As I started my internship at Art4Space two months ago, it seemed fitting to write my first blog post about my time here so far. Having finished my Fine Art degree last year, my practice has grown to be community-based and socially engaged, with a future interest in a career in art therapy or applied arts. So having the opportunity to join the team, learn and grow my confidence heavily appealed to me.
During my first month of the internship, I found it an incredibly humbling experience to be welcomed into such a kind team. I have been able to assist with all of the rolling programmes of creative wellbeing workshops and courses alongside our evening classes; learning how to do mosaics, kintsugi, hand-building pottery, and tile painting. I was struck by how much commitment and care everyone has at Art4Space (it’s a working environment incomparable to anything I’ve been in before). By having the time to work with different staff members and volunteers, I’ve been lucky enough to observe different specialisms and styles of teaching,
It is difficult to decide what my favourite session has been so far, as there are so many different people with different experiences I get to meet and work with every day, and having the variation keeps it all the more interesting. Most courses and programmes restarted in the new year, which is when I started, so it has been great to watch how people connect and grow through time, and learn how to facilitate agency in what they create. One particularly enjoyable session for me is the after-school clubs on Thursdays where we host families weekly, trying to find new ways to entertain and foster their creativity.
In stark contrast to the unpredictable nature of children’s after-school clubs, I’ve also been intermittently working on our current studio project led by Piotr. This project involves transferring 80 children’s drawings from a local primary school onto wooden boards for display outside a construction site (as featured above). This has been entirely new to me, I have been enjoying examining the randomness of their drawings and then transposing them so they best represent what they had in mind.
With spring on the horizon, I look forward to brighter days at the studio, with my own growing interest in how we can improve our garden and host a new workshop from our resources. I feel supported to branch off and find my own methods of working and teaching, while continuing to learn more from everyone around me. The studio is a positive place to work, and I feel incredibly lucky to witness people working together, building our community and contributing towards the sanctuary that is Art4Space.