{"id":1222,"date":"2019-02-21T15:48:22","date_gmt":"2019-02-21T15:48:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/arts-at-unisouth\/?p=1222"},"modified":"2019-02-26T21:19:55","modified_gmt":"2019-02-26T21:19:55","slug":"interview-with-southampton-showcase-gallery-curator-kate-maple","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/arts-at-unisouth\/2019\/02\/21\/interview-with-southampton-showcase-gallery-curator-kate-maple\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview with Kate Maple, Curator of Solent Showcase Gallery"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Arts Ambassador Katherine Wells interviews Kate Maple, Curator of Solent Showcase Gallery about her career and what&#8217;s planned for 2019.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<div class=\"jetpack-video-wrapper\"><span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"660\" height=\"372\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/mgmLLRUXjLs?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-GB&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span><\/div>\n<p>Kate Maple: My name is Kate Maple and I am the curator o<a href=\"https:\/\/www.solent.ac.uk\/showcase\">f Solent Showcase Gallery<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Katherine Wells:<em> How did you come to work within the arts?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>KM:<i>\u00a0<\/i>I graduated from Essex University, way way back, in the early nineties. It was a long time ago, but there was a recession going on at the same time, so my path working in the arts was quite a windy one, because it\u2019s been really difficult to get work, so I had to find ways to get jobs, doing voluntary work and trying lots of different things. I always wanted to work in the arts from a very young age and I think if you\u2019re really passionate about it, you stick at it, so that\u2019s what I\u2019ve been doing since the nineties. Little jobs here and there, and then gradually building to bigger jobs, but it\u2019s been quite a windy path.<\/p>\n<p>KW:<em> Can you talk about your role now?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>KM: I\u2019m currently curator of Showcase Gallery, which is my favourite job. I love it, it\u2019s great. I have to \u2013 we\u2019re a really small team, there\u2019s only two of us, and then we have lots of students to help us, but we have to devise programmes, research, implement, deliver all of the arts programmes for the whole year, so it\u2019s really varied work, really busy, but ultimately really exciting.<\/p>\n<p>KW:<em> How has Solent Showcase brought wider awareness and engagement to the arts?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>KM:<em>\u00a0<\/em>I think over the last few years we\u2019ve been really changing the role of the gallery here. We\u2019ve really been listening to people in Southampton, to what they\u2019ve said they want or need from a cultural provision in the city and tried to play to our strengths as a small venue that\u2019s very centrally located to try and do some really exciting programming and look at social inclusion and socially-engaged practice. For me, it\u2019s really important to have people participating and engaging with artwork in here and even being part of the process of making the work. We\u2019ve been trying to work with communities really closely to ask them what they want and what they need and work with them to help deliver that, and over the next few years we\u2019re going to do that more and more strongly, and it seems to be working. We\u2019re getting really good responses \u2013 people seem to be enjoying what we\u2019re doing, and our audience is growing, which is great.<\/p>\n<p>KW:<em> What are your plans for 2019?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>KM:<em>\u00a0<\/em>Coming up in 2019, we hope to have lots of community-related exhibitions, lists of participatory projects, things that go off-site and around the city, asking lots of questions about what it is like to live here, what is your experience of the city, how do different communities feel about living here? Do they feel welcome? Do they feel part of the cultural quarter? We\u2019re asking lots of interesting questions and researching what people need and expect from a cultural quarter.<\/p>\n<p>KW:<em> And lastly, what advice would you give someone trying to establish themselves within the arts?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>KM:<em>\u00a0<\/em>Working within the arts is an amazing career because it\u2019s really fulfilling \u2013 it really makes you feel like you\u2019re giving something to the wider community and I do believe you can change the world through the arts and other things. I think if you want to work in that field, you have to be passionate enough to make it work. You have to be determined and you have to try lots of different parts of the job. I think if you just go straight into a job as a manager or curator, you\u2019re not really learning all the ways in which a job or gallery is run. I\u2019d say start at the bottom \u2013 make the tea, stuff the envelopes, learn all the different elements of the job, and you\u2019ll find out which part of it is your passion and what you want to do.<\/p>\n<p><em>Arts Ambassadors is a paid opportunity, supported by the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.southampton.ac.uk\/careers\/index.page\">Careers and Employability\u00a0<\/a>Service\u2019s Excel Southampton Internship programme, University of Southampton<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Arts Ambassador Katherine Wells interviews Kate Maple, Curator of Solent Showcase Gallery about her career and what&#8217;s planned for 2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2268,"featured_media":1244,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[120,124,25,14,10],"tags":[46,5,122,65,32,49,68,6,98,115,121,37,75,234,235,4,77,97],"class_list":["post-1222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-ambassadors","category-city","category-southampton","category-student","category-visual-arts","tag-art","tag-arts","tag-arts-ambassadors","tag-arts-at-university-of-southampton","tag-careers","tag-contemporary-art","tag-cultural-quarter","tag-culture","tag-design","tag-exhibition","tag-experience","tag-gallery","tag-interview","tag-solent","tag-solent-showcase-gallery","tag-southampton","tag-student","tag-visual-art"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/arts-at-unisouth\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/149\/2019\/02\/MVIMG_20181011_182805.jpg?fit=4032%2C3024&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pc9CSZ-jI","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/arts-at-unisouth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/arts-at-unisouth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/arts-at-unisouth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/arts-at-unisouth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2268"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/arts-at-unisouth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1222"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/arts-at-unisouth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1222\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1352,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/arts-at-unisouth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1222\/revisions\/1352"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/arts-at-unisouth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/arts-at-unisouth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/arts-at-unisouth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/arts-at-unisouth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}