Take a look inside Creative Crawley's new space in County Mall Shopping Centre

SussexWorld

Creative Crawley has a new space in Unit 79/80 of County Mall Shopping Centre. Creative Crawley is launching its Spring Programme on Friday, March 28 but we got a sneak preview and a guided tour by  Community Producer Becky Jones

Transcript

00:00Hi, I'm Becky, Community Producer for Creative Crawley, and we're here today in County Mall

00:07Shopping Centre at Unit 7980, which is a new temporary creative pop-up space that we are

00:13opening at the end of next week with our partners Audio Active and Theatre Centre.

00:19And shall we take a look inside?

00:20Yeah, let's go for it, follow me.

00:21So, in we come.

00:22So, welcome, welcome.

00:24So, this is the sort of bare bones of what the opening space of the space will look like.

00:31We'll have this set up in a way more cosy way, so we'll have tables, we'll have chairs

00:37that people can sit on, and even though this is going to be a creative space, it will be

00:41a place that you can just come and have your lunch and hang out.

00:44We don't want it to feel like you can't come in here if you're not coming to see the art

00:48or coming to see the exhibitions or the shows.

00:50Like, you can come and hang out.

00:53We've also got here, which is a lovely feature, we've got a projector and a projection screen.

00:58So, we're calling this the Window Gallery.

01:00So, in here, we're going to be putting out commissions for artists to submit work or

01:05to come up with new ideas for work that can be displayed in that window, which is really,

01:10really exciting.

01:11Excellent.

01:12Yeah.

01:13So, then here is kind of where audiences will come in.

01:16This is like our welcome area.

01:18So, we can have on the notice board any sort of creative things that are going on, which

01:21is really great.

01:22So, our welcome team will be working here.

01:24This is a lovely feature.

01:26This was actually made by an artist called Kerith Ogden, who does a lot of the lanterns

01:31for Glow Wild at Wakehurst.

01:33Oh, my goodness.

01:34And she made this for us last summer for our Around the Lake Festival at Tilgate Park.

01:40And so, it's a lantern, and probably people, you will recognise this.

01:44This is the bandstand in Memorial Gardens.

01:46So, it was an ode to that.

01:48So, we're going to find a home for that.

01:50So, welcome into this, one of the first spaces.

01:54This is called the Long Gallery, which you might be able to see.

01:57It's very long.

01:58And the idea of the design of this is that we will always have something that's exhibited

02:03in here that audiences can see it from the window.

02:07So, like, if they're like, oh, I don't know if I want to go in there, or I don't know

02:10what's going on in there, they can look in the window and be like, oh, what is that?

02:14That might pull them in.

02:16So, it goes all the way down.

02:19And we've got a lovely bit of scaff here that artists can use if they want to display stuff

02:24on there.

02:25But we're going to have an exhibition in this space to start with called Making the Invisible

02:29Visible, which is by an artist called Eric McLennan.

02:31And he's worked with four different community groups to basically talk about connection

02:37and personal objects and the stories around that.

02:40So, it's going to display some of their objects, recordings of their stories and transcripts

02:44to really bring home the extraordinary ordinariness of the everyday.

02:48So, that's going to be a really exciting exhibition in here.

02:51Wow.

02:52So, then we come down.

02:54Throughout the space, there's lots of different zones.

02:58And it's been designed in a way that it's a flexible performance space, so it can suit

03:02different needs.

03:03So, whether it's an exhibition, whether it's a performance, we've got that movable tease,

03:08as we're calling them, that we can zone in different places.

03:10So, that's really exciting.

03:12And then we come down.

03:14Obviously, a greenhouse.

03:15A greenhouse!

03:16One of our favourite features.

03:18The reason this came to be is because we kind of wanted to just spark a little glimpse at

03:25how we can actually use different spaces.

03:28It doesn't always have to just be in a room with tables and chairs, but actually, well,

03:31why not?

03:32Why can't we do something in a greenhouse?

03:34So, we can use this in a multitude of ways.

03:36We're doing a fashion show in April, and the designers might be using it to put some

03:41of the garments in there after the show.

03:43People can just go in there and have a chill time.

03:47There's breakout space.

03:48So, it can be used in different ways.

03:50So, it's just a funky way of thinking about how we use space.

03:53And again, that's movable, so we can move that wherever we need it to go.

03:57Wow.

03:58It's massive, isn't it?

04:00It's really big.

04:02So, we come right down to the end of the unit, and it sort of curls into, and this is our

04:08performance space.

04:12So, here, again, similar to the rest of the unit, everything's been designed so that it's

04:17flexible.

04:18And we've got it in an end-on position at the moment, so it's like a 60-seat theatre.

04:23But this flooring can come up, the seating can move.

04:26We've obviously got all the amazing rigging, so we can have lighting and projectors and

04:30the sound.

04:31It's pitted out in a way that's really fit for purpose.

04:34But again, it's flexible to be able to move certain parts of it.

04:37Brilliant.

04:38Well, thank you very much for that tour.

04:39You're welcome.

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