Output details

Edited book 'The Lone Twin Boat Project' (Devon: Chiquita Books, 2012; ISBN 978-0-9567592-2-1) and supporting material regarding Lone Twin's 'Artists Taking The Lead' project, The Boat Project, for the Cultural Olympiad 2012

This book comprises one component of a major London 2012 Cultural Olympiad commission (£500,000) as part of the ACE-funded ‘Artists Taking The Lead’ initiative, one of twelve such commissions in Britain. Lone Twin’s The Boat Project, selected for the South East region, involved the building of a seagoing boat from donations of wooden objects, a maiden voyage during the lead-in to the Olympics with curated events at ports of call along the south coast, a website, and an ongoing legacy period in which the boat both travels internationally and becomes a civic resource.

In addition to a full catalogue of all 1,225 donations and their attached stories, the book also includes three new essays by David Williams (approx. 14,000 words in total) concerning earlier Lone Twin projects related to water, sea, boats, and the accumulation of materials; the design and build of the boat, and the incorporation of the donations; and cultural contexts for and readings of the donations themselves (as wood, memory, ‘talismans of continuity’, affective ‘sites of experience’ and so on). The editor was implicated in the project for a period of 18 months, from the initial gathering of wood to the boat’s naming (‘Collective Spirit’), launch and maiden voyage.

Conceived as an integral part of The Boat Project from the outset, the book endeavours to find an appropriate structure and forms for a project built around conversation, participation and exchange; so its practice-based research focuses in large part on innovative and creative modes of documentation and the page as space for performative traces. The documentation of processes/practices, and the final form of the book, were informed by close collaboration with designer Kevin Mount. All published materials here are original, as is the project itself in its combination of contemporary participatory arts practices, design, craft and sport.