Looking for a creative kickstart and a renewed focus for Spring? Join us for a series of evening workshops designed to wake up your creativity with an insight into new skills and practices.

This short course is about gently moving out of the work environment and into a creative space in your own time, with introductory sessions over Zoom on a range of artist practices, including mark-making, writing, solargraphy and phytograms, all themed around the Spring Equinox. Taking place across two weeks with two sessions a week at family and work-friendly times, join our experienced workshop leaders and arts practitioners for an interruption to the ‘everyday’ and a welcome addition to your normal routine. 

About the residency:

The main residency sessions will take place from 16th to 25th March on Tuesday and Thursday evenings between 7pm and 9pm, and there will be a follow-on catch up session on 30th March. The workshops will take place over Zoom, and you will be invited to join a private Facebook group with your fellow participants, where you can share progress and ideas over the course of the residency.

We welcome all to apply; artists, creatives, thinkers and dreamers! There will be opportunities to share and discuss sparks and interests wider than the workshops themselves. We encourage everyone to bring ideas, enthusiasms and questions with them, and we’ll aim to explore these along the way. 

The workshops won’t usually require any more equipment than things you can find in your own home, but where there is something more specialised we can provide materials if needed. 

As experienced workshop leaders and artist residency producers, Mayes Creative firmly believes that our minds work best when relaxed and creatively engaged. Take a step out of the normal routine and be inspired by introductions into new skills that can be explored further if they spark your interest.

Confirmed for Spring Equinox short course:

*Keith Sparrow, manga artist, cartoonist and writer, will share a workshop on balancing your light and dark sides in tune with the Spring Equinox, showing you how to use words and pictures to create your own personal equinox-inspired flip-sides and doppelgängers.

*Joanna Mayes, Mayes Creative director and analogue film artist, will share the art of phytograms; how to use the chemistry of plants to develop images on photographic paper with sunlight.

*Artist Peter Beeson will explore light and shade, and how to use mark-making to create tone in your drawings. 

*Olga Suchanova, visual artist and curator, will share how to capture the sun with a homemade camera using items found in your very own home. 

*Carolyn Kennett, Cornwall-based archaeoastronomer, will lead an introductory session giving background to the Equinox and sharing the stories and creative inspiration around it.

Submission dates:

This is a call for the second round of submissions and is the final deadline for all places.

Submissions will be reviewed on a rolling basis, with remaining places allocated on a first-come-first-served basis. Apply early to secure a place!

The overall deadline is midnight on Friday 12th March 2021 if spaces remain until this date. 

Cost:

£75 

We have kept the cost as low as possible to make this residency accessible to all. In the first round we allocated four subsidised places and although we do not have formal plans to offer further subsidised places, we are open to having a conversation with anyone who would like to take part but cannot afford to at the full rate - please get in touch with us via CuratorSpace messaging if this is you.