Posts Tagged ‘Highlands’

  • Crafting Together

    Date: 2010.11.29 | Category: Aberdeen City and Shire, Argyll and the Islands, Artforms, Caithness and Sutherland, Crafts, Inverness and East Highland, Lochaber, Moray, Orkney, Outer Hebrides, Perthshire, Regions, Shetland, Skye and Wester Ross | Response: 0

    Crafting Together

    Many of our projects address the need for our makers to get together; sometimes in a formal way through events such as Makers Days and at other times it just happens that the people involved hit it off and before we know it an informal group has emerged with very little intervention on our part!

    Feeling isolated can be a real problem when you live and work in a remote area and anything that can be done to help with this is a really positive and essential aspect of the work we do.

    Informal groups have sprung up from Makers Days, our visit to Stroud International Textile Festival, from our Making Progress mentoring project and many of the research visits we have arranged.

    Emails and social networking go a long way but sometimes you can’t beat a good blether over tea (and cakes!).

    Our latest visit to London and Craft Central brought this home once more.

    Members of Craft Central are part of a network of UK makers who can rent studio space in two wonderful buildings in Clerkenwell and participate in many of the events organised there including Open Studio selling days and exhibitions as well as business support and workshops. For obvious reasons a large number of the makers live and work in London but some (and that includes several from Scotland) use the organisation as their London studio, giving them an affordable way of reaching new markets but also the opportunity to meet other members.

    Makers that I spoke with said that having the support system of the others in studios near by is one of the most important aspects of membership.

    Our makers don’t often have such a luxury so we need to do all we can to put our own systems in place.

    Through our Mentoring to Market programme we are delighted to be able to now have the opportunity for our makers to become members of  Craft Central and to benefit from a London base, new contacts and networks.

    We will be featuring more on this development on the website but it is one positive way of increasing our profile and gives our makers a chance to work together and with a new group of people.

    As we stopped to take a break at the end of a hectic day – and yes more tea and cakes were involved – we reflected on how to make the very best of our London connections.

    We are so fortunate to be based in an area that inspires and gives our makers’ work such a strong identity and now we can dip into city life and all the new opportunities that this will bring.

    Throughout the next few months we will be strengthening our London links and in May 2011 we will be showing our makers work to this new audience with our Highland Showcase.

    I can’t wait to see the results!

    After such an inspiring trip it was back to battling snow, delayed trains, flights and the cold road home and the reality of the distances involved between  London and the Highlands. Hopefully we can do something to make this less even if we can’t control the travel aspect!

    Pamela Conacher

    November 2010

    www.craftcentral.org.uk

  • Making Progress

    Date: 2010.06.11 | Category: Artforms, Crafts, Regions | Response: 0

    Eileen Gatt, beaker

    On the 4th June we had our afternoon event to Celebrate Craft and our Mentoring Project, Making Progress. It also saw the opening of our exhibitions, Made It! and Laura West’s Spotlight.

     As promised, the sun shone, tasty food, refreshing fizz and good conversation was in order!

    As part of the mentoring project makers have to curate their own spotlight exhibition and Laura was our second maker to go through this process.

    Our Spotlight makers have very rarely experienced installing an exhibition, so it can be a daunting prospect. However, the pleasure in seeing your work as a whole, having positive comment on it  from the public and breathing a sigh of relief as you realise that you really are making progress should make it all worth it!

     For the public who view exhibitions, few have any idea of the huge amount of work that goes into getting an exhibition to the Private View stage.

     From the initial idea, selecting work (and making it when you are the maker), getting it safely to the gallery, planning the layout, designing plinths and display material, making sure everything is all delivered on time and in the correct condition, labels, invites and posters designed- printed and sent out, lighting, security, Private view refreshments and finally installing it all and you then have to be in a fit condition to speak to your guests when it all opens!

    With the short changeover time in galleries, you very rarely have the luxury of days of time and more likely it is 24 frantic hours of painting plinths, unpacking and hanging work. It always gets done in time, thought sometimes floors are being brushed as the visitors arrived!

    Our exhibitions last week were no exception and we had the added stress of dealing with work from the Crafts Council Collection that had very stringent installation and handling requirements. Highland Council Exhibitions Unit have worked incredible hard to ensure that this exhibition has been given a professional and classy display that does the work justice. No easy task with limited resources and no access to the work until the last minute!

    As the work was unpacked, the excitement mounted as one of the great joys of pulling an exhibition together where the work is of this calibre is seeing it insitu and realising that it is going to look amazing!

    The Craft Council Collection work was selected by our makers and their mentors as work that has influenced them and seeing their work displayed alongside it, you can see this journey  clearly.

     For me, the greatest pleasure is seeing that our makers work sits on a level footing with the top makers work. A true indication of the quality here in the Highlands!

    If you have not already been, please go and see for yourself. And as you view the exhibitions, remember the months of preparation that has gone into making it all look so wonderful!

    Pamela Conacher

    June 2010