|
|
Read all about our current work, get in touch for more info and please share with a friend or colleague to help us spread the word.
|
|
We were very pleased to be a part of The Holburne Museums' 'changing life through art' symposium last week. It was a timely event showcasing the impressive work of their Pathways to Wellbeing initiative. A significant project within this initiative is Fresh Art@, a collaboration between Creativity Works, The Holburne Museum, No. 1 Royal Crescent, The American Museum and Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Trust (AWP). As you can imagine, with so many partners this is a complex project to deliver, however, as discussed at the symposium, the benefits of partnership working far out way the knotty negotiations carried out between stakeholders. Fresh Art@ has been running for a number of years now and the work produced adorns and enlivens the walls of numerous NHS wards and buildings creating affirmative, pleasing and creative spaces.
This year, as in previous years, The Museums provide their space, artefacts and exhibitions as stimuli, and our current Fresh Art@ worker, Tash, alongside professional artist Barbara Disney and AWP staff, facilitate a group of participants to create work that is placed in clinical environments and also an exhibition as part of Fringe Arts Bath. This year's exhibition will be taking place at The Roper Gallery, Bath Artist Studios in the last two weeks of May.
We are all exceptionally proud of this project as it exemplifies the sheer hard work undertaken by our own staff, and our partners, to achieve our shared vision of changing peoples lives through art and creativity. Fresh Art@ does exactly that and I believe it should both be applauded and funded in equal measure.
As part of the exhibition in May, we will be holding a co|Create session for artists and other third sector and statutory organisations showcasing the work and disseminating the creative and partnership practice involved in making the project such a huge success. Do look out for this when we advertise the Creative Inspiration strand of our co|Create artist support and development programme in the very near future.
Lately,
I have been writing about our two other co|Create strands; Creative Resilience and Enterprise Works. Last week we completed the second of our Creative Resilience pilots for a group of social entrepreneurs in Bristol. The feedback from this day was extremely positive and we will be doing another session for artists very soon. Similarly, we recently completed our first Enterprise Works pilot in collaboration with The University of Bath Innovation Centre. I have to say, this pilot went even better that we anticipated and we received overwhelmingly positive feedback. Do see inside this newsletter for articles written by two of the participants about their experience of the programme and look out for our second iteration of this venture coming soon.
Olly
Director, Creativity Works
|
|
As we enter an exciting stage of our development as an Arts Council England funded National Portfolio Organisation [NPO], we're in need of certain extra skills on our Board and
we're currently seeking new Trustees with the following skills:
- Legal
- Socially Engaged Artists
- Accountancy & Financial
- Business / Enterprise Development
Whilst ideally you'd be a practicing professional, we recognise that as a voluntary role it might be more suited to an active newly retired person. If you are interested in volunteering as a Trustee and have the time and energy to devote to us, we would love to hear from you, or does this sound like anyone you know? Please do share our call-out with anyone you think could be interested.
For more details about being part of our board please visit: www.creativityworks.org.uk. Thank you! |
|
Upcoming Creative Wellbeing Courses
|
Ways with Words: Creative Writing Workshop
Fresh Inspiration from the World Around Us
Would you like to develop creative writing skills and connect with other writers and the world around you?
This special session will be facilitated
by author Sara Firman, who draws on her experience in guiding creative writing sessions and her love of nature-based experiences. Her work has been published in a wide range of professional, conservation and earth-based literary magazines.
Th
is
workshop will help you appreciate what matters to you, refresh your
creativity and begin writing as a wellbeing practice.
Learn
simple practices to
rebuild confidence in writing,
draw on
life
experiences
and
kindle
creativity through words.
The focus is on enjoyment,
sharing
and connecting with others
through creative writing.
The group is suitable for adults who live in B&NES and would like to support their wellbeing and mental health through creativity. Please note that there is no specific mental health support, but safe, respectful space is a priority.
Some practices will be outdoors, weather permitting. Wear clothing suitable for easy walking and weather protection.
Date:Tuesday 23rd April 1 - 4pm
Venue: Bath
|
|
|
Fresh Art@ update from Tasha Beesley, our Fresh Art@ Worker...
