Inspiring Spaces

The overall emphasis for Inspiring Spaces, from October 07-June 08, is on developing understanding around works of contemporary art within a context considering how interpretation and installation have an impact on viewers' readings of a work. As well as meeting independently the three school groups have come together for three artist-led days, one at Stour Valley Arts, the second at Tate Britain and Tate Modern and the third at the Beaney Institute, Canterbury. These days encouraged the young people to develop personal responses to work and to look at differing examples of interpretation.

Stour Valley Arts is working with Homewood school.

This year the project is funded by the national research programme Enquire      

Inspiring Spaces forthcoming exhibition                                                                                                                                        

Tuesday 1 April - Sunday 1 June 2008    

Turner Contemporary Project Space, 53-57 High Street Margate

Tuesday-Sunday 10.00-17.00           

Admission free

                  

Revisit Nature is a Workshop to see responses to the exhibition produced by Inspiring Spaces, a group of Kent students working with Turner Contemporary, Stour Valley Arts and The Beaney Institute, Canterbury.    

        

Supported by artists and educators, the Inspiring Spaces group have researched themes in Nature is a Workshop and produced personal responses, in the form of literature, events or art works, which will provide audiences with new ways of experiencing the exhibition. An update of this ongoing project can be seen at Droit House from 28 February - 1 June.

This year Inspiring Spaces will be inviting young people from ages 13 - 24 to get involved. If you are interested come along to the Turner Contemporary Project Space on Sunday 18 May to find out more and take part in activities run by the current Inspiring Spaces group.

Inspiring Spaces is an action-research project funded by enquire, a national programme managed by engage.

Find out more about Inspiring Spaces and how to get involved

 

Follow this link to find out more about the Nature is a Workshop exhibition at Turner Contemporary

http://www.turnercontemporary.org/whatson/?p=29&s=0&id=77

 

CLUSTER PROJECT
SVA ran a project with two different year groups in two Ashford town primary schools to explore and learn about the natural environment in King’s Wood and compare and contrast this with their own school settings. Over the course of an academic year the participating schools made two visits to the forest, saw the sculptures and took part in various creative activities linked with seasonal change. They also had a half-day follow up session in school, learning about the artists’ practice and creating more work linked to their experiences at King’s Wood. They recorded their observations in their own sketchbooks, using materials drawn from the forest environment. The students worked with SVA artists Martin Brockman, Nikki Dennington, Laura Thomas, Cas Holmes and Chris Rutter. The work was brought together in an exhibition at Ashford Library as a celebration event at the end of the year. A photographic record was kept throughout the year of the project for display at this event.

There is great potential to develop the resources at King's Wood and SVA exploring the art, ecology, history and geography of the site. By its very nature SVA encourages healthy activity and walking since the site is a large one. In harmony with its aims to work over long periods of times and through the seasons of the year, SVA wishes to encourage longer-term education projects to deepen the learning experience of the participants.

" a heightened awareness of the forest. An insight into how it might be possible to interpret the forest in a visual and aural way expressively rather than literally"        Chris Rutter artist

                                                                                          

"The project was extremely successful; pupils produced some excellent pieces of work"..." Pupils who are not necessarily motivated in a classroom setting showed increased signs of motivation in the woods and in the workshops back in the classroom"..."they enjoyed the practical work and the space to work on a large scale. Interaction with artists helped to motivate and inspire pupils"

                                                                       Peter McCabe teacher  

ART<>ECO

An arts and science project involving artists an ecologist and a group from The North school and Selling, Chilham and St Simon's RC Primary schools began in October 2007 and will run throughout the year culminating in exhibitions in summer 2008.

This involves activities both at King’s Wood and on the school site. Some of the themes this year involve growing cycles and habitats. The secondary school group are following a theme of a cabinet of curiosities. We will also be looking at seasonal change and issues about global warming.

 

This project has been generously funded by the Ashden Trust and Mark Leonard Trust

For more info : www.ashdendirectory.org.uk

Watch this Space 4 is a national project funded by Engage

and concluded with a meeting of forty five teachers and representatives from their host galleries at Tate Modern in mid December 2007. Ian Middleton, HMI for Art and Design spoke on the ways in which gallery visiting and engaging with contemporary art meets not only the requirements of the Art and Design curriculum but can also inspire cross curricular learning and address whole school issues such as increased attainment through personalised learning and a focus on creativity. Teachers from primary and secondary schools in Middlesbrough, Cornwall and Bristol showed films and talked about the exciting partnerships they had built with galleries during the last term. They had developed projects related to business and enterprise, the history of slavery, the exploration of contemporary architecture and the impact of new build arts venues on urban regeneration.

The eighteen gallery educators on the parallel strand of the programme met at ICA to present their work with schools. They had spent three days observing classroom practice in schools and had developed projects with teachers in response to gallery visits by students. The outcomes included the production of resources for secondary and primary schools relating to contemporary exhibitions and collections; the delivery of sculpture, drawing and photography workshops culminating in student exhibitions at galleries; and literacy and citizenship projects inspired by a range of exhibitions.

