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100 Years of Arts in the Community project - what we achieved
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100 Years of Arts in the Community project - what we achieved
Location: Derbyshire
What was achieved by the successfully completed 100 Years of Arts in the Community project, and the lasting effects it has had in the community.
This project enabled Ilkeston Arts Club to expand their regular annual exhibition as part of the celebration of their centenary in 2002, and to involve the wider community in exploring how architecture, landscape and lifestyles had changed over a hundred years.
Research in the museum, libraries and the Club’s own archives was complemented by an appeal through local radio and the press for contributions from the general public.
A former Club member’s son came forward with a bronze medallion that had been awarded to his father in 1908, and later rediscovered not only the prize-winning photograph mounted in its original frame, but also the camera it was taken with and the plate on which the picture was developed. An elderly lady contributed a tablecloth she had embroidered on bleached flour bags for the schools’ section of the Club’s annual exhibition during the 1939-45 war.
These items were among those displayed in the centenary exhibition at Erewash Museum in October/November 2002. Visited by over 1,200 people, the exhibition also featured a promotional video about the Club’s activities specially made by local amateur video enthusiasts, and a 36-page commemorative brochure which was distributed to libraries, schools, colleges, the country archives, and museums and galleries both local and national.
Links were forged with local secondary schools through workshops in portraiture, sculpture and collograph printmaking held during the centenary exhibition, and with junior schools through activities including painting, pinhole cameras and a quiz at the museum. The following summer, the Arts Club was invited to exhibit at a schools’ exhibition, following links developed during their centenary activities.
A set of double-sided display panels which were originally purchased for the Ilkeston Arts Club exhibition provided a lasting benefit to the local community, available for use by camera clubs, embroiderers’ guilds and other local groups as well as by the museum itself.
Ilkeston Arts Club went on to a second phase LHI project which enabled them to produce a permanent record of the paintings, artefacts and memorabilia featured in the centenary exhibition on CD and as a printed catalogue, and to lead further workshops with schools and local camera enthusiasts using new photographic equipment.
The second phase also used material elicited for the centenary exhibition - some 8mm cine film showing rambles around Ilkeston in the 1930s and ‘40s, and transparencies illustrating customs of Derbyshire in the 1950s - to create a "then and now" video showing how the landscape had changed.
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