Residencies usually have a timeframe. Michael Bowdidge's enduring attachment to x-church however has led us to think that the experience of working there never goes away so we now actively seek to keep our residents attached. The SARC group is a extension of this position but so too is Live Collage and it has developed a wonderful knack of portraying life in and around x-church
It started with a few digital collages Michael made from photographs STAP member Fez took at our first festival, Drum for Syria, in 2013. There are now over 200 collages and the number of people providing source material has expanded considerably. After Festival x-24 2016 we formed the Live Collage Working Group and this now has members from the youth and mental health areas of the project working alongside SARC members and a growing number of other artists
Adding photographs into the Live Collage mix is now becoming habitual and normal. Perhaps these collages best appear as fleeting moments flashing up in the social media churn. They get in the way of facebook traffic flowing in and out of the various groups intersecting with life at x-church