Great Craft events in the North West - a calendar

Making the NW Craft Network a Network

Ever since the North West Craft Network got started we've wondered how to create a balance between working size and inclusion. Too big and we can't manage and afford meetings. Too small and we get loads done and can meet easily, but we don't represent the whole.

Anyway, we were discussing this in the NW Craft Network Steering Group meeting and Kate Day, the Director of Manchester Craft and Design Centre, came up with this way to think about it (see her scribble on the right):

From now on, what was called the NW Craft Network will be the NW Craft Network Development Group.

The NW Craft Network Steering Group will still be the Steering Group

Anyone who cares about craft in the NW is free to join the Network - and can join for free at the moment, although we might have to review costs if we are to be sustainable in the long term.

But for now, let's make hay while the sun shines and sign up for nothing. Network members will recieve news and updates about what's going on with craft in and around the North West, consulted by web polls and email about relevant issues and will be invited to any events that we organise.

We'll take a week or so to update our web info with our slightly tweaked identity, but in the meantime: Welcome to the North West Craft Network.

To sign up go here
More about the NW Craft Network

North West Craft Network wins funding!

Makers & artist James Maskrey at The Whitworth

The North West Craft Network has won funding from Arts Council England for the second year of an already successful project to strengthen craft in the North West.  Together with small but significant funding contributions from leading North West craft venues; Gawthorpe Textiles Collection, Manchester Craft and Design Centre, The Great Northern Contemporary Craft Fair, Bluecoat Display Centre, Gallery Oldham, The Whitworth Art Gallery and Bolton University, the Network is all set to put craft in the region firmly on the map.

At our Networking event at GNCCF

In 2015-16 the Network aims to put together an ambitious three to five year programme of activity that will make a real and lasting impact on the health of the North West’s craft sector.

The programme will build on the already considerable strengths of craft in the region but also address the particular challenges that the people making, curating, selling and buying craft in the North West face.

During the year the Network will create opportunities for the North West’s craft makers, curators and stakeholders to collaborate, share knowledge and shape a plan for the future. A key part of this will be two Network events; a day conference at Bolton University and a curator development day at Manchester College. In addition they will partner up with the likes of Great Northern Events (the people who run The Great Northern Contemporary Craft Fair) and Manchester Craft and Design Centre to support their existing maker and curator development plans.

The Network will also inject into the programme data gathered from last year’s work, which included maker and curator events at The Great Northern Contemporary Craft Fair, The Whitworth and COLLECT at the Saatchi Gallery. To this, they will add targeted strands of new research into potential partnerships, exchanges, international collaborations and appropriate income streams.

Since it started in 2012 the Network has gone from strength to strength. One of the tasks for this year will be to address the issues of organisation and funding that this success has created so that the Network can become a permanent agent of support and development of craft in the region.

Craft has great potential to grow in the North West. As a region it has some top quality craft venues, as a glance at this list of venues that are concerned with craft attests. From public institutions around the region, including – to name just a few - The Whitworth, Manchester City Galleries, Gallery Oldham, Gawthorpe Textiles Collection and The Harris Museum and Art Gallery in Preston, to commercial concerns such as the Bluecoat Display Centre, and maker spaces such as Manchester Metropolitan University’s Marketplace Studio in Stockport and the Manchester Craft and Design Centre. There are fantastic collections, vibrant shows and new commissions taking place. Manchester hosts one of the UK’s main craft events in the form of the Great Northern Contemporary Craft Fair; not to mention a host of talented and respected professional makers; world class education and research in the field and a thriving amateur economy. But even so, the current economic climate presents tough challenges.

Markets for intensively produced, contemporary fine Craft are thin. Many buyers go elsewhere to build their collections, and there are still relatively few regional opportunities for exhibiting and selling. Part time work – often an important contribution to the income of both budding and established makers - is diminishing, creating a pull towards London and the South East. Curators find themselves stretched across a huge range of departments from fine art to science and critical writers who can explore, analyse and share the experience of craft among the community are few and far between.

The North West Craft Network was set up in 2012 to address issues such as these and build on the many good things happening in the region.  It represents publicly funded museum collections, Further and Higher Education Institutions, commercial galleries, crafts agencies and practitioners at all stages of their careers. This year’s project will be another bold step forward for the group, aiming to channel the knowledge, skills and enthusiasm in the sector in to a plan that will make the North West Craft Sector and robust and vibrant player in the creative industries of the Northern Powerhouse.

