Help needed at our #Coventry21 Festival in lead up to and during 26-28 Feb
Forget #BlueMonday right now and join us for #NotBlueMonday21 on Monday 18th Jan
In fact let’s see the glass half full - let’s think of it as #HappyMonday21 (feel better already?)
A live streamed day of talks and dancing grounded in Creativity, Gratitude, Happiness and Good Luck - Our Art, the thing that connects us and makes us human
Inspired by a book and a chat we overheard with Kylie.
All kicked off when we hung a mirror ball in a tree in the street and the feedback we got from the neighbours.
So it’s a day of dance and good vibes.
What’s haPpening and when?
5am - a cuppa with our colleagues in the #Teacher5OClockClub - trending most days on twitter
7am - a Live Streamed intro to the day with a throw back to 24 hours of Happy!
12.30pm - an exclusive talk from Dr Peter Lovatt - Dr Dance at the University of Herts
4pm - Community Dance with Luci Napleton
7pm - a chat with School Community leader Mike Fairclough about his book 'Wild Thing' about embracing childhood traits in adulthood that helped inspire today
8 - 10pm - a live Disco set with Disco Dad Crispin Dior, once resident DJ at Fabric and DJ at Kate and Will's royal wedding
DANCE DANCE DANCE
WIN WIN WIN
We’ll have a Zoom Room open for disco dancers 8 - 10pm and have 21 disco mirror balls to give to the best community minded dancers around the country to hang in #DiscoTrees21 around the country
All you have to do is come in to the Zoom Room here and dance and then enter the form we’ll give you access to in the Zoom Room.
PLEASE NOTE
A disco mirror ball is for life not just for #HappyMonday21, and due to the health and safety considerations of hanging disco balls, the competition is open to over 18’s only but may be one on behalf of a family but most importantly for the community.
Condition of competition entry, is being prepared to hang the mirror ball safely in a range of locations, subject to the health and safety advice that we will supply and sharing it on social media over 2021 to help us #InspiraNation21
WhEre to find us
We’ll be live streaming on the following platforms and will update these links during the day:
YouTube - find and follow us here
Facebook - find the event here now and say you’re coming, Facebook will then tell all your friends!
Twitter - see pinned tweet here
OUR INSPIRATION
Our Inspiration came from:
The January Challenge - the response to our #ILoveArt competition really jump started our year.
Wild Thing - the wonderful book by Mike Fairclough
Kylie - her ‘Make a Difference’ show on BBC Local Radio over Christmas contained a lovely reference to the community power of disco and how mirror balls shine a light in the darkness
Dr Peter Lovatt - we were blown away by the Doc’s talk at our #ArtConnects conference in King’s Cross three years ago and are sharing it today for the first time. It’s a wonderful combination of good-vibes and theory on how to Dance Yourself Happy
We were delighted when Lemn Sissay MBE chose our idea for Day 13 of #The JanuaryChallenge he is running with 64 Million Artists - just one of a whole month’s worth of things to get those creativity muscles going!
We asked people to simply design an #ILOVEART logo, using our template or the blankest piece of paper
We were blown away by the response and feedback.
Here are just a few
#ARTCONNECTSshow
We hoped to pick 20 winners at random in a live stream at 5pm on Thurs 14th Jan and had a few of the artists in a special studio audience.
But the interweb thingy broke so we did it on a mobile phone link and postponed the draw for the following night.
You can check it all out on the links below!
Why not join us tonight?
Facebook - do go to the link now and share it with a few friends. Link is here
YouTube - why not watch it on your Telly if it can get YouTube? Link is here
Twitter - will be pinned here later
THE ART OF FESTIVALS
We’re also did a talk about what our dream festival might look like, the January Challenge of the day, which is right up our street as we have plans for a #Festival22 - read more here
We’d love your ideas for what #Festival22 could look like.
Here’s a film of a year long festival we did earlier, The #ARTCONNECTS19 Festival and how that was partly inspired by the Culture Minister, and #Collaborate20 was inspired by Nile Rodgers
And now, drum roll please …
Here are the winners selected at random to receive a T-shirt with their #ILOVEART logo design on it! Please check your Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram messages for instructions on claiming your prize!
