PEOPLE - Plymouth

We know that thousands of people in Plymouth use their time to help out and volunteer in our city's communities. We want to create an extra special, one-off, flash-mob-type celebration on Plymouth Hoe in July 2022 to draw attention to, and thank, local residents for the time and effort they put into making our city great!!

We’ll do this by:

- bringing hundreds of people together in a mass gathering on Plymouth Hoe (with special gifts for everyone who takes part, and a collective, en masse “thank you” speech)
- taking a new, commemorative aerial photo of everyone standing in line to spell out the word PEOPLE
- showing the photograph we make together on a large billboard on the outside of the Millennium Building on Union Street.

We’re going to work hard to make this a really special and memorable experience for everyone involved, and we’ll do our best to make sure that the photograph we make travels far and wide - telling the story of the massive contribution that PEOPLE make to Plymouth, through the generous act of volunteering.

We need YOUR HELP to make this idea a reality!!!!

IMAGE: Snapshot of an archive image of the Plymouth Guild of Community Service volunteer fun day on Plymouth Hoe in 1982 (originally photographed by Devon & Cornwall Police) that has inspired our project. 

WHAT IS THIS CROWDFUNDER FOR?

40 years ago (in 1982) Plymouth Guild of Community Service organised a celebratory event on Plymouth Hoe, where hundreds of people gathered to spell out the word PEOPLE. We want to recreate this event in Summer 2022 to bring people together to acknowledge, draw attention to, celebrate and document people who live and work in our city who give their time for free for the benefit of others.

By recreating this historical photograph, our new artwork PEOPLE (Plymouth) will draw people together who might not already know each other, to form a temporary community, who each share a common bond through their generous acts of giving. It will be a chance for people to enjoy some social time-out, to meet others from across the city, and to share in celebrating their important contributions to our communities.

We’ll be inviting all sorts of volunteers who live or work in Plymouth to take part - whether this is people who volunteer their time to help friends, family, neighbours or strangers; care for animals and nature; or help to run clubs, societies, or groups of different kinds; those that support essential community action, emergency services and charities in a voluntary capacity; or do things that cover gaps in existing services through unpaid care, community organising and other types of work.

PEOPLE (Plymouth) is an opportunity to highlight the significant value of ‘free-time’ being given as a gift to others - where work meets love and leisure meets labour.

We have set ourselves an ambitious target for this project, and are hoping to secure 50% of our target via Plymouth City Council's groundbreaking City Change Fund. This means that if we can raise at least £3,500 from our backers, the City Council would match this so that we can hit our target of £7,000.

WHO ARE WE:

We are LOW PROFILE - Rachel Dobbs & Hannah Rose - artists based in Plymouth (UK), who have been working together over the last 18 years. As artists, we have an ongoing interest in bringing people into our work as participants, collaborators & experts in their field, where their involvement is highly valued & carefully considered. Our work is often made in response to specific places, and the contexts and situations we find in those places.

If you’re new to what we do, have a look at our website to find out more:
www.we-are-low-profile.co.uk

We also spend a fair amount of our time volunteering - supporting community building in Plymouth (through giving time to organisations like CAMP, Take A Part, JarSquad and North Star Study Group), helping out friends and neighbours, and using our creative skills and expertise to help other people make their ideas a reality.

PEOPLE (Plymouth, 2022) is the biggest and most ambitious artwork we have made so far, and we're really excited to be making this happen in our home city!!

WHAT, WHEN & HOW?

At the moment, we’re just at the start of our journey to making this idea a reality. We have partnered up with POP (Plymouth Octopus Project) and Our Plymouth (to help us contact the city’s volunteers), Plymouth Culture (to help us get the word out and promote the project), Plymouth City Council (to help us with getting all of the access & permissions in place that we need to make this event happen) and The Box (to help us with marketing, promotion and conversations around how this event could be remembered in the city's archives).

We have secured support from Nudge Community Builders (to host the billboard at The Millennium), and we’re in conversation with Improving Lives Plymouth (who are the organisation that has grown out of the original Plymouth Guild of Community Service).

Our experience of running large-scale events and making public artworks in the past has taught us that we’ll need lots of help, support and some cash to get all of this up and running. 

We’re going to employ a local team of Plymouth-based creatives to support the making of this work - including photographers, stewards, and arts production specialists Flock South West. We’ll also work with Big Ups (a great local sign making company) to produce the large scale billboard on Union Street. Backing this campaign is a chance and an invitation for you to also invest in our city, to support us to work with more local creative people and professionals in the development of this new artwork. 

