Community Art Club Stories

We have had two Community Art Clubs so far and I’m so pleased with how they have gone. The 19th January was the first one of the year and 51 people came. The Sisters Hall at Garforth Miners Welfare was full and It was lovely to meet everyone. I was able to talk with people about their own interests and see how very creative the people in my community are. These are just normal people, working and being busy but its clear they want to be artistically engaged.

One lady mentioned she was drawn to collage because when she looks at text, words pop out and she likes putting them with pictures.

I took as much as I could from my studio to encourage people to try new things. I was finally able to use all my charity shop collections for people to draw. Some things were inspired by something they had seen on the TV or some people wanted to try something they had seen online. Some people enjoyed just responding to the materials available and were quite experimental… it was all good!

This is inspired by Christmas TV - Wallace and Gromit

One message that came across from conversations was that it was nice to make time for creativity together.

Afterwards, I was able to reflect, prepare and improve the systems I had in place to make the next more efficient. I needed a big space with lots of tables and the Miners Welfare hall was the best place for this. One lesson I’ve learnt is that there are some people who are inherently curious and experimental and others very methodical. The ‘painters’ seem to clump together and where they sit is always the space that takes the most time to clean up! I was able to use some of the artwork for the poster for the next art club - and people seemed to like that too.

Yesterday was the second club (9th Feb) I had to split it between two rooms as the hall was rented out for another event. So that meant two rooms to clean up too. I was very lucky to have volunteers (family members) to support me.

The same lady came back and made another collage… I asked her if she makes them at another other time, she said she didn’t because she was too busy.

We had 60 people turn up to this one…. It was really lovely to go into a room with so many people of different ages, all making their own art. It was very quiet for the volume of people and it wasn’t because they didn’t know each other. There were quite a few familiar faces but people were just enjoying their own art making. They were drawing, painting, collaging, sculpting, printing and just gently being curious in a collective space. I was very touched by it all and its made me more determined that art club should be free for everyone.

I received this lovely feedback…

‘Its just amazing! I don’t know anywhere else in our community that brings people together like art club. It is so nice to see our children being free with art and creation outside of the classroom and outside of the home. Art club is very needed in the community, I get incredible benefits from it and I was very inspired to see other peoples art. Its a great place to see familiar faces, and meet new faces, and create space to be in the community.’ Amy Baxter

Making time to draw with oil pastels.