Kate Hunter Parker, Pearl Lucia Barcoe, Ciska van Beek, Clive Jive, Peter Wright, Terri Hart-Ellis, Jeannelise Edelsten, Jo Blackshaw, Chris Crosswell, Caz S., The Bookwitch, Fanny Weiss, Maria Wootton, Gemma Louise Walsh, Marisa Moore, Jane Mossop Padwick, Clair Anne Cutler, Linda Lines, Tina Roberts.
Congratulations to all!
ART CAMP 20
Two weeks after lock down lifted last summer, we managed to get a licence off Devon council to run a festival for 2,000 people.
#ARTCAMP20 had camping, art trail, night light trail, dancing, performances, workshops, the lot. Even Suggs joined us and told us about his cat paintings!
We love watching this film of how we ‘built a castle in the sky’ and hope you do too.
It also tells the story of how someone else’s festival inspired us to start STEAM Co.
BUY OUR SINGLE HERE
ALL PROCEEDS TO THE TRUSSELL TRUST
The Trussell Trust is working to stop UK hunger and poverty. Their network of foodbanks provides emergency food and support to people in crisis.
Support this single to support them and:
#SHOWSOLIDARITYWITHSHCOOLS AND HUNGRY KIDS
Let’s push Mariah Carey off the No. 1 spot for Christmas!
Be part of our assault on the Christmas charts with a community rendition of ‘Come on in from the cold’ with Boff Whalley’s Commoners’ Choir.
We’ll enter it in the Official Charts and you’ll be able to buy it for 99p.
All proceeds will go to the Trussell Trust.
It’s quick, simple, and fun:
Download the lyrics here
Set up your laptop or phone to play the karaoke version of ‘Come on in from the cold’ at a low volume
Film yourself singing (widthways/landscape) ideally with earphones and mic (and a santa hat?)
Email the video file to yourturn@steamco.org.uk or WhatsApp it to 07836375128
AND DON’T WORRY
Don’t be intimidated by the brillaince of the Commoners’ Choir, even if you can’t sing, sing what you can, even if it’s just the chorus!
Or mime it. It’s your mugshot that we want really.
Better yet, get your kids, other family members, and bubble buddies in on the act … stay safe!
KARAOKE VERSiON
Is below, play it on one screen and film yourself on another. Make sure the volume is low though
THE SONG SO FAR
Below is the first edit of the song and film, with a lovely contribution from former head teacher Rachel Orr.
Be a part of it… with your art!
BOFF GOT BACK UP AGAIN
A highlight of the #AimHigh20 Festival held with the community of Parklands Primary was surely the chat and performance by and with the legendary Boff Whalley, formerly with chart topping band Chumbawumba for 30 years and now leader of the Commoners Choir who sing socially conscious songs so beautifully.
He also sang a duet with Chris Dyson, the exuberant and inspiring led of the Parklands Primary School Community on the Seacroft Estate in Leeds.
COMMUNITY LEADERSHIP
Every Christmas, Chris Dyson invites the whole of the Seacroft estate into the school on Christmas Eve Eve for a hot meal, presents, and and real reindeer.
Obviously that wasn’t going to happen this year with Covid but he has still laid on the #XmasAtParklands extravaganza part of which we live streamed to the community as part of the #AimHigh20 Festival weekend.
Working with local charities he’s giving every child a food parcels and presents to take home as well as over £11,000 in supermarket vouchers.
POVERTY ISN’T STATS
Boff Walley’s Commoners Choir recognised this community spirit and generosity a few years ago with an anthem ’ Come in from the Cold’.
Will you join us to sing with, show solidarity for and showcase the efforts of Chris and the many other school community leaders like him that we have been proud to work with across the UK, like Chris Tolson in Bradford, Dave Shakeshaft in Birmingham, Brian Walton in Somerset and Siobhan Collingwood whose TES blog on how ‘poverty stats aren’t numbers, they are children’ in her school community haunts us to this day.
