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Director’s Blog
In stark contrast to the shorter days now upon us, we seem to be working longer and longer days to get through the huge amount of work here at Creativity Works.
We have some very exciting co|Create sessions coming up, including one that is inspired by Home Service, our work with Elders in care home settings. ‘Social Design’ looks at how, as an artist, you can use your experience, creativity, ingenuity and enterprise to advance products, apps and services for the market. I think there is often a taboo around the idea of artists monetarising their work, however without the imagination and application of creative people the world would be a far less remarkable and discernible place, so we believe that a session such as this, learning from social entrepreneurs and experts in the digital world, can only aid artists and creatives in their volition to have a sustainable and prosperous career. The brilliant artists presenting their work are Chloe Meineck of Studio Meineck and Barney Heywood from Stand+Stare, as well as Arts Programme Producer at KWMC, Martha King.
Other co|Creates in the pipeline include a session run by one of the leading socially engaged artists working in the UK today, Deborah Aguirre Jones, who will be discussing and presenting her work with us on The Golden Key project in Bristol. Davis&Jones, over a couple of years now, have facilitated brilliant work with the IF Group, firstly establishing then as a peer support group and latterly creating a business plan and website alongside them. We hope to be joined by members of the IF Group themselves who will be able to demonstrate their role in the process and promote the use of creativity and the arts in their work. It is a session that will be inspiring for artists, commissioners and participants alike. We hope to have finalised the date for this very soon, and will be delivered near the end of January.
We have also been doing a lot of preparation for our Community Matters project, that some may have seen featured in the Bath Chronicle recently. I have mentioned this community based participatory project before, but now we are about to carry out the research itself, it is a very exciting time for the peer support groups and for the volunteers themselves who will be operating the research. We hope to gain invaluable information regarding the functioning of our peer-support groups and, alongside the learning from the aforementioned co|Create session, we will be very well placed to continue our best practice and leadership in the support of creative peer-support groups locally and nationally.
I do hope that some of you may take notice of the social media we put out, although it is very easy to be swamped, I know. If I may, I would love to recommend one recent post, so do check out the link that we put on Facebook for a Dynamic Projection Mapping project called Gallery Invasion by Skullmapping. It is absolutely brilliant and something I am very interested in, in regards to new storytelling opportunities and visual expression. In case you don’t get to see it on FB, here is the link: