variety of birds and wildlife. Don't worry, this is not just birdsong and water, this is a beautifully made soundscape with a mixture of audio.

You are experiencing from dawn to dusk in 15 minutes. If soundscapes are not really your thing, kick your shoes off and have a snooze on the softest pebbles in the world while sniffing the fresh
meadow grass with wildflower which is growing around you in throughs. You can always go the Cider Bus and come back ;-)

Credits:

Colette Cudihy - National Trust project manager
Ben Irwin - lead build & design interpretation. R&D on deconstructed tree and carpentry of shoe racks.

Brody - carpentry (wave sky bar)

Will Kinnell - carpentry (sensory boxes, throughs, freak board stands)

Art Space Life Space at Bridewell Island- Studio Hire and generally for being the most helpful and resourceful organisation to work with.

Alice Fletcher - Illustration (sensory boxes, pub sign, shoe racks)

Matt Jackson - Light programming production

Andrew Binnie - Soundscapes

Ruby Exley-Meyers - Seamstress pebble cushions

Sally Doxey - Seamstress pebble cushions

Ryan Orme - Freakboard artwork

Malco Pantz - carpentry of boot brushes, laptop housing, lock fitting, the list goes on

Mike Ford - geodesic dome advice

Liam Beech - rigging

National Trust - for getting us into this adventure in the first place

Lex - Truck driver, delivery and advice

Pervasive Media Studio - office space and advice and for being the link in this project

Production volunteers:

Katrina, Amy C, Raquel, Hazel, Julie, Aphra, Maya, Sarah, Danny, Amy H, Baj, Jenny, Andy, Monica.

We also hand picked a really successful team of 10 volunteers from the National Trust pool who will man the installation at the festival.

And everyone else we have had chats with or advice from...which is many people!

Oh, ourselves ;-) Helen Bentley & Vanessa Bellaar Spruijt - Experience designers, producers, project managers, artists and mentalists. No point listing all the sanding, varnishing, painting, making, sticking, packing, designing jobs. We are knackered and going tomorrow...

Last week before Glasto

2010-06-13T20:51:00.001+01:00

I am, yet again, doing a brain dump here.The last week has arrived and my head is so full and my body, well, tired. This week we have a number of things to finish before the big bang. The most important parts to finish (artistically) are the tree canopy and the sensory boxes. The can sculptures look really stunning and will look brilliant mixed with the paper trinkets described by Helen in another post, the pine cones and real leaves set in transparancies. The trick is to get the measurements of the mesh right, not to mention the height. It is all a bit hit and miss as you really need to be in the geodome to get this perfect, so we are going for 'better more than too few'. Diorama's are a slight challenge with these odd measurements, but I think they will look really good when finished and if not, the boxes on the 'stone' pillars are a stunning feature in itself. (all outer artwork by Alice Fletcher by the way). Colette visited our workshop last week on Monday and was pleased with progress so far, she even cut some cans! We are batlling with transport issues to Glasto as it looks like we won't even get on site until about 11 a.m. on Monday due to all the traders queuing up. That would only leave us 1.5 days to build the whole thing and do all the finishing touches, volunteers briefing and Silent Disco tutorials, eek! It is weird, I always said that we would only have 1.5 days, but now it is really true. Most people told me that we have way longer than that, but it does not look like it with these logistics. It always amazes me that many people have no sense of how long things actually take.

The bar looks stunning and we had heaps of responses to the question posed by Jo Bell about the outdoors. Now they need to be written onto raw bunting. Anyway, need to crack on, but it is all getting quite excited now. Can't wait until Glasto Wednesday, when it should all be done. xx V

Twitter and poems

2010-06-07T00:09:00.000+01:00

The National Trust helped us launch our user generated activity this week. We are cladding the front of the Outside Inn's bar with pieces of wood that will be decorated with peoples thoughts and feelings about the outdoors. We are asking twitter and facebook users

"How does the outdoors makes you feel? reply @nationaltrust with #tag #NTGLASTO

Jo Bell the Glastonbury Poet in residence will create a poem inspired by these crowd sourced stanza's.

Making

2010-06-07T00:01:00.000+01:00

Some short stop frame films about making.

Balloons for Green Droplets

Painting

More sounds

2010-06-06T23:59:00.000+01:00

Andy has completed all his field recordings and has even put together a rough edit of both tracks. The tracks will be from Bossington and Lydford Gorge. The rought edits set out the intended composition and he will be working on balancing the mix, making sure everything segways seemlessly and above all making sure the sense of 'space' is observed. After our last meeting he has been listening to one of my favourite albums Cho Oyu 8201m (Field Recordings From Tibet) by Geir Jenssen as well as Oneohtrix Point Never's new album, Returnal, on Editions Mego and Russel Haswell's Wild Tracks. All lovely inspiration I hope.

Three weeks left!

2010-05-31T22:04:00.001+01:00

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaah! So much has happened, we have not had time to blog.

