<![CDATA[Stirchley Art Room

Visit the exhibition

Wonder Women is free to visit during Stirchley Library opening hours and Stirchley Art Room sessions, and runs until 3 September 2026.
We hope it's the first of many exhibitions that celebrate the creativity of our participants and help make Stirchley Library an even more vibrant cultural space for our community.

Our first exhibition is Wonder Women, featuring five striking gel plate collages by Editoriat.
The work explores the female gaze and the impossible standards often imposed on women through the media they consume. Every piece was created during Stirchley Art Room sessions.
Reflecting on the exhibition, Editoriat said:
"I'm very grateful for this opportunity. All five works were created at Stirchley Art Room and thanks to them I've been able to develop the gel printing process to exhibition stage. I've been in group exhibitions before now but I guess this is my first solo show! Stirchley Library is also my childhood library – and where I get most of my books as an adult – so the space has a special meaning for me."
For us, that's exactly what The Open Page Gallery is about: creating opportunities for artists to develop their practice, build confidence and share their work with others.

A little over two years ago, Sarah & I were sitting in the cafe at the Mac. We had arranged to meet up on our shared day off from the school we both work at as art teachers, to do some planning for a forthcoming community art project we were organising for school. We had been fortunate enough to have found several opportunities in the previous couple of years to help our students engage with artists and the community around them, though Longbridge Public Art Project and other organisations.

Over the next few weeks we met lots of people from organisations around Stirchley. We felt it was the place to be - so much going on already within an established creative scene. We chatted to Johnny from Artefact, Cassie from Sweetmeat, Denise and David at the library, and basically popped in to say hello to as many of the shops and organisations as we could, also on the lookout for a possible base for our future exploits.
We started applying for funding and teamed up with the lovely Friends of Stirchley Library to do various family art activities. And then later that summer we made the first of several successful funding bids to support our community art aims - Book Arts at Stirchley Library, funded by Arts Council England.

We look forward with optimism to the next 12 months - and beyond - getting back to ‘normal’, getting back into the Library, making progress with our plans to establish a permanent base for Stirchley Art Room, and a variety of other exciting projects!

Onwards and upwards. More Art Not Less!

With huge thanks to all of our friends, partners and supporters, and to our funders:
Arts Council England
Unltd
Postcode Community Trust
National Lottery Communities Fund
Birmingham City Council
DCMS / National Lottery Local Connections Fund

Nicki

Both of us hugely enjoyed these experiences. Both of us wished that we could do more to take our experience and knowledge as art teachers to a community setting, independent of the restrictions of school life.
And just like that, almost on a whim, Stirchley Art Room came into being. We registered a twitter handle there and then, and started to plan.

Two years and many projects later, we feel proud of what we have achieved, and so appreciative of the supportive and collaborative relationships we have with organisations and individuals in Stirchley and further afield.

Of course, the past 12 months have not panned out exactly as we would have hoped. The pandemic curtailed some of our projects and has delayed others, but also led to new and interesting ways of delivering on our aims, in the form of the three postal art projects we have run over the past year. The resulting books of artworks made by members of our community are beautiful and unique records of these very unusual times.

Maud Vantour works with paper to create richly coloured graphical layered images that almost look like openings or deep holes.

This theme is a little bit more open ended than the first one - we are suggesting experiments with materials and techniques rather than a particular image - this may make it more of a challenge for you or it might make it more straight forward!

Perhaps similar to Maud Vantour in lots of ways - this illustration by Eiko Ojala incorporates a repeated shape to create a sense of rhythm.

This collage by Andy Jenkins may not be as colourful but the neutral tones draw attention to the geometric structure of the image.

Hopefully these images have given you more to think about. Do share any more images or ideas you have though social media and comments here - and we look forward to seeing the artwork you produce!

A beautiful and very delicate woven collage by Hollie Chastain.

Tracey Algar is a landscape artist from South Africa who creates these gorgeous layered images with collage and paint. They look quite abstract but are actually organised and planned in quite a structured way...

In the pack you received you will have found all sorts of interesting materials of varying levels of translucence. You can of course combine these with anything else you have around the house - like clingfilm, baking paper, plastic envelope window inserts, found images and so on...

A really interesting layering of text from different sources by American artist Randel Plowman.

How about creating a sense of layers by cutting holes through the materials you are using? This stitched and collaged surface is by Deidre Adams.