The TRUSSELL TRUST
All proceeds from this campaign will go to the Trussell Trust - that could be £50-100k if we get to No.1!
We support a nationwide network of food banks and together we provide emergency food and support to people locked in poverty, and campaign for change to end the need for food banks in the UK.
After two years working towards it, we are obviously a bit disappointed not to have been chosen at this stage to get one of the £100k prizes to develop an idea to be part of #FestivalUK2022 and are really impressed by those who have, some of the UK’s greatest creative people and organisations from mega brands Jamie Oliver to grass roots activists like Emergency Exit Arts.
We had pulled together a great team from communities across the UK and know of possibly even better teams that were also rejected, so aren’t too disheartened.
WE DIDN’T NEED THE MONEY
It would have been nice to win a share of £100k and used it to strengthen old and fostered new collaborations, but we didn’t really need it as we knew all all long what we want to do, basically more of what we’ve been doing for the last ten years:
Helping Connect Our Kids with their Art and our Communities with their Schools
Campaigning for, Inspiring and Actioning the Power of Art - Creativity, Tools and People - to Inspire Kids in their Learning, Power the Economy and Connect Communities.
Last year, the Culture Minister helped inspired us to show how #ArtConnects19 and this year, Covid-19 didn’t stop our #Collaborate20 work, inspired by a video chat we had in a school in Toxteth with Nile Rodgers.
DOING OUR OWN THING
We’re grateful to HM Treasury, DCMS and Arts Council England for a small #CultureReliefFund grant to run the #AimHigh20 UK Tour and Festival and launch #Inspiranation21 Year.
That will be part of the build up to our very own grass roots, community art activity in #Festival22.
We’re going to use 2021 with our work under the #InspiraNation21 banner to prove that what everyone seems to love about our work here at STEAM Co. can scale and be sustainable before rolling it out across the UK, hopefully to compliment #FestivalUK2022, or whatever they call it.
TODAY’S LAUNCH
Today we’re launching our #TalkWalkers20 Podcast in memory of, and as part of the legacy of Sir Ken Robinson who inspired us in no small way to start STEAM Co. ten years ago with his No 1 TED talk on how schools can kill creativity and who tragically passed away this summer.
To help us raise the funds we need to keep going, we’re also launching our #CreativeCarersPatreon project where we’re calling for Partrons of STEAM Co. - yes, PARTrons, pARTrons - people to be part of our movement with their art, whatever it is, because it takes a whole village to inspire a child.
Be part of #Festival22 - our part of #FestivalUK2022
which we’ve been working on for ten years now.
LET'S CONNECT
LET’S CELEBRATE
LET'S COLLABORATE
LET’S CREATE
A month or so ago, Martin Green, Chief Creative Officer of #FestivalUK2022 (working title), released a strategy document with STEAM and a lot of Co. words at its heart, announcing the first real steps towards a major nationwide celebration of Creativity and Innovation with a budget of £120m to promote both what makes Britain Great and what can reconnect us as a country post Brexit and now Covid-19.
He was looking for 30 teams to be given £100k to develop ideas for the Festival over a 3 month programme of work from which they will chose ten to be given between £4m and £10m each to deliver their idea in 2022.
No one said it was going to be easy. But we’ll do what we can.
Few have campaigned harder than us for creativity and often against some aspects of government policy. We have counter signed anti Brexit campaigns led by the Creative Industries Federation but feel now is the time to move forward, for our children and all our futures.
It was sad but understandable to see the frustration, anger, and in some cases, real negativity, that this generated - understandable given how it was universally positioned by the media from the BBC to the Guardian and the Sun as the ‘Festival of Brexit’ and understandably derided as such by many.
But as someone said :
“You don’t have to have voted for this government or need to have been a Brexiter to want the country to succeed.”
So let’s look at why we’re such big fans of #FestivalUK2022 and why this doesn’t necessarily make us Brexit fans, when like most of the Creative Industries, we actively campaigned against it and what it represented. In fact, few have campaigned harder than us against the dark forces many see were behind it and which we feel risks a #CreativityCrisis.
