Julia O'Connell - Video and audio transcripts

so my name is Julia O'Connell animal so name is Julia nudists in the theater but I'm a textile artist living in Coventry my work centered around people and memories things that kind of like don't seem important but they actually are things like favorite garments or your trip to work those kind of things I think they're actually the big moments in our lives this particular piece of work is created from an old coat that I found in the charity shop but inside it is kind of like a book it really has collected stories from people from around the world so I email to and said tell me about your favorite ever garment I've also was the designer to the godiva coat was Imagineers they created this big huge 6 meter puppet and i created the code for that i had a team of fantastic artists with me though and we collected stories from around the region and basically we kind of stitched and printer that onto the code it was quite a lot of different details everywhere you look on it there's like hand embroidery and we also did some traditional screen printing which you kind of get quite rare to get that these days we created a look at about 25 screens and then we hand that with different designs on and that gave us the background pattern to the clothes I don't really do much dressmaking as such but they said to me or can you make a coat for her and by the way she's going to be about 6 meters tall and so you can imagine like my work is like usually quite kind of my news but I get it but also a team of fantastic artists with me a great glass maker and different kind of textile artist as well and basically the code for this big huge profit told the story of all the kind of industry and manufacturing throughout the West Midlands past but also about all the makers and crafters and different kind of artists and artists an agenda 50 at the moment so it was an amazing experience all the all the different stories from the region all the industry heritage was all featured on the actual code Oh set up there to absolute in 93 a long long time ago with Chris O'Connell use the writer and director the shock front is the is the uk's first professional shopfront theatre and the only one at the moment and it's really important to a city like commentary which has about 350,000 people in it grow into four hundred thousands over the next few years it's important to me that we have a kind of theater making space of that size in the city and not just say one civic theatre there needs to be a space for emerging artists as well as supporting mid-career artists as well where they can come and try out new work and just go hey I don't know if this is going to work but let's give it a go and that's what as well as our own stuff that I think we do at the shop fun so the piece of courtroom that we're doing it's a collaboration between ourselves literally and also moving spaces this is dimitar who's one of the members of moving spaces she's a choreographer and a performer and a champion experimental breaker we created this Peter courtroom which is about new arrival it's about anxiety what happens when you come to a new face a new country that kind of idea then we've got some funding from the Arts Council to try and see if we can extend it to 30 minutes so chris has been supplying more text and he's created a soundscape so I've trained as an actor in London and then I moved to commentary with Chris eons ago and so we've had our family here and everything and I absolutely love Coventry because it is one of the most creative places I know sometimes you kind of knocked icity that you're in but for me it's about the people in the city who make it and that's why it's important that things like you know I mean I'm bound to say it but things like the shopfront theater are there you know the music museum Fargo those kind of spaces because it's where people can get engaged to a place like this college even in times of austerity times of difficulty that's where actually you find a lot of creativity and I just think yes if you've culture you know let's go for it let's all work together to kind of really promote coventry in a good light that last bit is corny so you can cut that [Music]