N-E-W… thinking

N-E-W are planning more events for 2025. If you are interested in joining our meetings and lending a hand, please let us know by email – info@n-e-w.org

N-E-W Tuesdays –  Would you be interested in meeting other artists, groups, musicians, writers, poets, designers, filmmakers and more to share ideas, swap tips or just say hello? We are currently gauging interest in a monthly meeting and are proposing the first Tuesday of each month. This could take place in a set venue, or move to different locations. Ideas and thoughts on this will be very welcome – please email mark@markjessett.com

Dis-ASSEMBLY was the closing event of N-E-W ASSEMBLY, an audience-powered exhibition that re-imagined educational and social systems…

 ‘Assembly’ ran from 15^th and the 17^th of September 2023 at St. Lawrence Chapel, Ashburton, as part of Little Big Town festival.

“The idea that localised power structures are the key for flourishing communities is one of the key ideas behind the ‘Assembly’ project. Conceived and curated by Rob Manners, ASSEMBLY is a creation of the contemporary arts collective N-E-W, supported by the Arts Council England. Using a passage from ‘The Total Economy’ by Wendel Berry as a seed for dialogue, ‘Assembly’ invites various local artists and groups (including a school) to bring together their creative practises and observe the spontaneous emergence of connections – and community.

The exhibition venue itself, the historical St. Lawrence Chapel, invites questioning over education and hierarchic power structures. Now a heritage, cultural and community centre, the Chapel building was a grammar school for over 600 years; the wooden tables and benches where former students carved out their names as ‘graffiti’ are a permanent installation on-site, keeping alive stories of non-compliance. ‘Assembly’ will add to this, re-imagining the space and adding to the dialogue through projections, sculpture, painting, music and performance.

Aside from a stand-alone exhibition, the project hosted a variety of interactive events. On each exhibition day the audiences were invited to join the ‘Assembly’, for lively, non-hierarchical discussions and the presentation of ideas, where the boundaries between improvised performance and dialogue blurred.

Assembly was a performative exhibition – a work in progress. Taking a text by American writer, farmer and activist Wendell Berry as a starting point, artists including Sophia Clist, Alex Murdin, Robert Manners and students from South Dartmoor Community College collaborated to re-imagine and re-awaken the Chapel as a site of community education.