Time has flown by and we are now at our third and final venue, the glorious American Museum and Gardens. Last week was our first week here and the room was quickly filled with creative activity and concentration! We excitedly went to visit and absorb the Kaffe Fassett exhibition - an impressive collection of extremely colourful and detailed patterned quilts. Some of us became inspired by the geometric patterns and were encouraged to explore this through printmaking and drawing, others continued to work on ongoing projects carrying on from the previous museums... with an added injection of extra colour!
It has been fascinating to see the many different directions the group have ventured into with their process and ideas, from watercolour and pastels to origami and block printing. We will be here at the American Museum for a further 3 weeks working on our creations, which will be revealed to the public on Friday 24th May at The Roper Gallery, Bath Artist's Studios. We hope you'll come along to see the amazing array of work that's been created as part of this year's project.
Fresh Art@ Exhibition will be on at The Roper Gallery, Bath Artists Studios, from 24th - 31st May.
Join us to Create Everyday!
We will also be hosting FREE creative workshops every day during the exhibition, offering a chance to explore creative process and open a discussion around creativity and wellbeing. Full schedule and details for booking will be released soon including printmaking, pebble painting, pottery, photography and more.
|
What is the Fresh Art@ Project?
|
|
Fresh Art@ B&NES is an innovative project harnesses the power of creativity to make a real difference to the lives of people who have been experiencing mental health challenges and social isolation. The project is a partnership between Creativity Works, AWP (Avon & Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership Trust), Bath Museums Partnership and Virgin Care. For more details, including a short film about this project please click: The Fresh Art@ Project
|
 |
The Keynsham Photowalkers, a local peer-led photography group, who recently had some of their images displayed on billboards at Keynsham Railway station, have set up a dedicated Facebook page called @keynshamphotowalkers where they actively share their stunning and creative photography from their weekly meet-ups. Be inspired by their discoveries - and perhaps you might like to join the group yourself?
If you'd like to know more about joining the group please contact Philippa Forsey on philippa@creativityworks.org.uk or alternatively you can contact the group via their Facebook page for an informal chat with a member of the group. |
Artist Profile: Christina Sanders
|
|
This month we've the pleasure to introduce Christina Sanders who is currently working with us on our Creative Resilience training programme for Artists, Small Business & Social Entrepreneurs. We hope that you find her interview inspirational.
|
|
Hello! Tell us a bit about yourself and your artistic medium
 |
My writing practice includes short stories, sudden, flash fiction, journalism, spoken word, and more recently, creative non-fiction. My work has appeared in a variety of anthologies: Fish, Bare Fiction, The Bath Short Story Anthology, Words with Jam, Litro, Rattle Tales, Best Small Fictions, Toasted Cheese. In 2017, I won the Aesthetica Creative writing award.
Increasingly, I've become interested in working across boundaries, exploring different genres, collaborating with artists, natural scientists and academics to extend and develop my practice, both in terms of my approach to place, and the way I choose to write about it. I'm fascinated by the relationship between personal and collective identities, and the often contradictory themes provoked by place - home and away, absence and presence, familiar and strange, lost and found, to name a few.
|
What project are you currently working on with Creativity Works?
I ran a creative Walkshop in Bath earlier this year. The Walkshops grew out of an ACE funded project, called Write the Map. The project drew on psyschogeography and surrealism to explore ways of walking to 'awaken' the senses; to see familiar places with new eyes; focussing on our conscious and subconscious reactions to place, and using this as a starting place to write/draw/dance etc.
I have also been working with three other artists on the Creative Resilience programme, exploring ways evidence based approaches can develop resilience, tapping into and strengthening our innate creativity. Apart from being a brilliant programme, it's helped me personally. Being a writer, rejection's always hovering in the wings!
Who inspires you? (and why)
I tend to be inspired by people who take risks, push boundaries and make me see things differently. I've drawn on visual artists like William Kentridge and Anselm Keiffer. I love the way Alexander McQueen took themes and pushed them to extremes while maintaining a playful spirit. Among writers, I love the work of Deborah Levy, T S Eliot, Rebecca Solnit and Maggie Nelson who use language inventively and write in and outside of genres. I live in Frome, and admire the work of Crysse Morrison, a poet and writer whose practice is interwoven with her community involvement in way that connects and supports the local arts scene.