For more information contact the NW Craft Network Co-ordinator, Victoria Scholes at craftnorthwest@gmail.com or +44 (0) 1625 421768

To read more about the North West Craft Network and to see a list of current members of its development team, click here

To join our mailing list, contact craftnorthwest@gmail.com with 'I want to join the NW Craft Network mailing list' in the subject line and we'll add your name. 

Inside the world of curating. A visit to COLLECT 2015

This was my first visit to COLLECT, the International Art Fair for Contemporary Objects. The North West Craft Network awarded bursaries to a number of curators in the North West, and I was one of the recipients.

The excitement built in the couple of weeks before as galleries which were displaying filled my inbox with information about the artists who would be showing at the Saatchi Gallery. An invitation to apply for the Craft Council’s Museum Purchase Fund also arrived, with the opportunity to bid for pieces from the fair which would be purchased by the Crafts Council.

I had three main aims from the fair:

The first was to solidify my ideas as to which artists I will shortlist for our Contemporary Art Society Craft acquisition later this year. I was still in the initial research phase for this and have been visiting as many exhibitions and artists as I can. COLLECT was a great opportunity to see work by some makers I am interested in, and of course, see work which I was previously unaware of.

The second was to meet some of the makers who are represented in our collection, several of whom I’ve had e-mail and phone contact with but have never actually met face-to-face – Natasha Daintry and Ann Sutton in particular.

The third was to meet other colleagues from across the country who are also working alongside makers.

The morning session was the private view, at which speeches were given by Rosy Greenlees, Director of the Crafts Council and Geoffrey Crossick, Chair of the Trustees of the Crafts Council. My highlight of this section was the announcement that Gallery Oldham was one of the three museums across the country awarded work under the Crafts Council Museum Purchase Fund. We were awarded ‘Patience Flower XXIII’, 2014 by Vipoo Srivilasa and ‘Journey Jar’, 2015 by Adam Buick.

The afternoon part of the Curator Day was key note sessions followed by two case studies of recent acquisitions with the Contemporary Art Society. The first key note was a really interesting presentation by Tulga Beyerle, Director of the Dresden Museum of DecorativeArts, in which Beyerle described working in a small overlooked museum in Germany. Beyerle’s museum had little in the way of twentieth century craft so she had decided to start from scratch with a twenty-first century craft collection. While the context in Dresden is really different from the context in which I work, there was lots to take from Beyerle’s presentation, and her pragmatism, commitment and enthusiasm was really infectious.

Next up was Alastair Hudson from MIMA who spoke about the challenges of ensuring that museums remain valued by the communities they serve, rather than merely being tolerated at best. He talked in detail about loads of really exciting initiatives happening in Middlesborough. There’s not space to go into detail about them here – but do go and have a look at their website.

Next came the two case studies from curators who had recently received funding from the Contemporary Art Society – Fiona Slattery Clark from Birmingham Museums and Katherine McClung-Oakes from Bury Art Museum. It was really helpful to me to listen to their experiences as I am at the early stages of my first experience of the process this year. 

So all in all, I had a really great time at COLLECT 2015 and learnt a lot. There was a real buzz around the show. It was exciting to see so many private collectors supporting the sector. I personally really enjoyed bumping into makers who I’ve only met recently like Michael Eden, and catching up with others like Halima Cassell who I’ve known for a while. It was SO brilliant to spend that much time in a space which was brimming with lovely, lovely things.

Rebecca Hill
Exhibitions & Collections Coordinator (Art)
Gallery Oldham

Advocating Craft - 4 great tips for a healthy craft practice. Jade Mellor reflects on 'Building the Market for Contemporary Craft'

Four great tips for healthy craft practice from artist and maker Jade Mellor on what she took from the NW Craft Network's symposium and networking event at the Great Northern Contemporary Craft Fair.

Always thoughtful, Jade had drawn on her own experience as well as the advice from our three great speakers and the other event participants to make some sound points. Nice one Jade.

See Jade's tips here.

A creative response to Making It: building your craft future at the Whitworth

My name is Tasmin Williams and I’m currently in my final year of a Three Dimensional Design Degree at Manchester School of Art. I specialise in ceramics, exploring clays tactile qualities through hand built forms created to be held and touched.

