Street Art: Ascent at Chorlton Arts Festival

If the sign of a good arts festival is the way its presence is felt by the people of the town or city that hosts it, then the coming ten days’ worth of performing and visual arts heading to Chorlton definitely has the key ingredient. Returning for its fourteenth year, the Chorlton Arts Festival has taken its responsibilities in both cultivating the careers of new artists, and ensuring their work is accessible to all, very seriously. Nowhere is this more evident than in this year’s Ascent outdoor visual art commissions. A simple enough concept, the festival team has handed the same 150cm x 60cm blank canvas to seven of the city’s most exciting young artists, promising to display their responses on Chorlton’s streets. It really is that simple, and the absence of a strict rulebook is intentional, offering each artist almost unlimited freedom.

Rivca Burns, festival coordinator and Ascent curator, says: “Where many festivals fall back on more established names, we wanted to engage with up-and-coming artists from the city’s thriving scene. We came up with Ascent, showcasing artists’ work on boards outside local bars, and devised a very loose brief – the only rule being that each artist has to use only primary colours, really keeping it simple.”

Those artists include two members of Manchester’s Volkov Commanders performance collective, Aliyah Hussain and Anna Beam; character illustrator ARISU; graphic artist Alan Dalby; artist and DJ Michael Holland; and renowned screen-printer SAVWO, also known as John Powell-Jones. For Powell-Jones, it has been an opportunity to use ideas he's been working on, but on a larger scale. “I have been given free rein to do what I want,” he says, “but have to be mindful that there will be families in the area. My boards will be inspired by many of the graphic artists that I really admire, like Robert Crumb. Essentially, it will be a scene from a comic that I have been working on, making it really bright so that it stands out.”

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“I’d rather do something interesting than attention seeking” – Alan Dalby

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Being mindful of the accidental audience, exercising some level of restraint is something that Alan Dalby has also considered despite the finished work having to vie for attention outside busy bars like Electrik, The Beagle and The Spoon Inn. “I’d rather do something interesting than attention seeking,” says Dalby. “It would be bad to try and be eye-catching for the sake of being eye-catching. All of the work should naturally create attention anyway, given the fact they’re all being produced with limited, bold colours.”

As happy as the organisers are to have people happen upon each artist’s work as they stroll Chorlton’s streets, there is an interactive twist in store to enrich the viewer’s experience. Burns explains: “People can collect a map from the festival hub at Chorlton Library and follow the trail, picking up an item left especially for them to find at each location. Bringing them back to the library, they will get the chance to assemble the items in a frame to make their own unique artwork.”

In organising more than 130 events encompassing comedy, music, spoken word, digital practice and the visual arts, while ensuring that 80 percent of the events remain free of charge, Chorlton Arts Festival is certainly making the effort to ensure its lively – occasionally eccentric – local community feels at home in its company.