VACMA: Amy Beeston

I was awarded £760 in the Visual Artists and Craft Makers Awards Scheme Round II (February 2020) to fund a series of online mentoring sessions with two mentors: location sound recordist Martin Clarke and producer Antye Greie-Ripatti. These sessions contributed centrally to my aim of building a sustainable practice that is specifically (a) more robust to local weather conditions and can thus be (b) more relevant to – and integrated with – the Orkney community at large. Our discussions covered techniques to understand and mitigate the effects of wind and rain that make working outdoors with audio equipment difficult, and approaches to intertwine local and international efforts in environmental, ecological and participatory sound art projects.

The mentoring sessions undertaken in this project have been fundamental to me, allowing me to hold onto the central core of my own creative practice and yet transform many of my daily activities to match the constraints and affordances of island living during these years of intermittent lockdowns and increasing climate chaos. Discussions on sound recording have proved useful in numerous projects where I have worked with outdoor audio devices and data – with creative producers in Orkney (e.g., artist Louise Barrington and composer Gemma MacGregor) and in inter/national efforts too (e.g., with the ‘Silent Cities’ global consortium investigating pandemic soundscapes, and with the UK Acoustics Network’s EcoHack group examining metrics for biodiversity and soundscape assessment). Moreover, I have enjoyed being able to share technical sound recording knowledge with several intakes of students through my role as Relief Lecturer at the University of the Highlands and Islands (within the Orkney-based BA Fine Art degree, and in the remotelearning MA in Contemporary Art and Archaeology). Discussions on working in urban and (arguably) rural/remote contexts have

Discussions on working in urban and (arguably) rural/remote contexts have reinforced my wish to contribute to the communities in which I am based – both in a geographical sense, and in the sense of communities of interest. I hope also to encourage all I meet to take positive action in response to the environmental and ecological questions of our time. I have been a member of the Scottish Artist Union’s Climate and Sustainability subgroup since 2021, and this year joined Creative Carbon Scotland’s Springboard Assembly (Cohort J: The role of creative freelancers in the climate crisis). I have been able to share my practice and wider discussion points in remote artist talks (e.g., with artist development groups at Spike Island, Bristol and Focal Point Gallery, Southend-on-Sea) and have also become an active (and core committee) member of the Orkney-based artist collective, Móti. Throughout this work I aim to deepen my core skills as artist, researcher and activist – and to broaden my approaches so that I can be useful and act in response to the needs of the people and the environment around me. Much of my determination in these tasks harks back to the thinking I undertook during the VACMA mentoring period – long may it continue! Where relevant, please briefly describe any monitoring or feedback obtained during or after your project. N/A Did the award make a difference to the success of your project? I am very grateful to Creative Scotland, Highlands and Islands Enterprise and Orkney Islands Council who provided the funding for the VACMA scheme. My project would not have gone ahead without this funding: the entire fee awarded was paid to the two mentors in question.

Public page on my website acknowledging the award and funders, and overviewing the project activities (posted 10 June 2020):

https://avbees.com/vacma-2020/

Further images or sound from my website may be used if needed for your reporting – please contact me with any queries for specifics. e.g. Recent visual collages:

• Lighthouse communities (2023): https://avbees.com/lighthouse-communities/
• Holder (2022): https://avbees.com/holder/, e.g. Recent audio collages:
• The heart speaks even when the lips cannot (2023): https://avbees.com/the-heart-speaks/ • Wave by wave (2022): https://avbees.com/wave-by-wave/