Over the past month we have been packing and delivering some surprises for our Shared Space and Women's Creative Company groups.
Sadly unable to meet in person at present, the focus of our recent pilot project Creative Action: 2020-21 is offering our groups new ways to engage in creative practice at home.
At A Distance Together is the digital/remote strand of our creative delivery, our response to the isolating environment of lockdown. In February, Project Coordinator Mina, and Access Coordinator Elena delivered 48 Creative Packs, direct to the doorstop of our groups.
Filled with arts materials and weekly Creative Tasks, the packs invite the groups get creative at home, with weekly video instructions shared digitally.
“Journaling is like whispering to one’s self and listening at the same time”
Journaling invited participants to design and create covers for journals discovered inside each pack and make a first entry. The journal provides a space where thoughts, creative responses and feelings on our lives right now can be recorded and collated together.
“Drawing is the art of taking a line for a walk”
Colouring In Your Lifeline invites us to "take a pen for a walk across the page", eyes closed, experimenting with big movements, small movements, fast, slow, curves and corners. Art materials were used to add more colour, drawings and textures and developed to begin to tell a story.
In Week 3 we encouraged participants to write Messages of Hope to other group members and family or loved ones, with postcards and stamps provided to then post. In week 4, we explored print making as a creative skill in Researching Our Shadows. Now in week 5 participants are invited to create audio recordings in a sound based creative task from associate artist Najma Abukar.
Each written task is contained in a sealed envelope and the groups are invited to open weekly, complimented with the digitally shared video instructions. Our first box is filled with 8 weeks worth of multi artform tasks and materials for participants to creatively respond in text, image, textile, print, video, drawing & sound form.
Although we are at a distance from each other right now, we invite each person to create together that week and share responses on the groups' online shared platform. This way, individual responses can be collated and shared collectively, encouraging conversation, connection and artistic exploration between the Women's Creative Company and Shared Space groups outwith our regular online workshops...
We look forward to sharing the groups' creative responses as we move forward this year!
With thanks to our funders who made this project possible: Glasgow City Council, Robertson's Trust and Foundation Scotland.