The first project we have undertaken as Plank is a publication entitled Shy Bairns: The Only Pizza Shop Where I Live Burnt Down, Volume #1.
The project was conceived from the idea of creating out own inclusive platform in order to allow young creatives to connect with one another and build a community. The publication, therefore, acts as a showcase for the wealth of emerging talent across the North of England. All of the published work will be created by artists who originated in the North or have now moved away from the South in order to embark on a university degree or artistic career.
Submissions
In order to gather content for this publication connected with a range of contacts asking for submissions, some from previous artistic projects and exhibitions, and some from our own universities and degrees. The members of the collective cover a large part of the country, having all originated from near Newcastle and now attending university in Manchester, Leeds and London, and after contacting people to gain some initial interest in the project we received a lot of positive feedback and a very obvious desire for young creatives to be involved.
Considering this we then put out an open call for submissions using our social media platforms. As a start-up collective the cheapest and most efficient way of connecting with a large audience was to use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and email to advertise the project. Utilising a combination of friends and family from across the country, as well as creators of other zines that we admired or previously been featured in, the campaign proved to be successful. We wanted the project to flow succinctly and gave an optimistic 8 day submission window from the 29/08/16 - 06/09/16. However we received an unexpected number of submission and closed a week later with enough content to make a publication twice the size of our original idea.
In total we selected 26 artists to be included, ranging from illustration and photography to performance art and academic writing.
An advert from our social media campaign
The official list of contributors