Art-therapy is a tool that facilitates the communication, expression of feelings and resolution of inner conflicts through arts: painting, theatre, sculpture, music, photography, etc. It can be applied in individual sessions or with groups, but always under the supervision of an art-therapist. [Read more…]
Practical tips to organize a showroom/pop-up shop
There has never been a better time to find a suitable venue for your showroom. With the depression and austerity across Europe most of our cites have empty shops. These are usually available on short term leases for free or minimum rent. They are becoming extremely popular because they allow immense flexibility, while not requiring a large commitment of time and money. A pop-up gallery or showroom can be a great option for our ‘Artcycling’ project.
What are the most important factors in choosing a pop-up location? [Read more…]
Art As An Inclusion Tool from the point of view of Retextil
From the very beginning there has been groupwork at Retextil Foundation, but four years ago the number of the workers rose above thirty. In such a big group based on the law of large numbers, there will be people with very different personalities and temperament. The members of this group are changing from time to time, some people go [Read more…]
Coordination meeting in Copenhagen
The team of coordinators of the Artcycling project met in Copenhagen on 8-9th June to talk about the activities already done in each of the partners’ countries and also to discuss and agree on the tasks to be done in the coming months.
We had a great opportunity to know about the excellent work done so far by the four organizations, mainlyabout the meetings with craftspeople and the local art labs.
The next months are going to be very exciting, as we are starting with the Artcycling creation. National and international showrooms, training to develop skills for earn a living with art, blogs telling the experience in all the countries, ePortfolios, etc. We will keep you updated about everything! [Read more…]
The Artcycling project so far in Pacificstream
Pacificstream had several meetings in different places, one of them being at Tracy, one of our artists’ lovely home which is made out of driftwood and other up cycled and eco building materials..She even has a driftwood kitchen!!!
Our ideas so far combine a number of concepts, which include the use of sustainably sourced greenwood for crafting furniture legs, to using old tyres and textiles and upholster them into funky furniture. We are also organising some print workshops which will hopefully allow us to explore the use of recycled paints and various different ‘found surfaces’ to work on…..
So one of the things that Jane, our art director has been doing is building some green woodworking equipment to make the furniture legs. She built a shave horse which is a piece of equipment that allows you to shave down freshly cut wood and more recently she made a pole lathe which is used to turn the wood…she is still learning the woodturning techniques though!!! She also worked with local rangers to collect the wood from a sustainable heathland, just outside Liverpool in Wirral. The tyre stool is still in a prototype stage at the moment, but we are looking to upholster it in brightly coloured funky designs.
As an example, one of our artists has been making some collage work with stamps, as you can see in the photo, which we may bring into the print work.
Its all a work in progress, but once we have a workspace, we are really hoping to gather some interesting materials to work with. We will also be thinking about making smaller items like notebooks from recycled textiles, and possibly some jewellery from computer wires.