The ART of COMMUNITY
Martin Green was the head of ceremonies at the London 2012 Olympic Games and director of Hull's year as UK City of Culture in 2017. I certainly enjoyed and attended both, which are universally considered to have gone down as resounding successes and were, he says, examples of the unifying power of creativity, be that for a country or a city.
Reference also the brilliant work in Waltham Forest, London’s First Borough of Culture in the film here.
Green also cites the acclaimed World War One centenary events masterminded by artists like Jeremy Deller and Danny Boyle. None of those projects were overtly political. "And neither is this," Mr Green says. "Creativity, creative acts and big projects can sit to the side, above and below 'Politics with a big P.'"
He adds: "Remember, coming together and bringing people together isn't about asking people all to think and believe the same thing. It's about understanding each other and appreciating each other's differences and commonalities."
We certainly couldn’t have written a better strategy ourselves, grounded as it is in the power of STEAM and Collaboration - the very things that have underpinned our work.
We’ve been waiting for this and are keen to be part of it some how and invite you to join us, to help walk the talk in our response if you’d like to. Already many have offered to help from all walks of life across the UK.
THE TALK
Last year, I was invited to a speech in Coventry by the then culture minister Jeremy Wright who told how he had been using art and culture of his department as a currency to collaborate across a wide range of government departments from education to health.
It was a breath of fresh air, as was his announcement for a National Festival of Creativity in 2022 and the fact they’d allocated £120m to it.
He generously filmed an interview with us after his talk in which he said the government is “looking for projects that show the value of art.”
Read my blog here on LinkedIn about Jeremy Wright’s speech launching Festival UK 2022
AN INSPIRATION
The government’s plan for #FestivalUK2022 where manna to our ears and fitted perfectly into our five year plan, which we kicked off with the #ARTCONNECTS19 Festival of Creative Schools, Work and Lives - a year long programme of events.
COLLABORATE AMID COVID
As you’ll see, Nile Rodgers inspired this, our #COLLABORATE20 Year.
It kicked off with a great event in a school community in Dorset, a collaboration with Barclays that was live streamed on BBC Radio when covid hit.
What better reason to collaborate with the UK’s leading provider of creative tools and content LGfL and we’ve just finished a five month programme of Commmunity Art projects with an emergency Arts Council/National Lottery/DCMS Grant under the banner of our #CommunityLockIn
This consisted of four channels from a Content Creation and Community Collaboration Hub, a fully functioning, green screen internet TV studio we built within days of lock down:
#ARTCONNECTS SHOW - Championing, Inspiring and Actioning Creativity via ongoing social activism and a Live weekly show
#ROCKET KIDS CLUB - A safe and creative online community for kids and creative carers to be Inspired, create and Share. Live Weekly Show
#UK ART TAKE- OVER - Activities and action across the UK which kicked off with a parliament launch 1st May and five weekend Art of Community festivals through the summer.
#CO-CONFERENCES - live events broadcast for and with friends and partners including a Decolonising of the Music Curriculum event and one with our founder sponsors LGfL.
In the last five months we have worked with and paid over 100 artists and creative practitioners in and with communities across the UK from Cornwall to Cardiff, Belfast to Bradford, Liverpool to Leeds and Ludlow to London. Even the Isle of Wight.
It saw us build a half size pyramid stage from cardboard and code in a school playing fields for #YourGlasto - down the road from the world famous music festival that had been cancelled due to Covid.
Another highlight of the summer was #ARTCAMP20 - a weekend Festival with Camping and an #Eclectic Art Trail for community art, which we staged with a licence from the local council in Devon within 2 weeks of lock down lifting.
We themed it ‘Building Castles in the Sky’ to both echo the aspiration we want to instil in our young people but also to take us back to the setting of Camp Bestival, where exactly ten years ago we had been inspired to start STEAM Co. - to ‘Power Communities to Inspire their Children with Creativity’ but helping them run their own Creativity festivals in their school communities.
For the last five years, two specifically, we have quite deliberately been working to trial and test concepts for the sort of Community Art we feel could play a grass roots role in the government’s Festival UK 2022 and certainly what Jeremy Wright said he was looking for.
Our plan:
#ARTCONNECTS19 - to showcase the Power of Art and Creativity in our Schools, Work and Lives
#COLLABORATE20 - to encourage more companies like Barclays, Google, Cass Art etc to work with us
#INSPIRANATION21 - to lay the foundations for a year of community art in school communities and beyond
#FESTIVAL22 - to play a core grass roots role in this exciting year
#TBC - let’s see how the other four years go first!
THE PLAN FOR FESTIVAL UK 2022
So back to Martin Green and his slightly more ambitious plan for his Festival, which in hindsight may have been conceived to help showcase British Innovation and Reconnect the Country post Brexit regardless of outcome. Along with others, we supported the Creative Industries Federation’s anti Brexit campaign though are saddened by the negative press and response to Festival UK 2022.
Festival UK 2022 will now also try to help re-energise the economy and country post Covid so there is every reason for everyone to support it now, for all our futures.
When the plan for the next stage of #Festival UK 2020 was published, we were particularly excited to see that it was built on the same pillars as us - the interdisciplinary STEAM approach and people:
In summary:
Festival UK 2022 of Creativity and Innovation is to celebrate and remind the world what makes Britain Great and Reconnect the Country
Key themes: Creativity, Collaboration, Community, Co-creation, Optimism, Legacy, Inclusion, Openness, Freelancers
It’s being organised by the team behind The Olympics2012 Celebrations and Hull 2017
They were looking for ten projects - one in England, Wales, Scotland and N Ireland and six across the UK
They have a budget of £3m - £100k each for 30 R&D projects from which the above ten will be selected
JOIN US - LET’S WALK THE TALK
Ten years ago, a group of parents were inspired to start STEAM Co. with their school community after a weekend at a Family Creativity Festival called Camp Bestival, reading a book about the power of education and community called ‘What’s the Point of School’ by Prof Guy Claxton and seeing THE No 1, TED Talk about how ‘Creativity is now as important as Literacy’ by a Liverpudlian, Sir Ken Robinson who sadly passed recently.
Today STEAM Co. issue a call to likeminds to join us, whoever, where ever you are, whether a parent, business person, company large or small or any type of #CreativeCarer - someone who cares about creativity, children and all our futures.
The long walk to Festival22
Be part of #Festival22 - which WILL be part of #FestivalUK2022 whether or not we win any of this budget to do what we’d done for five years now across the UK.
Be part of it by popping a comment in the box below, go on… whatever comes into your head, and then sign up here now.
It takes a whole village to inspire a child and a whole country to put itself back together.
Let’s show how #ARTCONNECTS
LET’S #COLLABORATE20
Read more about #FestivalUK2022 here and see a snapshot of our work to date below
Bottom line:
“It’s about bringing Creativity to some of the most deprived Communities”
Marva Rollins OBE
Education Consultant, former HeadTecher and STEAM Co. advisor
BLOG UPDATES
10/03/21: We’ve got 2021 and our #InspiraNation21 Year off to a flying start by building a half sized cardboard Coventry cathedral in a school playing field in the city.
Through March, using our new tech, we’re live streaming #InspiraNation21 assemblies from it to schools across the UK (and world with one booked in new York) and twinning them with schools in Coventry.
We held a three day #Coventry Festival and an #EvolvEd21 co-conference and a session on World Book to Celebrate the life of Sir Ken Robinson as part of his daughters global #ImagineIf festival in his memory.
Yes, we’re flying high!
We’re delighted to be hosting a panel discussion ‘In Memory of Sir Ken Robinson’ at the Creative Coalition 20 Festival being organised by the newly merged Creative Industries Federation and Creative England on Wednesday 11th November at 12.20pm. Details below
We’ve been grateful
For the support of a wide range of artists that capture the breadth of our definition of art from Homer Hickam and his Art of Rockets to Mamta Singhal’s Art of Engineering and Martyn Ware, who sums up the science and tech and Art of Music so well as a pioneer of electronic music and Nile Rodgers who told us that “collaboration is everything”.
