Visual Arts Forum

Visual Arts Forum AGM Annual Report 2008-09-26

This is the first AGM of Visual Arts Forum since its constitution following the successful Arts Week Civic Hall Exhibition in 2006. Since then Visual Arts has gone from strength to strength with 50+ members across a wide range of media and styles both established and emerging artists.

Visual Arts was set up to raise the profile of the extent of local visual arts talent in a community that has been starved of exposure to this aspect of the arts and to develop new audiences and greater understanding of what we visual artists have to offer.

To this end Visual Arts has staged 5 exhibitions, offering 70 exhibition days in total over the past two years. These have been staged in a variety of venues attracting many people who have not previously had much access to visual arts.

In addition Visual Arts has run a range of workshops for local people to get involved and has established a very attractive web site which has the potential to reach an even wider audience.

Our web site, designed and maintained by Andy Marshall, presents our organisation very professionally as well as providing a platform to promote our exhibitions and events to a wider audience. Any member can apply for an artist page to promote their own work, for which there is a small cost, and can promote their own exhibitions & events for free on the news page by emailing Andy with the details.

As a result of the level of interest the site attracts Andy feels it would be a worthwhile development to sell Artists work on site. Payments will be made through PayPal, a secure payment method.

From the outset we have established a relationship with the management at the Civic Hall who have provided exhibition space, meeting rooms, storage for our boards and a great deal of ongoing support. Our first major annual Exhibition here last year set a benchmark for the standard of exhibition presentation and precedence for offering opportunities for artists to share skills with members of the public through workshops.

Last Sept 2007 Visual Arts was invited to exhibit at a local corporate event for Tim Cox Associates. This offered us an opportunity to promote the work of our members to a wide range of local business people.

This year Visual Arts staged two exhibitions as part of Warwickshire Arts week:

• The Arts Week Café here at the Civic Hall
• Mundell Court at the Croft School, a wonderful exhibition venue targeting a very different audience.

For our Annual Exhibition this year we worked with the Stratford Gallery at the Leisure Centre, run by Wendy Freeman on behalf of Stratford upon Avon College, to establish a working relationship that we hope to be able to further. Although unmanned both sales and comments demonstrate considerable interest from members of the local community and visitors to the town.

Since starting Visual Arts a lot has happened. We have established:

• A wide ranging group of artists offering work that appeals to many tastes through a wide variety of high quality visual arts
• A reputation for staging highly professional and exciting exhibitions
• A precedent for embracing new spaces to exhibit through which we hope to reach new audiences both local and further afield.
  

Future Plans

We need to build on what we have achieved to ensure future events and exhibitions continue to have a vibrancy and originality of approach We would like to invite you all to get more involved in making this happen. To maintain vibrancy Visual Arts needs constant new energy and this is best achieved by involving as many people as possible.

1.We have identified additional skills needed to support Visual Arts:

• Publicity & Marketing
• Sponsorship & Funding
• Someone to develop a ‘Friends of Vis Arts’ to support our work

If anyone has specific talents or experience that you feel you could offer please speak to us.

2. Exhibition Teams: we feel individual events could benefit from having different teams to coordinate each exhibition/event working to inject new ideas and energy. This would involve working in partnership with the current expertise and experience of the steering committee.

3. Workshop opportunities. To maintain opportunities for more people to work with artists and understand the complexities of the work they do we need to offer as many workshop sessions as possible along side our exhibition programme. Any artist with an idea for a workshop they would like to deliver would contribute to this programme.

Exhibition Opportunities:

We have been talking with the Civic Hall/Claude recently about developing a permanent exhibition space in the Market Space here. This would enhance the attraction of the space for visitors to the Hall and provide a regular exposure for local visual arts. The idea would be to organise a rolling programme of artist exhibits, both wall hanging and 3D work displayed in glass cases, as used during the Annual Exhibition at the Stratford Gallery, now owned by Visual Arts. This will not cost individual artists anything to enter and it will not be a direct selling exhibition. We can however include information about the artists and direct ant interested persons to Visual Arts for sales. A percentage of any sales will be payable to the Civic Hall.

Over the next year there are some exciting developments taking place locally which could also provide interesting opportunities for us. The ‘Cultural Consortium’ organised by World Class Stratford are promoting four themed seasonal events or programmes.

• Spring Festival built around Shakespeare’s Birthday Celebrations which will feature the Literary Festival and Spring Sounds Music Festival
• A Summer River Festival focusing on outdoor spaces, young people and the River Avon.
• A Winter Festival with a theme of ‘Light’ focusing on wider aspects of culture - food , seasonal festivities etc
• Stratford Stories, an ongoing theme focusing on aspects of local history and life.

SPRING FESTIVAL

The most immediate concern for Visual Arts is the Spring Festival. We already have a booking with the Civic Hall to develop an Exhibition here next year. Over the period of the Spring Festival there will a number of events going on here and we felt it would be beneficial to exhibit throughout that period along side the other events. This way we will benefit from a crossover of audiences and offer a vibrancy and buzz to the atmosphere at this venue.

We have also had some discussion with the organisers of the Literary Festival with a view to developing a partnership event with a theme of artist books and storytelling. This will possibly be staged in the Literary Festival marquee on Waterside. See presentation by Julie de Bastion.

SUMMER FESTIVAL

As part of the Summer Festival a number of ideas have been suggested but would need to be developed with those of you interested in supporting them. These ideas include:

• Possible collaboration with Summer Sounds Music Festival
• Sculpture Trail along the river
• Artist banners in the theatre Gardens
• A covered exhibition on Waterside/Bancroft Gardens are
• Swan trail around the town

WINTER FESTIVAL

The Winter Festival of Light offers wonderful opportunities for Lantern processions with artist & community designed lanterns and there may be other ideas for exhibiting during this event.

STRATFORD STORIES

This is a theme that could be incorporated in any of the events we are organising over the next few years and offers a multitude of possibilities.

A printabler version of this article is available HERE.