Art for everyone
Community Art Clubs provide a place where individuals and families come together and develop their creative expression. People who attend will try new artistic techniques, experiment with different materials and learn new skills. As the club is open to the entire community, members encourage each other, share ideas and diversify their work through collaboration.
Each session provides members with access to materials for painting, printing, drawing and sculpture. There is always an opportunity for people to share their own personal narratives through their own artwork.
The location
The art clubs will be held at the Miners Welfare Hall in Garforth, the address is 56 Main Street, Garforth, Leeds LS25 1AA.
https://www.garforthcommunityassociation.co.uk/
We will either be in the Trench room or Sisters Hall. Please follow the signs on arrival. Look out for the signs!
By Car
If you are driving, the best place to park is the Leeds City Council (LS25 1AF) car park behind the Izgara Restaurant - this is opposite the welfare hall.
The dates & TiMe
The sessions will start at 2pm and finish at 4pm on the following dates:
19th January 2025
9th Feb 2025
23rd March 2025
27th April 2025
18th May 2025
29th June 2025
27th July 2025
17th August 2025
28th September 2025
26th October 2025
Booking
Its important I prepare the events properly, therefore booking is essential. This gives me the advantage of knowing accurate numbers so I can best accommodate everyones material needs. You can book by email at contact@pennyscommunityarts.com or my messaging me on my social media pages. For regular updates follow @pennyscommunityarts on Facebook and Instagram.
Open to everyone
Everyone is welcome at Community Art Club. These are free session funded by Leeds City Council through the Leeds Cultural Investment Programme. All children must be accompanied by an adult.
Community art club is also a great space for people who work or volunteer in roles where they are required to be creative. People can explore their creativity and play with ideas that might relate to their community vocations. These opportunities might enrich wider community engagements and other groups and facilities.
Please read through the blog for art club stories.
‘It’s 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. It’s a great place to see familiar faces, and meet new faces, and create space to be in the community.’ - Amy Baxter
We have been using artwork from participants to make online advertising. People were really proud their work is being used. The one below was done by Francis aged 4.
Here are some amazing photos of artwork during the sessions.
On the session in October we had the smallest gallery in the universe showing work from participants who wanted to have a go at putting their work up for the first time.
Art club has now come to an end for 2025 and I just want to thank Leeds Cultural Investment Programme for funding this special event. We successfully delivered 10 monthly community art club sessions at the Miners Welfare Hall in Garforth from January - October 2025.
We averaged 40 people at each session, with a total number of different individuals being 125, with the highest number at one session being 62.
Participants postcodes were mostly from LS25 & LS26 (also LS24 and LS15)
Social media figures from instagram and Facebook show good responses to each promotional post. Visits to the website that had blogs relating to the event had a total of 486 individual visitors with over 1000 page views.
Volunteer opportunities were fulfilled, with help in setting up, clear away and admin.
Questionnaires were handed out half way through and at the end of the project for qualitative feedback. They were all really positive, here are some feedback quotes:
‘Fantastic resource for the local community to get engaged with arts and culture… Accessible to everyone’.
‘Great community event to get people involved, especially for creating opportunities for lover income families to get involved’.
‘The range of resources was great, Penny was great at giving advice’.
‘Its fabulous, thank you…Welcoming, creative community space… good for the soul’.
‘I’ve really enjoyed community art club. Thanks you so much! Its been an amazing opportunity to connect with community and develop my own art project - both really important to my wellbeing’.
‘Seeing the amount of people from the community engaging in art and creativity is a credit to Pennys dedication to the arts.’
‘I really appreciate the work that goes into running the group and I love coming.’
I’m pleased to say we have funding for 2026 for art clubs in Garforth through the CO-OP community fund. We aim to look for alternative funding sources to take art club to different wards in Leeds.
