GYOML North West

An introduction to GYOML and Folly

History

Folly is a leading digital arts organisation developing and delivering content through the presentation of a distributed programme of workshops, events, exhibitions, research and consultancy work. folly is interested in how society makes sense of the world through art and technology.

folly is a socially driven organisation that promotes the use of FOSS and democratic technologies in the creation of new work.

Since the Summer of 2005, folly has developed a mobile open lab for gyoml through which it has delivered a programme of workshops, events and commissions across the North West. Evaluations of these projects can be viewed at the bottom of this page.

Approach/Philosophy

As advocates of socially driven and open source software and the democratisation of the arts, GYOML is fundamental to folly‘s artistic vision.

We believe in supporting society to make the most of freely available tools and believe in the power of networks, collaboration and sharing.

We encourage communities of producers rather consumers and offer those people the tools and expertise to get involved.

folly have chosen to tackle GYOML in 2 major ways.

Working with new users/audiences Folly take a long term view and approach in supporting artists, communities and arts organisations to understand the creative implications of FOSS tools and digital arts.

We offer a healthy exposure to FOSS by delivering a programme of creative work building skills, confidence, knowledge and expertise for new users.

Artists Professional Development Folly seek to support artists working with technology. We offer work to artists to develop new and experimental ideas driven by the GYOML ethos investigating artistic approaches to open source software and low cost methodologies.

We believe the project offers real possibilities for making a major impact within the community, media and visual arts sectors of Lancashire and Cumbria.

People - Regular users

These GYOML projects currently work on a project basis only. The following artists have been commissioned to deliver workshop acitivity or develop new work:

Steve Symons
Tim Cullen
Lorraine Berry
Nick Holme
Jason Lamb
Jaromil, dyne.org
Aymeric Mansoux, goto10
Marloes de Valk
Dave Griffiths
Simon Yuill
Antonios Galanopoulos
Chun Lee

People - Project users

Artists
Film makers
Community Leaders
Community Activists
Young People
Teachers

Location

In September 2005, folly embarked on an ambitious development project to develop a new fit for purpose Presentation Space and Media Lab due for completion in 2008 and based in Lancaster.

We are therefore operating as a non-venue based arts organisation throughout 2006 and 2007. All GYOML activity is currently being held in partnership with other host organisations throughout the North West using 2 mobile media labs built by folly principally running on dyne:bolic and pure:dyne. They also have installed Suse 10.1

To date we have delivered GYOML activity in Lancaster, Heysham and Preston in Lancashire, Maryport and Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria and Rochdale in Greater Manchester.