What book or exhibition has inspired you recently?
I've been involved with a group of walking artists who've recently put on an exhibition in Stroud called Confluence, their work reflects explores themes of revelation and re-enchantment in landscape. The breadth of work has been mind boggling - no two artists approach walking in the same way. I've learnt so much! I'm currently reading The Enigma of Arrival by V. S Naipul, a slow contemplation of life on Salisbury Plain. I'm also struck by the number of fantastic young Irish writers working at the moment.
What's been your biggest professional, personal or creative achievement to date?
Winning Aesthetica short story prize - and working with an agent to develop a novel. Receiving ACE funding for a project. Focusing on one project - as opposed to working across many projects - really enabled me to move my work forward.
What are your creative aspirations?
I'd be very interested in walking with other walking artists locally in BANES and Somerset on a regular basis. I have a number of new walking collaborations this year, including retracing the steps of the poet Edward Thomas, Co-hosting a Walking & Weaving Walkshop as part of Frome Festival, and getting involved with the Bristol Literature Festival. Then, of course, there's the novel to finish and get out there.
What advice would you give an emerging socially engaged artist?
It's paradoxical - keep your focus and stay open minded. Without a goal, it's easy to drift. However, one of the most enriching and uplifting things about socially engaged practice, is learning from other people, and the odd directions this can take you. It's often a master class in paying attention and from this, things grow. Don't wait for the big things to happen. Do small things everyday. One step at a time.
Where & how to connect with Christina:
|
Do you want to be part of our Voices of Creativity Works project?
|
|
|
Have you taken part in a Creativity Works Project and would like to share the positive impact it's had on your life?
Working with Somer Valley FM's we're creating a radio programme to share the stories of participants,
volunteers and artists who have taken part in any of our projects over the years. Have you been part of FreshArt@, My Time My Space, Snap & Stroll....?
We are going to be creating an hour long radio programme called 'Voices of Creativity Works' for Somer Valley FM and we'd like to hear YOUR stories.
If you'd like to know more about this and get involved please tell us about a Creativity Works Project you've taken part in and how it has helped you. Email to Morwhenna - morwhenna@creativityworks.org.uk.
|
Enterprise Works for Artists Course Reviews
|
|
| Our Enterprise Works programme for Artists, in collaboration with the University of Bath, has recently come to the end of it's first pilot, as mentioned in Olly's blog, and we're grateful to Angela Hill and Cathryn Crane, two of the wonderful participants, for their reviews which are shared below. We'll be running this programme again later in the year so if you are interested in being the first to hear about those dates, please register your interest by emailing us at artists@creativityworks.org.uk |
Angela Hill, The Art of Curiositree:
"I saw the Artist's Social Enterprise Business Course offered by Creativity Works and I thought this could be the key to the confidence and business knowledge that I lacked. Excited and daunted I signed up.
My work as a teacher has gradually squeezed out my theatre-maker-artist-self and taken over! It has been easier to earn a living by teaching than by relying on theatre projects to support my family financially. I am now ready to dip my fingers back in the paint, thanks Creativity Works, and get people in my community outside and creative.
The course was an absolute pleasure in itself - spending the time with 12 artists focused on helping each other and themselves to move forward in their careers was great. It was a positive and inspiring environment in which to learn: relaxed, focused, interactive and energetic. There were continuous opportunities for the participants to share their experience or ideas, whether it was on tax or social media use, this kept every element of the course both relevant and clearly related to artists' businesses as opposed to other types of business.
So my venture The Art of Curiositree begins. I am creating an outdoor arts project, inviting children, families, elders, community groups, schools and businesses into woodland spaces to make art, theatre, dance, cook on the open fire, enjoy the wild and escape the screens.
|
|
Cathryn Crane, MoonMaker Arts:
"I signed up for the Enterprise Works course hoping to learn more about the experiences of individuals working in the arts. I did not expect to feel so inspired by it that I would leave raring to put into practice an arts social enterprise of my own. My background is as an Art Psychotherapist but I have been working in arts admin for the last few years. When I moved back to live in my home town of Warminster, I really wanted to be able to bring my skills and experience of art therapy with me for the benefit of the local community that I grew up in. Making a step change in practice to go back to working independently felt like a huge and difficult thing to do but this course really broke down all of the steps for me in such a way that it felt not just manageable but exciting.
