Burlington Fine Arts Club: Residency Day One

Just having a coffee before setting off for Manchester this morning for my residency at The Burlington Fine Arts Club.
The residency encourages a Manchester based artist to collaborate with 'an outsider' artist. I am the outsider and I will be working with Tracey Eastham. I am very much looking forward to meeting Tracey today, and seeing how we might work together.
The Burlington Fine Arts Club is a fascinating project: originally a London Gentleman's drinking club where men would meet to share their enthusiasm for the arts, established in 1886 it is now being reimagined to coincide with the Manchester International Festival, and I have been lucky enough to be selected for a residency.
The Burlington is a members only club, and as I understand it, there will be a number of groups/galleries based within the club. I know that Trove have a space as does Michael Day's new group Furlough. I cannot quite imagine how this will fit together, but it sounds very interesting. There is also an emphasis on the social side of the arts world - so drinking and chatting is very important. All members pay to join and then membership fees and drink proces will be collated and then distributed to participating artists at the end of the project. This means that at this time I have no idea if I will recieve a fee for the residency, and in fact it depends on the success of the project. I think this is a model which lookms very sustainable - and is an interesting experiment in alternative funding sources.
My application to the Burlington residency programme involved becoming a Sommelier. I will be working with my collaborator to come up with a set of criteria for evaluating Manchester International festival events, each criateria will be represented by a cocktail ingrediant, and so a menu of cocktails will be produced for the opening night of the residency showcase evening on 14th. This will be a way of creating conversation around the impact of MIF and the Burlington's place within it.