Case studies of some of the projects will be included in the Watch this Space Handbook, to be published in March 2008, as a celebration of the four years of the programme. Intended as an inspiration for other gallery educators and teachers seeking to form educational partnerships it will also present analyses of the current educational context for gallery and formal education and resources to complement those in the   Watch this Space Toolkit.

SVA has worked with Queen Elizabeths grammar school, Faversham and Rosita Higson in the art department and a group of year 9 students on a pilot funded by WTS4 to explore ways of working together. It is hoped that this will be the beginning of a fruitful collaboration. Students came to King's Wood to complement project work on the theme of Conflict (including a visit to Ypres) and we looked at art works to reflect this as well as the history and geography of the site. Latest plans include a whole school assembly to showcase the project and an exhibition to be held at the Community Café in Preston Street, Faversham.

Other teachers interested in discussing how SVA can support the delivery of the 5 hours of culture or other projects should contact Lucy Medhurst : education@stourvalleyarts.org.uk or by calling the office on: 01233 740040

 

KING'S WOOD SYMPHONY

This is a new work commissioned from composer Matthew King and involving Stour Valley Arts, the Wigmore Hall and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. The wood is used as inspiration, performance space and instrument in this piece which creates a dialogue between the ancient woodland space and the contemporary urban environment of Wigmore Hall. 

The third movement of the piece will involve percussion and will be performed by St John's RC Comprehensive school in Gravesend.

The fourth movement of the piece is being created as part of a project involving students from the electronic music department at Guildhall led by Mike Roberts. They are mentoring school students from Norton Knatchbull school in Ashford and St Marylebone in London. The students have made recordings of sounds in the forest which will be used as part of the second movement.

There will be a public performance of the piece in King's Wood on Saturday 23rd June 2007 from 3 - 6 p.m.

There will also be a concert at the Wigmore Hall at 7.30 p.m on Saturday 30th June.

David Alberman violin

Richard Watkins horn

Huw Watkins piano

Ligeti Trio for violin, horn and piano

Matthew King King's Wood Symphony (world premiere chamber version)

Brahms Trio in E flat Op. 40 for violin, horn and piano

King's Wood Symphony was co-commissioned by Stour Valley Arts and Wigmore Hall and has been created in collaboration with Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

Tickets available from Wigmore Hall Box Office 020 7935 2141

Supported by Arts Council England, John Wates Charitable Trust, Peter de Haan Charitable Trust and Colyer-Fergusson Trust

Exploring the Context

A series of artists' talks and workshops have been arranged by SVA as a preliminary step towards a site specific ecologically sustainable building for King's Wood.

The workshops will run as follows:

24th February and 3rd March 2007 led by Simon Barker and Martin Brockman and involving Chilham Environmental Protection Society and Friends of King's Wood.

7th and 8th March led by Sara Wicks with Chilham school.

12th and 19th March led by Tina Carter at Valence school.

For more information on the artists' talks please e mail: info@stourvalleyarts.org.uk

The workshops and talks have been generously funded by AONB and Arts Council England

A copy of the project report is available at Stour Valley Arts office

SALON workshops

Following a successful first year of residential workshops at SVA, we are delighted to announce that a second series will be funded by the Arts Council. The workshops will be coordinated by Melissa Mostyn. The series will run in July 2007.

A CD of the 2006 workshops is available through the Salon website.

More information on www.salonart.org.uk

Student Bursary Competition

SVA ran a student bursary competition for undergraduates from UCCA at Canterbury and ASAD in Ashford. This was run in collaboration with Ashford Borough Council. The competition was launched at the SVA conference on 24th February and students collected an information pack, which set out a brief to design a temporary piece to be sited in a range of locations in Ashford town centre.
There have been field trips to King's Wood and to the sites at Ashford.

The final presentations and the selection of the winners was made in June and exhibited at Ashford Library during architecture week from 16 - 23rd June 2006.

The winners were Kamilla Sztyber from ASAD and Christine Lobb from UCCA and their sculptures were launched as part of the Art and Architecture Festival in September 2006 in the Memorial Gardens in Ashford.

CEMEA workshops

A project, which is a collaborative venture between Fabrica, SVA and CEMEA in Lille. A party of children from France came to King’s Wood for workshops in the forest between 6th and 9th June 2006. A group of students from Towers school worked with the French students for one day.

More information on the Fabrica site wwwfabrica.org.uk

For You Too

Funds are being sought to finance another phase of this successful project, which involves artist training and 2 day workshops at King’s Wood with groups from a hospital school, a youth group, a school with a hearing impairment unit and a school with a group of Roma children.

Each group will be matched with artists to work on particular themes.

You can download the For You Too report from our 2004 programme using the links below. Each will open in a new browser window or automatically download to your computer depending on your settings.

- 4U2 Report 2004 (download Word, 24.9MB)
- 4U2 Report 2004 (download text only, 101kb)