But it’s great to go back to basics to look at the Art of Painting and few people have supported us like the painter Mulumba Tshikuka, who we include an interview with below when he chatted to Portobello Radio about his upcoming #OdeToTheQueen show opening in London’s Queen’s Park the day of the US Election - which is timely as he’s painted Trump!
Check out the clip here and find out what happened when he walked into a pub, with The Queen
Below you can:
Join a debate about issues raised by the show
Read about our work with Mulumba
See a live stream from the opening evening
EVENT ANNOUNCEMENT
We have just been offered use of the gallery for an #ARTCONNECTSshow to discuss Decolonising of the Art World. It will be live streamed from the gallery with a panel of special guests:
Joan Hillery - Film Director
Mulumba Tshikuka - Artist
Isis Amlack - Afrakan Queen Mother Warrior
Haviva Kohl - Equity/opportunity enthusiast
It is open to all via free tickets here on Facebook or here on Eventbrite if you don’t use Facebook.
TIME FLIES
Mulumba has worked with us for over five years now since our big stage at the Festival of Education at Wellington Collage, when Sir Ken Robinson keynoted and where Mulumba earned the title ‘Dr Spin’ for running our spin painting activity.
He’s been to a few Camp Bestivals with us since, came to Liverpool with us last year and we’ve worked particularly closely with Mulumba all this year in lock down when he’s helped out as a virtual production manager on our events and live streamed shows like #YourGlasto and #ArtCamp20.
We’re delighted now to support his upcoming show ‘Ode to The Queen’ which opens in Queen’s Park on Nov 3rd, the same day as the US goes to the polls.
How Art Connects
Our connection to Mulumba is the very embodiment of our mantra of how ‘art connects’.
Five years ago we were publishing our first newspaper with a full page print of the Cass Art manifesto on the back page to ‘fill this town with artists’.
I’d been taking a few photos of their Soho art shop and come back home to Paddington where a distinctive Cass Art bag caught my eye outside George’s Fish and Chip Shop.
Given that its owner was also carrying an A0 portfolio I felt confident asking if he was artist. We connected and he agreed to join us at Wellington College later that week!
We were delighted when Mulumba generously agreed to include some of the paintings from his ‘Dictator’s Garden’ project in the #Eclectic Art Trail which he helped us curate at the #ArtCamp20 Festival weekend that we ran in Devon two weeks after lock down lifted this summer (See film above and photos below).
It included a wall of Cass Art bags with two odd ones out, in different colours.
AN ODE TO THE QUEEN
When Mulumba was offered a gallery for his first major London exhibition we were delighted to help anyway we could.
‘The Dictator’s Garden - An Ode to The Queen’ will feature a number of Mulumba’s quirky and thought provoking takes on the world’s most famous/infamous historical dictators.
The centrepiece will be a portrait of a black Queen Elizabeth II and the unveiling of Boris Johnson and Donald Trump on the US Election Day.
See the film below of a chat Mulumba had with North Kensington’s community artists at Portobello Radio - and find out what happened the day he walked into a pub with the Queen.
Click image to hear the show
It was a great radio show (listen here) which also included artist Alison Jackson talking about her controversial Donald Trump sculpture and Community Artist/Educator and STEAM Co. friend Linett Kamala talking about her mural inspired by the remarkable Frestonian story, Black Lives Matter and Windrush Generation.
MULUMBA’S SHOW DETAILS
Click the flyer image to download and share
This is a covid-secure event with only 6 people allowed in the gallery at a time, do don’t miss the show, book your free timed ticket here now:
‘The Dictator’s Garden - An Ode to The Queen’
Worldly Wicked and Wise Gallery
81 Salusbury Road
London NW6 6NH
3 - 15 November 2020
Pre-book free timed tickets here
The venue is opposite a bar, the Salusbury which would make a good meeting point and place to get a drink afterwards
Launch event live stream
Below is a live stream on the opening event with an introduction from Mulumba and walk through of the show.
I have a sign on my office door from Cass Art that quotes Matisse.
