Appetite Stoke

Appetite Stoke have released a video highlighting their project to help engage the good people of Stoke-On-Trent with the Arts. The growing Arts community in my home town is something I'm both excited and in awe of.

Healthy Sex Forever Report

 

 

Nearly time for the Healthy Sex Forever deadline. Managed to get 112 participants in the end and this week, I helped Mel out with compiling the report. Images above are a couple of pages I helped out with. Looking forward to moving onto the next project now.

Wh@t T#e F*?K Zine-making

Images gathered from a previous Sexual Health Creative Consultation completed by The Cultural Sisters and re-arranged by my own fair hand into lovely Zine pages. This project was about communicating with men who have sex with men about risky sexual behaviours (called Wh@t T#e F*?K, seriously surprised that Stoke council let that one fly but kudos that they did).

Yesterday I helped collate some of the research-gathered into collages which will be photocopied and used as pages to make a zine. Each page covers a question asked, and each question has a small relevant image or symbol associated with it so a brick wall, to represent barriers and cogs to represent what further work needs to be done. This is an awesome example of how community-related artwork can be beautiful and I'm really proud to have any association with this project.

Super Thrilling General Update

Got part-way through making a tool when the people commissioning the project phoned up and asked us to delay the project. The world could always use more fancy paper hearts in it though so I'm sure they'll get used some other time.

Also here's the near-completed Anti-Stigma Canvas with pocketses!

I've been doing shorter hours this week so I can try to catch up on my work for university. I have a research project about typography and material qualities and that has lead me down the path of éctriture and finding out about Helene Cixous.

Tonight University of Wolverhampton has a visiting Lecturer called Geoffrey Mann. According to the email I received "Mann will focus on a new series of work that explores the concept of the 'objectile' examining how an artefact can occupy an in-between state by means of an event. The talk will also discuss the current trend of utilizing new technologies in the world of the hand-made and highlight the possible pitfalls of 'going digital'"

This all sounds right up my alley so I'm looking forward to this.

 

7 Handy Websites for Surviving as an Artist

In the spirit of Waving Not Drowning, instead of describing how cool it was I've decided to make a post which links to all of the networks mentioned on Saturday, for my own reference as well as signposting for anybody else.

http://www.tpwestmidlands.org.uk/

Turning Point West Midlands

Never really entirely understood what Turning Point West Midlands was fully about until yesterday. They are a network for artists in the west midlands, and run several projects as a part of this including:

• New Art West Midlands which is an open exhibition for recent graduates in the West Midlands
• a small number of partner residencies
• an Artist Development Program which aims to broaden the amount of opportunities available
• a limited number of writing bursaries for arts graduates intending to write about art
• potentially upcoming business suite which I am super interested in

http://www.artquest.org.uk/

Artquest

This website has numerous opportunities as well as a dandy email newsletter for keeping you in the know.

http://www.a-n.co.uk/

A-N (Artists Newsletter)

Another goldmine of information, newtork and advice, this has been recommended to me before by friends so I feel a bit silly for being so slow on the bandwagon. Definitely worth subscribing to.

http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/

Arts Council

Super obvious, not fond of all the pink they use on the website but still another bastion of support. They also have a jobs email and a newsletter, but make sure your settings are set to weekly and not daily because it can become a bit annoying.

http://www.voluntaryarts.org/

http://www.voluntaryarts.org/basic-page/england/

Voluntary Arts

Another good way of making connections and potentially finding charities who might have funding for arts projects.

http://www.artistslotterysyndicate.co.uk/

Artists Lottery Syndicate

http://elephanttrust.org.uk/

The Elephant Trust

Charity dedicated to raising appreciation and awareness of the arts in the UK.

And I guess I'll finish on the question posed by Anna Francis in Signpost (with my own emphasis): 

What didn't they tell you at artschool?

Quick-Fire Round

Not enough time or pictures to warrant individual posts buuut:

• Anti-Stigma consultation tool is all sewn together and looking rather grand if I say so myself. Had to re-learn how to use a sewing machine but I managed okay.
• Firehand pieces escaped the kiln looking great. It's been agreed that the entire hand should undergo a re-firing, and so the next stage of process is to go back down to the Spode factory and start wrapping everything up for boxing and transportation to Wolverhampton
• I learned how to use a pompom-making device and made a large blue pompom quickly and efficiently
• I finished writing a rather dry sector report on Arts for Health for my uni module, hurrah

Healthy Sex Forever

Today at the Cultural Sisters Studio, Mel and I recorded data from the 'Healthy Sex Forever' creative consultation. There were at least 50 over-50 year old participants so it was a good morning's work and some of the responses were beautiful and fantastic.

Healthy Sex Forever was a consultation designed to find out whether sexual health services in Stoke-On-Trent were meeting the needs of its 50 years plus population. If by any slim chance you are reading this, over 50 years old and living in the Stoke-On-Trent area you can also complete this anonymous survey via this little link here.

20% of all HIV cases occurring within the UK are adults between the ages of 50 and 90 years, and 80% of this age bracket reporting to be sexually active it's more important than ever to help provide the right information so it was a really nice project to be contributing to.

On my way back to the station I spotted this lovely bit of artwork which rounded up a very poignant morning.