It has been just a couple of short months since Eleven, our three-week exhibition at Brighton Dome as part of Brighton Festival, and the launch of our online shop selling limited edition prints from a collection of talented artists.
We’ve finally got our mitts on the video from the launch (below) and looking back on it we can’t help but feel a twang of pride. Look closely and you will see many great supporters of the work we do, from the whole extended team at Creative Future, to the honourable Mayor of Brighton and Hove (2017 – 2018) Mo Marsh, to sculptor Jamie McCartney, and of course artists, friends and family, all against the backdrop of one of Brighton’s most culturally significant venues.
But what does it all mean?
If you didn’t already know, Creative Future provide arts training and mentoring to people from under-represented backgrounds. Since 2007, we have assisted over 5,000 people right across the South-East through workshops, skills training, one-to-one mentoring, and exhibition and promotional opportunities in galleries and via our national showcases.
This has enabled under-represented artists to earn a total of over £25,000 from the sale of their work and helped us to realise our own dreams of providing real empowerment; real tangible opportunities for artists and writers to access, grow and flourish.
Eleven, a showcase of the work of just eleven of the many hundreds of artists we have worked with at Creative Future, signifies a bigger sea change for us as a charity that values inclusion and equal access to creative opportunities. These opportunities include, for writers, involvement in the London Literary Festival at the Southbank Centre, appearing on a programme alongside Salmon Rushdie and Sally Field.
Each image, work and painting by our Eleven in the video captures a point in time that may never be reached again. As with each of our Eleven artists, each point is unique.
Our Eleven represent so many artistic possibilities.
Take a look for instance at creations by Kim Noble, an artist whose imaginative work was highlighted in a recent feature by Vice Magazine. Kim, who has Dissociative Identity Disorder, paints from the perspective of her unique multiple personalities resulting in stark contrasts and exploring a huge range of different techniques.
Kim and her alters have their own individual style, colours and themes and their work has a wide appeal, each piece promising a unique window to a moment in time in their life’s journey.
This is a wonderful snapshot. But what you can’t see on the faces of our Eleven are their journeys that got them to this point; their ups and downs, the turning points, or moments of self-doubt or derision. What you don’t see is just how far they might have come or how their relationships with art may have enriched their lives.
This celebrated day, captured on film for prosperity, also captures a new era for Creative Future, a move from not just empowering artists to create art therapeutically but to the realisation of even bigger aspirations for artists and for the organisation.
See their work for yourself: https://shop.creativefuture.org.uk/.