It just gave me some strength as I’ve been awake since 4am worrying.
What have I got to worry about?
Ideas. Art. Money. Community. Connections. Making them.
And I was devastated as my biggest and boldest idea ever was almost in tatters thanks to a one line email from the Health and Safety consultant I’d hired less than 24 hours previously.
But by 6am I had another idea. Wanna hear it?
Anyone who has been tracking our #CommuntyLockIn this year may have noticed a theme or regular references back to a place - North Yorkshire, Leeds particularly.
That’s down to one particular man, a dad and school community leader.
Read how a Tweet by Chris Dyson at Parklands Primary led to a Leeds lead with severe special needs headlining a very special Glastonbury Festival before going on National ITV News and BBC breakfast
“IT’S LIKE LIVE AID,
BUT BETTER”
BOB GELDOF*
Announcing our Glasto Street Fest, the second of five Art of Community Free Festival weekends on our own Pyramid stage in the Vale of Avalon to jump start a Creativity Revolution, in the spirit of Punk 1.0 from ’76, brought up to date for Punk 2.0 and all our futures.
Who would imagine it takes a lockdown to discover things that are right under your nose? Virtual as it was, the seed is firmly planted – when the world is safe and the gates open again, I will set foot on Cornwall, and enjoy its lambs and seas. And, of course, go street crazy at the Bude Carnival!
It was a pleasure to re visit Bradford with one of our #RocketKidsClub Shows in the morning and an #ARTCONNECTSshow Special in the afternoon to look at the heritage of music education here and abroad.
Our old friend, music teacher Jimmy Rotheram of Feversham Primary Academy in Bradford, and one of three UK educators shortlisted for the "world's best teacher" award (triple kudos), hosted this #ArtConnectsShow and Co-Conference.
Even though the event was virtual, and our eager audience had to be reminded to stay home, it was easy to feel the breeze on one’s face as far away as our ‘Dad’s Studio’ in London, as Rob da Banks brought us inspiration to be DJs… We also met some local teachers with gig ideas!
It’s never too late to learn new techniques and to add fresh material to your art practice. Our stop in Cardiff at the Wales Millenium Centre brought us close and personal to students from the School of Art and Design Illustration. A cardboard arcade teen wiz joined us from California, and artist Chris Gilmour showcased his museum cardboard works.
THE ARTS COUNCIL ARE A NICE BUNCH.
They moved a mountain to mobilise £160 million and we’ve asked if we can have some of it.
Read how we want to share it with artists across the country on our #UKArtTakeOver and also to collaborate with galleries and institutions to help everyone have access to #ARTforALL
Gawd, they say time flies when you’re having fun but when you’re living on borrowed time, money and in 120% denial there’s no stopping it.
Today came around like thunder and I had decided not to do our first #ARTCONNECTS Show as we hadn’t had any time to get any guests lined up.
If you wanted to collaborate on an Art project to connect us all at this time and if you saw Art as the Killer Combo of Creativity, Tech and People, who would you want to collaborate with?
We know. And we are. Read on.
40 YEARS AGO... My Mum (and Dad) launched a Holiday Playscheme for deprived kids and those of working parents to play, create and be together
With others in their community, they ran it for about 20 years. There’s a photo of them below at a garden party at Buckingham Palace as recognition of work my dad did on SureStart, not the biggest fan of royalty, he only went cos she wanted to go.
For the next 30 odd years mum ran the Church book stall before books were a twinkle in Jeff Bezos’ eye. She helped kids make rockets at the STEAM Co. Day we ran at my old school there in Ludlow.
YESTERDAY I launched a #CommunityLockIn and #RocketKidsClub as an artistic response to Covid19 and need to raise money to make it happen for free for kids of key workers and on free school dinners. All our kids even.
TODAY she’s too ill for me to see on #MotheringSunday
I stand on her shoulders.
She’s my giant
LOVE YOU MUM X
The day I ran a Twitter poll whcih had 35,000 views after most people saw one thing they didn’t like and saw red.
Fond memories of growing up with a television, not having one and the golden age