As part of our research and planning for the SSW Community Making Space programme 2024 we are welcoming three national and international guests who also run spaces that connect communities through making and craft. We are excited to welcome Manoeuvre, the Portland Inn Project and Myvillages.
Join us for talks, activities and a bowl of soup and get inspired by our trans-local friends and colleagues.
How to attend the event
- All events are free and open to all ages
- Children must be accompanied by an adult
- To book your free space please email our Community Arts Organiser, Mara communities@ssw.org.uk
- Events take place in the Community Making Space, SSW, 1 Main Street Lumsden
This programme is partially supported by the Aberdeenshire Council Local Learning Community Partnership.
Manoeuvre – NAMES project
Thursday 15 February
11am – 1pm
We are delighted to welcome Chris Rotsaert from Manoeuvre in Belgium.
Chris will be at SSW sharing the work she supports with local people from migration roots and with artists which takes place in the Ham district of Ghent. Together they work with manual and slow techniques particularly with textiles. Local residents know specific techniques and exchange these with the expertise of artists. In addition to textiles, other crafts and forgotten knowledge are also used and shared. Through the process of making things together, temporary collectives with artists are created.
We will come together for a shared lunch and join Manoeuvre’s project ‘NAMES’, where we will be embroidering the names of Palestinian victims.
Portland Inn Project
Tuesday 27 February
11am – 1pm
We are delighted to welcome our second guest Rebecca Davies from the Portland Inn Project in Stoke-on-Trent.
Rebecca will be joining us on Zoom to share the transformational work that The Portland Inn Project has developed over the past 7 years and how using clay is central to their work on Portland Street. We will hear about how they are currently renovating an old pub to develop a new community hub complete with clay studio. They will also tell us about other projects they have developed working with their community and ceramics including the infamous Portland Pigeon.
Please join us for a making session where followed by a shared lunch.
Photo by Felicity Crawshaw
Myvillages – The Rural School of Economics
Tuesday 12 March
11am – 1pm
We are delighted to welcome Wapke Feenstra, a co-founder of Myvillages that initiated the Rural School of Economics with Kathrin Böhm in 2020. The school is made by many and among them Indra Gleizde – a Latvian lens-based artist living in the Netherlands and working since 2021 within the Rural School of Economics.
Together they will join us on Zoom to share the work they have been doing across Germany, Netherlands, Russia, Belarus and Romania working with local people specifically exploring soils, culture and economies through methods including digging into clay and textiles. Wapke will introduce the making of ‘New Village Goods’ and together we will reflect on the learning from this project using Myvillages methods. This is an opportunity to hear about this work and the wider connections it has to SSW’s Community Making Space, through its involvement in the Rural School of Economics.
We will also come together for a shared soup lunch.
