A New Image by James Cridland

Betty's art work

Pictures of Betty's art work

This picture is filled in with
Knitting wool.

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I made a copy of the picture and used chocolate wrappers, cut them

 up and stuck them to the picture to make it look different, it took

 about 8 hours to do. 

International Women's Day, March 2012

International Women's Day (8th March 2012) is coming up again and the Women's Group are going to celebrate being a female artist through the medium of self portraits.

Last year we used The Parlour on Park Street to put up an exhibition celebrating female artists and inviting the public to put up pictures or pieces of writing about influential women in their lives. It was a massive success and this year we want to expand on the experience!

We are going to produce a series of self portraits in a variety of mediums, that will create an exhibition celebrating women called 'Portrait of the Artist as...'. We will be inviting the public and other art/community groups to come and create their own self portraits that will help explore their identity and the empowerment of women.

Here is a run down of our aims;

- To create an event to celebrate International Women's Day in Bristol that will benefit the group and the local community

- To continue in supporting a group of socially excluded women within Bristol

- To provide outreach work within the community for the Women's Group (making links and gaining members)

Please let me know if you would like to join in or to support the group- we will need people to help with promoting the event, fundraising for materials and generally helping out when the exhibition is up and running. (this would be good experience in art workshop leadership/support as we will be inviting the public to create their own self portraits)

I'd also like to film the event so that we can use this on the website and to keep as a documentary, let me know if this is your field and you'd like to help out!

Also we don't have an exhibition space yet so get in touch if you have ideas.

Thanks,

Charlotte

My first 'term' as a volunteer

I have been volunteering with art + power since October 12^th and have had 12 days of working in the office. In this time I have been developing my personal role at art + power and working out what I’d like to do within the organisation, I really like having this freedom to do my own thing and discover my own place within the organisation. I originally volunteered so I could get to work with a range of different people, all brought together through the power of art – a concept I think is really amazing.

The first few weeks I mostly carried out admin tasks like updating the database of participants and projects which, while necessary, was a little dull. In week 4 I worked with Dave at the UWE ‘meet the employer day’ which I really loved as I got to talk to lots of different people about art + power and what we do and had some really interesting conversations with people as passionate about art as I am. It was so nice to get out of the office and in to the real world! After that I knew I wanted to take on more of a people role and got involved with contacting the 100 Projects people and keeping up to date with what they were achieving.

The last few weeks have been a lot more creative and people-based, I went to meet Susan Lawrence who is working on a Dramatherapy project and have kept in regular contact with her since as her project develops and forms. I have also learnt a lot more about the participants through creating profile pages for them on backpack. I’ve really enjoyed working on the newsletter and bringing together all that has happened each week to share the information with others at the regular Monday meet ups.

I’d now like to get to know participants better by running creative journaling sessions with them once a week. I see these sessions as being a calm space to sit and write about our thoughts, ideas, really anything that is on our mind as I know this can be quite a good way to express yourself and make things clearer in your head. We could visit exhibitions together and then write about our responses to them. People will be free to keep their writing private or share it as they wish. I am really keen to get started on this and would love to see it come together in the new year.

Performer's Toolbox Workshop

Coming Soon: Performer's Toolbox Workshop

The workshop uses a range of improvisation techniques and games to help workshop participants gain an insight into ideas that can be expressed through performance. The workshop is facilitated by a group of artists with the support of a CRB checked volunteer who is experienced in the field of performance, training and working with vulnerable groups.

Aims: to include any adult or groups who identify as disabled or feel socially excluded. We are also interested in delivering the workshops to groups of paid and voluntary workers who are interested in providing performance and creative opportunities to the people they work with.

Arts Appreciation Group

The Arts Appreciation Group meets on the first Saturday of each month. They visit exhibitions together and discuss what they've seen.
Here is a review of the group's visit to Spike Island on Dec 4th.

We went to Spike Island and Picture This and a new gallery called Works/Projects. We tried to write a review afterwards of what we thought of the exhibitions.

The Spike Island exhibition was ‘interesting’ and ‘hard to understand’ ‘eclectic’ and ‘confusing’. Everyone wondered what linked all of the work together. Jeff thought that it was about ‘how finances link into each other, and an interesting description of power, and economic flow.’ It was ‘proper’ conceptual art.

Things in the Spike exhibition: garlic being used for money, a film of a man in a garden showing off a bulb, two game boys, some big photos of two men and a woman, a video of people jumping off a bridge and some photographs of buildings.

Picture This was a video on four screens with people who looked like Zulus, wearing masks made out of tea strainers and big wooden blocks. There were also buildings, the sea and islands.

The Works/Projects gallery had a big eye drawing on a wall that brought everyone over to it, it was the first thing everyone noticed. There were some smaller drawings too, with lots of detail, and a video of a woman washing her face.

Film Fusion

A quick note to let you know about 'Film Fusion' happening at Watershed on Friday 3rd Dec 2010.

Film Fusion takes place on Friday 3rd December at 7:30pm at Watershed in Bristol.
art + power are hosting this event to support film-making by disabled people in the region.  The event will bring together experts and enthusiasts to make it easier to make films.
There’ll be a chance to see some outstanding films including ‘Condemned to Darkness’ and the multi-award-winning ‘Light and Dark.’  Michael Smith, star of Light and Dark will be joining a panel of experts to give advice and inspiration to aspiring film makers.
The event is part of the first UK Disability Film Festival organised by DASH. Films by disabled people will be shown throughout the day at Watershed and at cinemas around the country.
Tickets are £1 and can be booked online at http://www.watershed.co.uk/exhibits/2736/
Do come along and help us build a new creative community of disabled film-makers