We have been awarded funding from Arts Council England to cover part of the costs of planning and producing the event, but we need YOUR HELP to match this through this Crowdfunder campaign to reach our full project budget.

Here’s what we need to do to make PEOPLE (Plymouth) happen:

• Plan and organise an event that gathers as many people as possible (at least 300-600 people) who regularly volunteer their time in some capacity, to gather together on Plymouth Hoe on a specified date and time later this year (Summer 2022). This will (of course) need to work within all COVID regulations, and will be supported by the Public Art team at Plymouth City Council, with all risk-assessment etc in place.
• Create a large scale aerial photograph of the word PEOPLE spelled out by the participants who attend the event standing in formation
• Digital copies of this photograph will be distributed as a free gift to those who take part, and printed copies (paid for) of the image will be offered as rewards through this Crowdfunder campaign
• We also plan to make a 500 piece jigsaw puzzle (limited run) offered as a Crowdfunder reward 
• Produce special limited edition badges created by LOW PROFILE to be gifted to participants, celebrating their participation in the project and offered as rewards through our Crowdfunder 
• Display a large-scale copy of the PEOPLE photograph as a billboard on the outside of The Millennium building on Union Street (Autumn / Winter 2022), to coincide with The British Art Show exhibition in Plymouth. This will allow visitors and local people to see, share and celebrate the artwork, and again draw attention to the importance of volunteering in Plymouth.

GET INVOLVED!

This Crowdfunder is a great opportunity for YOU to get involved and help get this project off the ground. We’ve prepared some excellent rewards to thank you for your support and allow you to own a part of the new artwork we create…

IMPORTANT: All rewards will be delivered AFTER the event happens (currently planned for July 2022 - but subject to change if COVID regulations change too)

REWARDS!

£35 - PEOPLE - Limited Edition Print (2022)
We will produce an A3 limited edition print of the new PEOPLE commemorative photograph especially for this Crowdfunder campaign.

£55 - PEOPLE - Limited Edition Jigsaw Puzzle (2022)
We will produce a limited edition 500 piece jigsaw puzzle of the new PEOPLE artwork especially for this crowdfunder campaign.

£18 - PEOPLE - Limited Edition Badge (2022)
We will produce a limited edition enamel PEOPLE badge that will be gifted to everyone who takes part in making the PEOPLE artwork. A limited number of these badges are also available to backers as rewards through this crowdfunder campaign.

£10 - FREE TIME - Limited Edition badge (2022)
We will produce a limited edition enamel FREE TIME badge that will be available to purchase through this crowdfunder.

ALL REWARDS INCLUDE UK POSTAGE & PACKAGING - If you live outside the UK, please contact us for extra postage costs + estimated delivery times.

DO YOU VOLUNTEER YOUR TIME IN PLYMOUTH? WE NEED YOU!!

• We are also seeking as many people as possible in Plymouth to get involved in making this artwork, by coming along to the event in July 2022. If you are someone who regularly volunteers their time for the benefit of others, we’d love you to get involved!
• All participants will receive: a FREE digital copy of the PEOPLE photograph and a FREE commemorative badge (and if you want to receive a printed version of the photograph, please choose this Reward Pledge on the campaign)
• Please register your interest to participate by filling in this short form 

How else can you help?

Every pledge and contribution is really valuable to our project, but we know that people don’t always have money to spare. If this is the case, there are lots of other ways that you can help us to reach our targets...

• Your recommendation - If you like what we do, be sure to tell your friends, family and colleagues about our work. If you can personally recommend this crowdfunder to just one or two people you know who would LOVE it, we'll get our work out to lots more people than we could ever reach by ourselves.
• Sharing our crowdfunder on social media - By sharing and recommending our project to your friends, followers & contacts you can help to boost the number of people our project reaches. Crowdfunder reckons that each share on social media can equate to around £20 in pledges, so your shares could make all the difference!! Be sure to include a personal message for the best results.
• Write / blog / shout about our work - If you are excited about our idea, the work we make and our approach, please do tell the world! Blogging about our projects and artwork helps to spread the word and support our practice by introducing new people to our work. Make sure to share links with us so that we can retweet & share your writing with our networks too - you'll find us online at @helloLOWPROFILE on Instagram, Twitter & Facebook