Poetry Polaroids

Soo.... what d'ya get when you put 3 creatives in a coffee shop with a minfestival to program, no budget and lots of juice?

We created an open poetry arts project - Poetry Polaroids - where participants are given a polaroid shaped card with a location written on it. Their mission, if they choose to accept it, was to go to this neraby location, get inspired and splatter down all their lovely creativity onto the polaroid - write, draw, whatever. Then they return it to us, in a biscuit tin. Simples..

But we needed a big special map to show off all this random marvellousness right? So you're truly "borrowed" a comedy festival advertising hoarding and improved it a bit with spray paint and a collage of Edinburgh's past. All this + the volunteering at other events + working full time = I was up all night sniffing glue and spray paint but this is the result.

Can hardly believe I chased a creative whim this far into cuckoo land.. but so glad I did. I loved cutting out all the pics of Edinburgh's past (air raid shelters in princess st gardens? hula hoop demonstration at the assembly room? 70's babes in every news snap for no reason whatsoever...etc..).

People really responded!!! We got about 40 back the first week when it was unveiled at Pulp Fiction books, then we found a longer term home at the newly re-opened Forest Cafe and we got a few more. I was so delighted, each biscuit tin full was full of wee gems : beautiful stories, poems, hiaku's, drawings, concrete poems, surreal ditties and absurd glimpses from around Edinburgh's landmarks and offbeat ruins (we had an abandoned car park and arthur's seat as locations). We even got a real polaroid with words cut out onto it!!!

Despite making me an solvent abusing insomniac kleptomaniac living an office double life, I feel like this is the week I started to feel some creative superpowers.. and it's all of YOU who did it. I was encouraged to contact a few bigger cultural groups to see where the idea could go...

All of this while finishing up my job, trying to find a house and writing essays to get into another part of my course.

this is one of the best reasons why I have been so far behind on blip...
for my own memory.. I wanted to add the other stuff i did this week at the inky minifest, 3 open mics, caberet nights, magazine launch and protest performance art (filming an evolving script)

oh and other stuff that week - my cousin ann louise was up and I did the speed of light thing on arthur's seat. But I could choose only one pic and this was it.