PHONE BOX PROJECT R&D
The Phone Box Project
"THE PHONE BOX PROJECT shall open up the phone box doors to host temporary art events in empty phone booths in 8 villages. Developed & presented by a consortium of 8 artists/artist groups working across a range of disciplines." CANOPY Creative Network
Eight red phone boxes across the Forest of Dean have been gaining the attention of a number of arts practitioners. These artists are working with the communities near the boxes to develop a weekend arts trail.
SHEBANG have been working with CANOPY Creative Network, local community residents, the Dean Heritage Centre archives team and the Innovations Lab to develop temporary art installations and social events in and around the dis-used phone boxes. This project has been put on hold due to Covid-19.
The project so far...
We have been working with two phone boxes in two forest locations: Oldcroft and Berry Hill.
Our approach:
Getting to know the communities, place making, skill sharing and building on the strengths of the community.
Thinking about COMMUNICATION old and new as a theme, we have been exploring communication methods and how they have impacted on the social fabric of the Forest of Dean. Recent advancements in the ways we communicate give us instant connection - communication at our fingertips - but the Forest of Dean is a rural place with intermittent mobile phone signal and disparate towns and villages.
Since the age of the phone box there has been a shift in social patterns. Contemporary society is becoming more divided, more 'indoors' and with less social meeting places. Loneliness and isolation are big issues on the agenda of change makers in rural places.
In this context we set out to look at how things were for the older generation in the Forest, how things are for young people now and how we could explore those narratives in relation to the phone box. This manifested as a number of pop up style actions and interventions with the phone boxes at both sites.
Development of ideas:
Our phone box locations were at the start and end of the larger interactive trail. We were working towards producing a social event, co-produced with the communities at each location with a view to bringing people together. It would start with a breakfast/tea party gathering at Oldcroft to mark the opening of the whole trail. It would end with a closing event at Berry Hill mirroring the trails end location.. The events would sit alongside the phone booth transformed as an Alexa (Google) style interactive personality. Informed by the local community and reflecting different generations. Berry Hill phone box would become a male Forester of 50+ years, speaking forest dialect and would represent the older generation of foresters. Oldcroft's persona will reflect its contemporary counterpart in a younger, new generation of Forester.
"I know of few more fascinating areas and, entering the Forest of Dean by whichever route you choose, you can soon sense that you are in a self-absorbed community where the inter-relation of landscape, work and the different generations demands more than the usual flickering attention" Dennis potter- The Changing Forest 1962
