Who we are | What we do
rtsnet is one of around 20 networks that make up the Community Network for Manchester. We’re a collection of voluntary & community groups that exists to find new ways of enabling people to fully participate in Manchester’s economic, social and cultural life. We always welcome new members into the Artsnet network and you can join in various ways:
Website
If you're a Manchester-based artist or arts organisation you can request an entry on the member’s page.
Google Group
You can receive daily information posted by the 500+ members about arts-based news, events, employment and training.
Newsletter
You can receive the quarterly hardcopy newletter (distributed in January, April, July & October) direct to your door.
E-newsletter
If you’d prefer the greener option, sign up to receive the quarterly e-newsletter. Register by visiting subscription page.
Network meetings
Quarterly networking meetings are an opportunity to meet members from other networks. It often involves workshops, presentations & information sessions. Email artsnet@can.uk.com for more info.
News
Lots more changes at CAN
In the last issue of the newsletter we reported on the recent departure of CAN’s Digital Arts Manager and Administrative Assistant.
Since then, CAN has welcomed Sarbjit Mistry Kaur as the new Admin Assistant and Richard Ramchurn as part-time Technician.
This year, we also say farewell and good luck to David Martin, our General Manager who’s leaving to take up the post of Chief Executive at Oldham Coliseum Theatre. He'll be replaced at the end of January by Angela Bezer who is currently at Emerge.
Exodus Coordinator, Erin McNeaney will be leaving at the end of January to travel the world. You can see information about that vacancy on the jobs section below.
After 7 years, Sue Robinson has left her post as Artsnet Coordinator. She continues as Director of consultancy and project management organisation, Robinson Howell.
Finally we congratulate Faye Salisbury, CAN’s Arts Development Manager, who will shortly be going off on maternity leave.
Studio spaces available in Ancoats
We're an established Manchester-based arts organisation, a registered charity and company limited by guarantee aiming to provide support, facilities & training to artists in the Manchester area.
We’ve been funded for the next 3 years to establish a flexible studio facility in Ancoats.
Would you like to get involved?
Are you an artist working in any medium, someone who has a good idea about the direction of your practice? Or someone who finds that arts practice is an important part of your life?
Do you live in the Manchester area?
Have you had any experiences of mental or emotional distress mental health problems / depression / anxiety / psychiatric illness either recently or in the past? Would you benefit from access to affordable, flexible studio spaces based in a busy artists mill in Ancoats? - (you pay a monthly fee of £15: the spaces are then bookable for up to 2 weeks at a time.
We also hold group projects occasionally for members, such as life drawing or painting club). Are you ready to make a commitment to being involved with running the organisation, by attending regular meetings and taking on responsibilities?
For info contact James Bloomfield 07792 784625 for further details or email us on memberenquiries@googlemail.com
Mediabox news
Mediabox funding is available for organisations to work with disadvantaged young people on youth led media projects.
Funding Round Information
Mix Mediabox - open for applications: 25 Jan
Mid Mediabox - open for applications: 26 Feb
Mini Mediabox - has rolling deadlines
For more information go to www.media-box.co.uk
For pre-application support contact lwimbok@visionandmedia.co.uk or call 0870 609 4481
Mediabox Workshop
Making the most of your application
Wed 20 Jan, at Northwest Vision & Media offices, Salford
Have you applied to Mediabox and been unsuccessful? Do you want to apply for Mediabox funding but not sure how to go about it? In this workshop you can receive advice on how to improve your Mediabox application to increase your chances of being funded.
The session will include details about meeting the Mediabox outcomes, youth participation and appropriate skills transfer for the young people involved on the project.
To book onto this event go to http://mediaboxworkshop.eventbrite.com
See & be seen
Seeing and Being Seen Works by Adam Booth and Lee Deaville & Richard Turner Greenroom, Whitworth Street West. Seeing and Being Seen is a collection of new photographic works by Adam Booth and Lee Deaville & Richard Turner curated by Blank Media Collective.
Opening night: Wed 24 Feb, 5pm-11pm
Exhibition open: Thu 25 Feb to Sat 27 March
For further information about Seeing and Being Seen, visit www.blankmediacollective.org/seeing_and_being_seen
FutureEverything call for submissions
We are now inviting submissions & nominations for the FutureEverything Awards and submissions for the FutureEverything Festival & Conference.
The FutureEverything Urban Festival of Art, Music & Ideas and the Social Technologies Summit offer a range of opportunities to get involved, from joining the team as a volunteer, to open calls for artist projects and conference presentations, and a huge range of events, workshops and participatory projects in which you are invited to take part.
The FutureEverything Awards call for submissions is the route to have your outstanding work considered for this major new international award. The Open Calls in Art, Music, Conference & EVNTS are the route to having your project considered for the FutureEverything Festival & Conference. The submissions deadline for the FutureEverything Awards and Open Calls has been extended to 15 January 2010.
To submit a project to the FutureEverything programme you must first create a user account. To do this visit www.futureeverything.org
Events
Young Voices Conference
Thu 28 Jan 2010, 10am-4pm
Manchester Conference Centre, Sackville Street, M1 3BB
£50 per delegate (inc. free copy of the project evaluation)
Over the last three years, the CSV Young Voices project, with the support of the Big Lottery Young People’s Fund, has successfully involved young volunteers, 11-18 in three library services in the North West of England.
The energy and action of the young volunteers has had a huge impact not only on library services but across the whole community; not to mention on the volunteers themselves.
CSV will be launching the project evaluation report and hearing from 3 keynote speakers:
- Roy Clare CBE, Chief Executive of the Museums, Libraries and Archives council
- The Minister for Culture and Tourism, Rt. Hon Margaret Hodge MBE MP
- Dame Elisabeth Hoodless DBE, Executive Director of CSV
Delegates will hear the inspiring stories of young people and their impact on local library services and find out how to set up similar volunteering projects at their local libraries.
