Do you have performance ideas for vacant commercial space? How could such a space – be it an apartment block, the floor of an office building, empty land or a retail space – be more creatively utilised to provide a more vital inner-city?

Here’s a chance for artists from the theatre and dance worlds to have their say. Letting Space is calling for submissions from artists for their second Urban Dream Brokerage, funded by Wellington City Council as part of their Toward 2040: Smart Green Wellington strategy. Send us a summary of your idea and we’ll choose three of the best to be presented in a live pitching session in Wellington at 6pm, Friday 29 July at the Wellington Town Hall (attendance free). Last year’s Urban Dream Brokerage featured for example a great pitch from Wellington theatre producers The Playground Collective.

Pitches are required by Friday 15 July.

Your written pitch should be snappy (under 200 words). It may relate to a specific site in the city, or be an idea for the city in the future. It may suggest new models of exchange or propose alternative systems of value. Drawings and images are welcomed.

Please submit to sophiejerramandmarkamery@gmail.com

We welcome pitches from artists from outside Wellington (if you are selected you will need to make your own way to Wellington for the event). We are also happy to receive proposals from artists who have pitched previously.

The Brokerage is part of Letting Space, a major art and property project featuring a series of art projects and discussions. Our current project, on until July 10 is Pioneer-city.com by Bronwyn Holloway-Smith (www.lettingspace.org.nz/bronwyn-holloway-smith) which was originally pitched as part of Urban Dream Brokerage last year.  

At the last UDB in May 2010 we had to turn people away as a packed house at City Gallery watched dragons become petitioners, and property managers and artists alike impress the crowd with visions of art inside elevators and boatsheds, a new age therapAy stronghold and gargantuan lightshows.

Letting Space and Wellington City Council share an interest in how artists can contribute to creating a more dynamic future city, and we ask all potential pitchers to consider the Toward 2040 strategy as part of their thinking (see link below). Toward 2040 details what WCC think Wellington needs to do as a city to make sure it continues to thrive in a rapidly changing local and global environment.  

We can’t promise you’ll get to realise your dreams, but we’d like to reveal to the city the best creative ideas for the use of unemployed spaces.

Some Handy Links

Further information on the Toward 2040: A Smart Green Wellington strategy can be found at: www.wellington.govt.nz/projects/new/wellington2040.html
To see a range of 10 written pitches made to the 2010 Urban Dream Brokerage go to: www.lettingspace.org.nz/realty-pitch/

To see images and read an account of last year’s event go to www.lettingspace.org.nz/the-urban-dream-brokerage/

A panelists experience (Jeremy Diggle, former head of art at Massey University) of the event can also be read on our blog here: