tenantspin have been reconogised for their work with Liverpool Mutual Homes on the LMH.tv project at the 2011 LMH Focus Awards. We won the partnership award at the presentation ceremony, hosted by Roger Philips.

We are very pleased to be given this award as the LMH.tv project has only just come out of its pilot stage, its great to be working in partnership with LMH and the award is very heavy and shiny!

We are continuing our work in Anfield/Breckfield and have started our growing interventions in St David’s Road. Progress has been slow, mainly impeded by red tape and planning allowances. Never-the-less we got together with a group of lovely ladies from St David’s Road to start our work with productive hanging baskets. The baskets included pak-choi, lettuce, radish, tumbling toms, strawberries and various herbs, workshops where run by tenantspin member Jennifer Welch and was the start of our work with residents in this road.

Work will continue with some defensive planting, technology and webcams so watch this space!!

More images can be found on Jennifers flickr page.

tenantspin ON TOUR is an exhibition and collaboration space created for “The Fifth Floor Ideas Taking Space” at Tate Liverpool. The Fifth Floor refers to a floor that does not physically exist within Tate Liverpool’s four-storey building, but invites the visitor to reconsider the Gallery as a place of imagination and invention.

For The Fifth Floor, tenantspin has set up a fully-equipped interactive TV studio to capture stories, and opinions, and where live discussions, readings and performances will be recorded and streamed online throughout the exhibition. Tate asked one thousand people across the city what kind of exhibition they would like to experience, and in response to what they suggested; leading international artists will be there creating major works. tenantspin has been invited to take part and our major new work is ‘tenantspin ON TOUR’ bringing community TV to the Tate.

The Tate is housed in Liverpool’s Albert Dock; which was also the original home of daytime TV show This Morning. For many years Richard and Judy broadcast from the beautiful Albert Dock; and now it’s our turn

Until 1st February we’ll be working at Tate Liverpool and broadcasting live from there every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. More info on the project is over at http://www.tenantspinontour.com

Ropewalks Square recently played host to variety of talents from the world of fine art al fresco. The idea had been honed a year or so ago by Ronnie Formby (Scottie Press) Michael Kelly (author of Liverpool’s Irish Connection amongst others) and Mike Lea (Maggie Mays Bold Street) when they stumbled on the idea of opening a gallery in Maggie Mays dedicated to the life and works of James William Carling the original Liverpool pavement aritst.

Finally, one slightly wet day in October the plan came together and the square saw the gathering of artists intent on winning the prize and creating the best piece based on a famous work from one of the regions famous painting galleries.

tenantspin was there to film the whole thing and the results of this, the work of John Scotland, can be seen on www.fact.tv.

Monday and Tuesday last week IDEE visited tenantspin from Dresden. The group is made up of artists and young people from a housing estate in Prohils, Dresden who started a arts club in the middled of the housing estate around 1994. Prohlis is an interesting looks at how Germany responded to the housing crisis after the 2nd World War. It was once in Eastern Germany before the Berlin wall came down and is made up of mostly 1950’s high-rise blocks, built originally to house 25,000 people. Since the fall of the wall most people have left for better experiences in other parts of Germany and those who are left tend to be young, unemployed and male.

Adam, an English artist who has lived around the estate for since 1994 saw the problems involved in these young peoples lives and started a media club which trains young people in film production, video editing and other interesting modes of creative development through media such as stop frame animation. They also make really interesting video blogs with other young people from the estate about their experience of being unemployed in Prohlis, what they do on Sundays, a week day and pay-day. The result of these are poignant and touching examples of an excellent way to get people to open up to a camera which can sometimes be problematic.

We took the group to the Liverpool Lighthouse on Oakfield Road, Anfield to have a look at the facilties they have there and then got together with them to run a workshop from FACT on the Tuesday – the group produced a small film which mixed flash animation techniques with stills and some moving image to give their reaction to coming to Liverpool and to seeing the large-scale regeneration of some areas and degeneration of others – the film isn’t ready as yet but watch this space……..

On Tuesday night Adam gave a talk to a group in the Renew Rooms looking at ways you can work as an artist in an environment like this and what can ultimately be gained for participants and practitioners.

For more information about IDEE and their projects go to http://idee-01239.webconsulting-dresden.de

tenantspin is very excited to present the first discussion in our six part Ways of Seeing Series 2008. For those of you that are new to us, tenantspin have been working with the Liverpool Biennial over the last 3 festivals, and in the build up we host a series of discussions aimed at giving us a bit of background leading up to the festival’s September launch.

In the broadcast below we welcomed, The Windows Project, University of the 3rd Age and artist Nancy Davenport who joined us all the way from America. Click here for more information about this years Biennial.