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Getting these fabulous little artworks back through the post is such a treat! Huge thanks to our artists Joanne, Noelle, Cheryl, Chris, & Ruth for this selection of loveliness.
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Hello Quarantine Art Clubbers (QACCERS? quackers?!) We've seen some lovely examples of artwork already, responding to the theme of 'Here Comes the Sun'. The second theme we have asked you to explore is 'Layer it' - so here are some more images and ideas to get you thinking...
...and below you can see some of the first artworks to come back to us! - thanks to Ruth and Alison for these. The first theme we have asked participants to think about is 'Here Comes the Sun', which up until today has been quite apt! The packages we sent out - full of interesting paper bits and other materials for collage - were a little delayed in the post but got there eventually (please do let us know if you haven't had yours ASAP). Don't forget postal people - we would like you to send 2 A5 artworks for each theme... they will all be hand bound into very special one-off zine / artists books for participants to keep. We are also scanning them so we have digital copies of everything produced. We can't wait to see more! Thanks again to the wonderful Postocde Community Trust for allowing us to change the way we are using our funding in these unusual times.
A lot of the organisations who fund our various initiatives have been working hard to support projects like ours at the moment, including the Postcode Lottery Trust, who have said that we can re-direct the funding we received for the Friday Art Club to something more 'deliverable' in these challenging times.
We are currently planning a postal art club that will take the place of the art club at the library. It will involve us sending out a monthly pack of materials and prompts to the people who sign up. Participants will produce a piece of artwork on a postcard sized piece of paper, and send those back to us every fortnight. At the end of the project, postcards from all participants will be bound into a set of very special limited edition zines, which will be given back to project participants! Interested? Please email us at stirchleyartroom@gmail.com ... and we'll keep you posted! 'Unusual times' - probably a bit of an understatement!
As you may have seen we have taken the decision to postpone all of Stirchley Art Room's various activities at the library for the time being, to protect the health of everyone we work with. When things have settled down we will publish new dates for both Change a Book and the Art Club, as well as other exciting future projects we are currently planning. In the meantime, we intend to continue offering art learning opportunities for the community, somehow, by offering project ideas, tutorials & links to artists and information online. We would welcome your thoughts on how we might do this and what sorts of things you would like us to do! Please email us at stirchleyartroom@gmail.com or message us on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook (@ArtStirchley) if you have any suggestions. Take care folks! ...and watch this space. Nicki We can't quite believe this has come around so quickly, but it is nearly time for the third and final set of workshops in our Arts Council funded project. We hope to see both new and familiar faces at the 'Change a Book' workshops, where we will be exploring ways of re-binding, recycling and re-purposing existing books and texts. All workshops and events are now available for booking on Eventbrite. See our Whats On pages for more info. In the meantime, we are also currently planning an exhibition that will follow the recent 'Fill a Book' workshops - we will be having an opening evening event at the library on Tuesday 17th March, and the exhibition will continue until March 28th.
Also in the meantime - Friday Art Club continues! This is our free drop in art club for adults, funded by players of the Postcode Lottery. See below for details!
Although we're having a break from the book arts workshops, it's still going to be a busy month for Stirchley Art Room - we are very happy to be working with the Canal & River Trust again to deliver some workshops for Bournville Bookfest (in addition to our own book making workshops for the Bookfest in June). Exciting times!
Nicki These images really speak for themselves - so this will be quite a short post! A huge well done to everyone who took part in our 'Make a Book' workshops and contributed books to our exhibition of hand made books currently on show at Stirchley Library - until this Saturday, January 18th. The next part of the project, 'Fill a Book', starts this Monday - please go to our 'Whats On' page for info about this and our Sketchbook Circle. Thank you Phil Banting for letting us use some of your photos; thanks as ever to the wonderful library staff, Friends of Stirchley Library & Arts Council England for their support with our ongoing book arts project. Nicki  We'd like to say a big thank you to everyone who has contributed their thoughts and ideas to our ongoing consultation about transforming the first floor of Stirchley Library into a community art space. Comments have continued to be returned via the website form and on the paper flyers handed in at the library, so we thought we'd share some more of them.
The comments we have received have continued to be incredibly positive and supportive, both in terms of there being a new community art space, and also in how it will benefit the library itself in the longer term.
The particular heritage of Stirchley Library has been mentioned, and the relevance of this is something that has also come up in the face-to-face conversations we have had with members of the community over the past few months. Stirchley Art Room at Stirchley Library seems to feel like a good fit, an appropriate and meaningful partnership, that pays tribute to a local history of community benevolence and recognises the special role the arts can play within this. "I whole-heartedly support your dream of a community art room in Stirchley, more particularly in the first floor of the Library! Amidst all our preoccupations of daily life, and compounded by the dearth of community space and time, we desperately need to re-inspire ourselves and connect in meaningful ways. This is a fantastic way of doing it. Especially in a building that was made possible by Carnegie and Cadbury. I can think of no better way to honour and sustain their legacy."  We are excited to announce that thanks to funding from Arts Council England, we are going to be delivering a series of book arts community workshops over the next few months, in our very favourite place: Stirchley Library! Since our very early days, Stirchley Art Room has worked closely with the library and we have always been made to feel extremely welcome by staff and FOSL volunteers. We have always been interested in the crossover between books and visual arts, and in the summer of this year we put together a funding bid to support an accessible and affordable series of workshops of events designed to explore book making, bookbinding, and lots of other associated artforms. We were thrilled when we discovered we had been successful, and in recent weeks we have been finalising our plans for this exciting project. The project has three phases: Make a Book, Fill a Book, and Change a Book. The first phase begins on November 18th, and places can be booked using the links below. We have planned to sessions to be as accessible to as many people as possible, with events taking place on weekdays, evenings and weekends. The courses are free of charge to people who are not currently earning, with a nominal charge for those who are. Make a Book Mondays: 10-2pm on November 18th, 25th, December 2nd, 9th & 16th.
Make a Book Saturdays: 10-2pm on November 30th & December 14th; 10-12pm December 7th. (A shorter version of the Monday course) Coptic Bookbinding with artist Chloe Spicer: Artist talk 10-11.30am, and workshop 12.30-3.30pm, Saturday 23rd November. Please share far and wide! Dates for phases 2 & 3 will be announced shortly... Nicki |
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