Community Arts in the High Peak
We have now unveiled the lovely ceramic clock in the lounge of Charis House, made by residents, staff, volunteers and artist Angie Hardwick. The clock was unveiled by Councillor Jean Todd, as part of a celebratory morning with coffee and biscuits.
Here it is – being installed, and covered; then unveiled!
And here are a few images from the sessions:
This project ran for two years, with a slight overspill caused by covid! This year, once the sheep were sheared, the best of the fleece was sent to Griffiths Mill to be spun into Aran yarn.
This has now been returned, and together with one / two skeins of chunky hand spun wool from last year, is ready for sale!
Some will be kept back for the staff and residents to use in ongoing craft projects, using the skills learnt in the workshops, with a few ‘reminder’ sessions as needed. Last week , several women started to learn to crochet.
For more details of the 2 year project, see below.
We were delighted to run a 2 year project, ‘Sheep to Craft’, with the residents of Charis House, Buxton, and Oldfield Farm, a safe place where homeless women, including those escaping from domestic violence, and women recovering from drug and alcohol dependency can find rest and recovery.
This programme worked with artist carol Wilson, and residents and other women in the community in a wide range of creative arts.
Workshops were held at Good News Family Care’s Family Centre or Oldfield Farm.
Funded by The Ashley Foundation, The South West Peak Landscape Partnership, and the John Booth Charitable Trust, the project seeked to provide a fun, creative way of learning new skills, socialising and doing something different. The main ingredient in this project came straight from local fields, courtesy of our four-legged fleeced friends at Oldfield Farm! Local Lleyn sheep took centre stage, with women learning all the processes about how to transform a sheep’s fleece into carded wool – washing, sorting, dying, and carding – and then using the carded wool for wet felting, needle felting and weaving, as well as spinning the carded wool into yarn.
In order to learn about how to earn some income from the fleece / yarn, we have created our own brand ‘Good Ewes’, and made needlefelting kits, for people to make their own sheep or robins – sold for £10 from High Peak Community Arts or Good News Family Care. These kits contained all you needed, including needles, needle holder and foam blocks, and we also sold top up kits for those who already had needles and foam at £7.50. We had themed bags of dyed fleece for £5.
We also sold the first batch of Good Ewes yarn.
Here is our display at ‘Made in New Mills ‘ on September 28th …and more pics from workshops, below that..
As part of National Writing Day, Bella Hardy (BBC Folk singer of the year 2014) ran a creative writing workshop with the women at Charis House. Everyone had a go at writing poems and song lyrics and also enjoyed a sneak preview rendition of a song from Bella’s new album, due out in November. Funded by Writing East Midlands, we are now fundraising for a longer project.
In May, we held a Celebratory Event to unveil both the Willow Angel, Gabrielle, made with artist Christine Redstone, and two ceramic bird baths made with artist Caroline Chouler Tissier. We also enjoyed looking at the Canal Boat Art, weaving and printing done earlier in the year.
Busy making an amazing ceramic bird bath with artist Caroline Chouler – Tissier. Funded by Santander Discovery Foundation.
Weaving
With artist Carol Wilson, the group enjoyed weaving, making small hangings for their own rooms in Charis House and Oldfield Farm.
Printing
With artist Sandra Orme, participants learnt a variety of printing techniques and used them to make cards, print onto aprons and bags.
We created a wonderful Tree Of Life in Ceramics for the Dining Room / Lounge of Charis House, which was unveiled in February by The Chair of Derbyshire County Council, Cllr Steve Freeborn and the Mayor of the High Peak, Cllr Sewart Young.
We also made lovely tiles for the hallway, with flowers and the word, Peace, Freedom and Flourish.
Back in September 2014, We started with a felt making project with artist Carol Wilson – to create large hand felted wall hanging, and a table runner using naturally dyed wool from local sheep.
The group also had much fun with shadow puppets, with the Babbling Vagabonds, creating 2 shows for Easter, and singing with Rose Hodgson.
The group has now also completed a mosaic project to create plaques for the bedroom doors at The Family Centre in Buxton – on the theme of ‘Flowers that Heal’, and a large Welcome Sign for the farm.
The group worked with artist Deborah Pitman, had a lovely time, with great results.
For their most recent project our 13+ young writers’ group wanted to look at environmental issues, and were fortunate to receive funding from the South West Peak Landscape Partnership, so chose the theme ‘Local Landscape: Global Future’
We started in October 2019 with three days of activity at White Hall Outdoor Education Centre. With an educational session with a Peak Parks Ranger, Jackie Wragg, young people experienced their local environment and did group research into the local natural world. We have found out about flora and fauna, our oceanic climate and our role in the global picture.
“We walked around White Hall and other walks to places that are new – it makes a change and it feels exciting, especially somewhere – like a woods with a really good atmosphere. It made us have some really good ideas”
In sessions with M6 Theatre’s Caroline Kennedy we watched clips of young climate activists from all over the world speaking at global events in defence of nature, and trying to influence the decisions of international agreements.
In October and in April 2021 we walked through a range of locations, from Corbar Woods, to Solomon’s Temple and Fairfield Low to increase appreciation for and knowledge of local walking routes.
“It would be nice to encourage more young people to go to these places if they’ve not been there themselves – maybe they would get ideas from it”
We found examples of Britain’s ‘Lost Rainsforests’ and tagged them to Guy Shrubsole on Twitter, who is mapping these examples of our oceanic climate at work.
“Mark spoke a lot about UK rainforests and mosses and lychens and that’s sparked an interest”
The young people involved used this information to design characters who interact with the local environment in different ways, with different motivations. These characters were then written into a story which animates the landscape and brings a range of issues to light. Over 4 Saturdays in January 2020 we devised dialogue between the characters which tells the story, before the project was brought to an abrupt stop in March 2020.
During the pandemic we met over zoom four times to refine and edit the dialogue into a script, now called ‘Gone to Ground‘, and finally in June 2021 we shot the scenes.
The older young people then met for ‘edit parties’ over 4 Fridays, working on graphics, sound design, and other video and audio effects.
“For the audience the theme overall gives a warning – an ‘act now’ warning”
One of the adult (amateur) actors we roped in said
“It think it’s brilliant. The young people have done so well – great storyline and some top acting! Well done to everyone and I think they had great fun!”
One of the first people to see the film said
“the end is quite dark, because although we find out what’s happened, it’s not a clear positive message. It’s a complex story”
Huge kudos goes to the core group who stuck with the project to the end and especially the editors who put a lot of time into getting the final result just right!
The finished film now seeks opportunities to screen, get in touch if you want us to bring it to your event!
The dialogue contains some mild swearing, and the content is probably not suitable for a young family audience.
Watch the film here:
Our choral fundraiser from Duodecimo chamber choir was cancelled in spring 2020 – but it’s back again!! On the 9th October join us for the ‘We’re Beginning to See the Light!’ Choral concert fundraiser.
Please join us to enjoy light music, folksongs and madrigals by Ellington, Rutter, Stanford, Monteverdi and Vaughan Williams.
It’s our first fundraiser and their first concert since the pandemic began, so we are trialling a ‘pay as you feel’ ticket.
Arrive at 7pm for drinks, with music beginning at 7.30pm with no interval.
Springbank Arts is limiting booking to half their usual capacity, so although the tickets are free, please do book.
Booking details can be found here.
Nurture Nature is led by artist Amanda Whewell. It will be collage and print based and inspired by the work of artist Mark Hearld.
In week four, we are going to use the techniques learnt over the last three weeks to make a collaborative collage garland.
You can join in the project, using the PDF activity sheet, and short film, here.
Click here for the activity sheet.
