For two and a half years or so I've been hosting ArtsLab on RedShift Radio. It's an unusual arts programme in that everything I play is created by artists each week, and so it's always full of new content, always interesting, and often experimental.
When I jointed RedShift as a presenter, I was given complete freedom by the wonderful station director, Liz Southall, to make any sort of programme that I wanted. For my first year I decided to include interesting music, tunes I'd not heard before, or acts that I thought were artistic or different. I played bits of Scott Walker, Pierre Arvay, Jean-Claude Vannier, and other acts. These mysteriously seemed to appear in the mainstream soon after, with the BBC featuring programmes about these great acts, as if my magic. Of course, being a little surrealistic by nature, ArtsLab was also fun and filled with strangeness and unexpected features, from a 'Charlie From Casualty' slot to a parody of 1970s television series, Heidi.
In year two, I decided to switch to the new format to try and engage with listeners more and encourage creative people to have a stake in the show. It was a slow start but the format worked, with a steady growth in listeners and people who created work for the programme. At the end of 2017, I wanted to push for something special and we created a two-part, 90 minute "opera" which told a tale, all made up from segments created by the regular contributors in a format that was a bit like an 'exquisite corpse' for radio. This was a groundbreaking experiment in itself.
As 2018 began, I was wondering how to take ArtsLab onto the next level. For the Internet, I thought that video would be more engaging, that people tended to listen to audio while doing other things, and that television, not radio was an ideal future for the show. So I decided to continue the format and move on and up with a new programme called ArtSwarm.
The first ArtSwarm is due to be shown on March 20th 2018. Like ArtsLab, ArtSwarm will be a programme of experimental creations around a theme, but it will be broadcast on YouTube. It will go live every fortnight, giving the creators more time to work on something, and viewers more time to watch each episode. I'll call out, on Twitter here and on the Facebook Group for work to include, all on a theme. Work to include will have to be new, never shown before, that is a key point. I don't want old things. The fact that everything needs to be made new each show makes the work edgy, raw, unexpected and of course, it means everything is a premiere. The show is watchable because it's full of things you haven't seen before.
Although ArtSwarm is a video show, I will still welcome audio-only pieces, and have created a series of stock animations to accompany these. I wanted to be careful to make the existing ArtsLab contributors feel comfortable and welcome to send their poems, soundscapes and other musical pieces. The main difference is that now, video is an option, or even still images.
If you are interested in creating work for the show, there are some guidelines on my website: www.marksheeky.com/artswarm.php.
This blog will document various things about the show and will list the contents of the show each week as an official record.
The show will go out live on a new channel on YouTube every other Friday at 8pm London time. Please subscribe to the channel: https://www.youtube.com/@artswarm.