- Had a National Trust volunteers day in the Pervasive Media Studio and chose 10 brilliant candidates to man the dome at the festival.

- We visited one of the geodesic domes the other day and it looks amazing.

- We had a bit of rain trouble

- Most of the bits of furniture have been made by Brody, Ben and Will and are nearly finished.

- Helen and I have been sanding, filling, painting, thinking, lifting, calculating, shopping, stressing, glueing, cutting, moving and talking a lot and still are.

- We did a tree test today and it is very impressive.

Too little time, too much to say, I am just going to dump some photos with captions here.

Looking for leaves and the biggest bird in the world decided to poo on me.

Our studio with some of the bar pieces, the sign and the trunk structure on a low rig.

Ben pulling some weight

Sewing bits of wood on metal wire

Branches are not the easiest to work with...

Hard to see, but the trunk and the branches are up! Not under tension though.

Sound Recording

2010-05-20T11:22:00.002+01:00

Andy has been out and about collecting sounds for the Two soundscapes. This shot was taken at Lydford Gorge.

The conditions for recording were ideal, with the trees absorbing a lot of the wind sound allowing for beautifully clear recordings of the rushing water on its way to Devils Cauldron.

After the recordings had been logged Andy and I spoke at length as to how to compose a narrative from found sound without loosing the interest of the listener . Speaking with reference to Chris Watson and BJ Nilsen's collaboration; Storm, a full length album which follows a Storm's journey across the North Sea- we threw around ideas about creating a sense of movement and rhythm from field recordings. Inspired by this, we moved onto the topic of merging field recordings with synthesised sounds/ samples to complement the recordings sympathetically. With such an abundance of interesting sounds everywhere (nod in Silence to Cage) we both felt that it would be better to use only field recordings - and through the composition create melodies = think Reich inspired phased minimalist-esque melodies.

Lets see how it pans out.

Paper mache test

2010-05-20T11:08:00.002+01:00

I am testing ways to create green, droplet, organic shapes from tissue paper. In my mind I can see fragile rough shapes suspended in clusters that are transparent enough to let light seep through.

Using various sizes of balloons and a nice pva/water mix I went about trying approaches to creating these shapes. Including incorporating thread, using the paper mache as a moulding substance and simply laying sheets over the balloons.

I look forward to popping them today to see the resultant shapes.

More quick experiments

2010-05-11T20:34:00.000+01:00

More quick experiments. As with all quick turnarounds there will be problems...it is obviously not possible to create more than a 1000 objects within our budget and time...plan B is to go back to plan A and create a mixture.

One of what is going to be many resin experiments

2010-05-10T22:36:00.001+01:00

Tree felling for our project

2010-05-10T22:04:00.002+01:00

Mark Courtiour and Rob Stephens felling trees.

In case people should question the need for cutting down trees, this has not come from a wood, but is part of the scrub removal work to return Cheddar Cliffs to species rich limestone grassland.

How it all happened and what we are doing

2010-05-10T21:54:00.003+01:00

Aaaaaaah, too much to say. In a large nut shell: I was alerted by someone in the Pervasive Media Studio in Bristol about the National Trusts's call for artists for Glastonbury festival 2010. I called Helen Bentley because I like working with her: she has bouts of energy, hands on approach, a twinkley cheeky resourcefulness and plenty of oomph under her belt (not in that way) and NO VOLUME CONTROL! I talked through some of the themes I was exploring at the time and she was game.

Back in April we met up with the lovely Colette and Jess from NT at Watershed to do a braindump and they were as excited as us. Proposal went in, we pitched, several other artists pitched - we WON!

There was a very short turnaround on all of this and we had somehow managed to go from some loose themes to a week later with nearly fully shaped ideas. At this stage we had already rounded up some of our finest contacts to check some of the feasibility and financing and one of those guys was Ben Irwin. Ben is an exceptionally skilled carpenter, sculpturer, designer and builder and several other amazing things. He's currently working with the Invisible Circus on some of their highly complex sets and installations . And now he is ours ;-) Ben has put together a crew of artist builders and carpenters who all work with the Invisible Circus, Brody and Will K.

I am not going to write up the tedious process and nightmarish admin involved with trying to get certain types of insurance and a business bank account: done.

So what are we doing? Well, that would be telling. Let's just say that we are creating an Outside Inn in a really busy spot at the festival near the Bandstand and Cider Bus. The Guardian's take on it is this (even though we feel that it does not sound that great compared with what we are producing). http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/may/01/glastonbury-festival-national-trust-debut

What we can reveal is that we are designing and delivering everything for the inside of a beautiful canvas double geo dome (yes, we are filling 1000m2 with stuff and activities) with the help of an increasing number of people. We only had official sign-off on 5 May 2010 and the check won't clear until 13 May so the pressure is on! Most people think that we are absolutely mad for doing this, but we are.

Hopefully we will keep up the blogging from now on and post lots of pictures of process and trial and error etc. until we have finished!

xx V