Last week I attended the North West Craft Network event, ‘Making it: Building your craft future’ at The Whitworth Art Gallery. I was given the opportunity to respond to the day’s events through the medium of clay.

The talks and 1:1 surgeries delivered by established crafts people covered so much insightful information and facilitated the opportunity to network with these experienced practitioners along with like-minded individuals who all have a passion for crafts. The artist talk that really inspired me was that given by Halima Cassell. It was fascinating to see how her work has progressed from when she was a University graduate and continues to develop throughout her career as a practicing artist.

Being in a room with all of these incredibly creative people was a great opportunity for me to further explore the relationship between the clay material and human touch.

I decided to document the day through a series of objects made by the participants taking part in the day’s activities. Giving each person a ball of clay, I asked them to play with the clay and create anything they wanted to. The series of objects made were fantastic.

There was such a wide variety of shapes and textures and almost every participant that had a go enjoyed the experience with one lady describing it as therapeutic. Most people were tentative in the way they picked up the clay at first but once they had rolled it around in their hands for a while they became more comfortable and familiar with its malleable properties. I feel the area in which each person practices affected the way they interacted with the clay. For example, a lady who purely works in two dimensions spent most of her time adding patterns to her object using the fine metal tools.

I found the event incredibly helpful and it has provided struggling and up and coming craft practitioners with tools they can use to move their practice onto its next stages and I am very privileged to have been part of such a fantastic opportunity.

Check out Tasmin's Blog

Making It: building your craft future at The Whitworth, Thursday 5th March 2015

The Great Hall at the Whitworth

Making It: building your craft future was the second of the North West Craft Network’s events. Aimed at early career makers, the programme contained a mixture of speakers, workshops and one-to-one surgeries.

 "A chance to talk to Craft professionals in person, one-to-one's and hearing people own stories - All great!" event partcipant

The day kicked off with an introduction by CJ O’Neill. CJ shared some great examples of makers across a range of media and styles. She introduced the importance of having great images of your work, which turned out to be a theme which recurred throughout the day.

Drying Pots with an electric blanket

Halima Cassell outlined her career so far. The highlight for me and many others was definitely Halima’s photo of herself tucked up in bed with a couple of pots, which she was drying with an electric blanket in her one bedroom flat earlier in her career! She gave a really honest account of some of the challenges and trickier times, while also showing what you can achieve with great ideas and a lot of persistence.

Pencils at the ready!

Rachel Kelly talked through the process of getting her business up and running. She had really some good practical tips like consider confidentiality agreements when working with large companies to develop new ideas, research your clients before you pitch to them and make sure you really focus on your work at meetings/pitches.

After this we broke up into smaller groups for the one-to-one surgeries. This was a chance for makers to ask experienced professionals a specific question. People providing surgeries included makers who are already running successful businesses, curators and craft event organisers.

Katia Stewart telling her story

Next Katia Stewart, Talent Development Manager from the Crafts Council, began by speaking about her career as a maker and went on to talk about how the Crafts Council can support makers at different points in her career. There was frantic scribbling across the room as she showed her slide containing top tips for a successful Grants for the Arts application.
http://www.craftscouncil.org.uk/

The final speaker of the day was James Maskey. He spoke about his career as an artist and also his experience of working with other artists at the National Glass Centre. James’ most quotable quote of the day was definitely “Make work you love – it will really sing!”.

The formal part of the day concluded with CJ O’Neill leading a session about Our Craft Future. This was a space to reflect on where you are now, where you’d like to be and how to get there. It pulled together the themes from through the day such as understanding your market, networking, good images and many more.

 "I liked meeting so many creative people. The talks were really inspiring and relevant to my practice. I made pages and pages of notes!" event participant

I wasn’t able to stay for the social part at the end of the day (boo hiss!) but that was the bit where everyone got to have a wander around the newly refurbished Whitworth, have a glass of wine and continue discussions begun throughout the day. My impression was that the event was great success, with participants and organisers learning from one another. My personal thanks go to Victoria Scholes for organising it and the staff at The Whitworth for hosting it. Here’s to lots more marvellous North West Craft Network events!

Rebecca Hill
Exhibitions & Collections Coordinator (Art)
Gallery Oldham

Find out about the NW Craft Network here