Since the course I have created MoonMaker Arts which takes its name from a colloquial term for the people of Wiltshire. I will be offering therapeutic arts classes in Warminster and the surrounding area for a variety of groups of people. I haven't felt quite so alive in years as I did going through ideas with Stacey and Ollie. I even think that the module on tax returns may have saved me enough in a single year to have covered the cost of the entire course. I am now building something that I have dreamed of doing for a long time."
|
L-R: Cathryn Crane and Angela Hill deep in conversation during the Enterprise Works course. |
|
|
|
|
|
Other Opportunities & Events
|
|
|
Artist Opportunity: Co-Creating Change Project Commissions
|
|
|
Co-Creating Change is a network and programme which explores the role which artists, cultural organisations and communities can play to co-create change together around the UK and beyond.
COMMISSIONS
The first round of Co-Creating Change Project Commissions is now open for applications until Monday 27th May 2019. Applications are open to everyone, whether or not they are part of the Co-Creating Change network.
Co-Creating Change Project Commissions are commissions for projects which use co-creation to effect social change. They are not designed to support conventional participatory arts projects, in which people are invited to join in with the work of an artist or organisation. Instead they are designed to support projects which see people and partners working together to create.
For more details visit: www.bac.org.uk |
|
Murze Magazine has launched an international artist call with a focus on artists' response to the political sphere and climate change:
"Social art, refers to the work of artists that use their skills to help promote and improve communities or affect social change. This is precisely what we are looking for, not genre or medium specific but artists who use their practice to better and strengthen community ties. (Any medium will be accepted, artwork that represents a community, or engages the community.)"
|
|
Black Families Education Support Group are looking for a dynamic individual to co-ordinate our Supplementary School Programme aimed at creating an inspiring educational space for Black and Minority Ethnic children and young people.
Salary £18,450 Pro Rata Part Time 19 Hours Per Week 1 Year Fixed Term Contract
Please call 01225 787 924 if you require more details
Closing date: 5pm Monday 22nd April 2019
Our organisation is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children. This post is subject to an enhanced check with barred lists to the Disclosure and Barring Service.
Black Families Education Support Group. South Vaults, Green Park Station, Bath. BA1 1JB
|
Connect 5 Training - New Format for 2019
|
|
CONNECT 5 has changed and is now available in an improved and condensed version. Connect 5 is a course that helps you develop the skills and confidence to talk with someone in distress and who is experiencing mental health and wellbeing difficulties. Connect 5 takes the position that we don't need to be mental health specialists to support those who are experiencing emotional and mental health problems. Now run over 1.5 days you can sign up for all or part of the programme as suits you best.
For the full details dates, locations & booking please click here to download a PDF flyer
|
MECC Training - New Dates
|
|
This course is about supporting people to make the most of every opportunity they have to start up a conversation about health with the people they meet through their work and broader lives. Telling people to change unhealthy behaviour is unlikely to be successful; instead MECC provides the skills to work in a different way, encouraging brief interventions that can lead to longer term change. MECC training is delivered over two half day sessions.
Full details - Dates, locations & how to book please click here for a PDF flyer |
Life Drawing Classes at Edge Arts, Bath
|
|
Always fancied having a go at Life Drawing, or wishing to brush up on your skills? The Edge Arts Bath are running a series of sessions this summer. These classes cater for all abilities in a light, airy Art Studio and provide a good block of time to deeply engage with observational drawing.
Click here for more info and booking:
http://bit.ly/2WAp0Qf
|
|
|
| Simply click through Give as You Live every time you shop online to raise money for Creativity Works |
|
Thank you for reading our newsletter. If you would like to follow our updates in between newsletters remember that you can also follow us on
Facebook,
Twitter,
Instagram or
Pinterest!
With Best Wishes,
The Creativity Works Team
For more information:
Supported by Bath & North East Somerset Council and Arts Council England |
|
Registered Charity No. 1075812 Company No. 3768255 Creativity Works for Everyone is a company limited by guarantee registered in England
|
|
|
|
|
|