This conference is for library staff, volunteers, library members, and everyone from voluntary sector and public services with an interest in volunteering, reading, youth participation, community engagement or library services.
For further information and to book a place, download the information leaflet (PDF document) or contact Ann Shackleton, on 07972 265169 or email youngvoices@csv.org.uk.
Neck of the woods
Neck of the Woods | Nexus Art Café, Dale Street
Opening night: Fri 12 Feb
Exhibition open: Sat 13 Feb - Sun 11 Apr
Opening times: Mon-Sun: 10am-7pm
Neck of the Woods is an innovative & exciting group exhibition curated by Blank Media Collective investigating artists’ responses into the concept of community and how this is evolving. Artists and practitioners join from throughout the UK and Internationally to challenge the audience’s preconceptions of community and how this can be explored within their own personal artistic practice. Artists and practitioners will be announced soon.
For further information about Neck of the Woods please visit www.blankmediacollective.org
Established in 2006, Blank Media Collective champions emerging artists, writers, musicians and practitioners through exhibitions, performance, free portfolio hosting on our website and via our online magazine, blankpages
Under Director Mark Devereux, the organisation has gained an excellent reputation, particularly within Manchester and the North West.
Creative writing workshop
PAPER PLANES: SECOND SATURDAYS
- Sat 9 Jan
- Sat 13 Feb
- Sat 13 Mar
12 noon til 4pm, £13/9
Upstairs at FUEL CAFE - 448 Wilmslow Rd, Withington M20 3BW 0161 448 9702 paperplanes@hotmail.co.uk www.myspace.com/mypaperplanes
Come to this newly-announced workshop if you’re free and want to trigger some new ideas for your writing.
You’ll enjoy trying some easy, unusual writing exercises, and you’ll look at your writing in a fresh way and take home 3 or 4 new pieces.
Whether you write poems, fiction, scripts, raps or blogs, and if you’re a beginner or you’re more experienced, this workshop is for you.
You can join poet & Commonword trustee, Steve Waling & Comma fiction writer, Anthony Sides downstairs at 11.30 for a coffee or upstairs at 12 for the session.
Free creative writing taster day
Sat 16 Jan, 2-5pm
£160 (includes all class activities, refreshments, end-of-course readings party & online individual support).
Moor Cottage, Manchester Language School, Didsbury.
For anyone wanting to improve their creative writing skill in an international environment. We welcome all nationalities & age groups. All you need is the ambition to improve your writing skill, developing your ideas into a story, an article, poetry, a novel, a play or a script for film, TV or radio.
Wednesdays, Jan 27-Mar 24 (8 weeks), 6.30-8.30pm. Weekly workshops, plus online individual support.
By the end you’ll have completed a piece of work which will either be a short story/stories, an article/articles, a selection of poems or a solid framework for a longer piece of work such as a novel, play, or script.
It will be run by Ged Neary, novelist, playwright & university lecturer, who’s been writing professionally and teaching internationally for over 30 years.
For more information email info@manlangschool.co.uk or call 0161 448 8372.
About members
MEMBER CASE STUDY: Pool Arts
Shed Gallery, based at Tonbridge Road Allotment Community Site
Pool Arts has been in existence since 1999. Members have their own arts practice, and share in common certain experiences that have brought them together – to find out if you would be eligible to join, contact Pool Arts. Members hope to develop their practice in a variety of directions – towards professional practice, education or simply to maintain their wellbeing.
Since they set up, members have exhibited work, set up exhibitions, taken part in training opportunities, run a temporary studio space, held public art workshops, created a small gallery (SHED gallery), attended and spoken at conferences, visited exhibitions around the country and abroad and have progressed individually as artists.
Previous members, who have moved on to education or employment, often choose to stay in touch (as “sleeping” members) as everyone knows that they may need the support of Pool Arts again. Currently there are around 10 sleeping members. Being part of Pool Arts offers often socially excluded artists a supportive network and the chance to take up real roles and responsibilities in developing the organisation. Members have the chance become trustees of the charity and directors of the limited company and everyone attends monthly planning meetings to agree on projects and priorities.
Artist Eddie Price with his work at PINK AND BLUE
The Charity Commission, and local health workers as well as arts professionals have welcomed the “member led” model that Pool Arts is developing, and have worked with them closely to address constitutional matters.
Individual success
Of the entire membership over the past 10 years:
- Exhibited with pool arts 20/20
- Exhibited outside pool arts: 11/20
- Attended further Training and Education (inc higher education): 8/20
- Employed in the arts: 11/20 (including voluntary or sessional work)
- Employment in other fields including teaching: 4/20
Pool Arts helps to raise awareness of the positive role that art and culture can play in well being by providing a positive role model of an arts organisation successfully run by its members who would otherwise be isolated. Through work in the local, regional and national networks of art, and arts and health projects, Pool Arts aim to contribute to this growing area of interest with their pioneering company.
The artists involved come from diverse backgrounds and their chosen art forms are equally varied. Pool Arts has included writers, photographers, textile and fashion artists, craftspeople and a DJ as well as contemporary visual artists. They are working to create a supportive framework, giving their members opportunities to produce, promote and sell their own artwork.
Pool Arts now operates from a purpose-built art studio within the Hope Mill / AWOL complex in Ancoats, offering members a flexible studio option (shared space) at affordable costs.They also run training courses, talks, exhibitions and events from this base.
The studio has been funded by, Grass Roots Fund, Lankelly Chase Foundation and ACE North West. See www.poolarts.org for further details or call Alison on 07767 356302.
Artist Nicola Smith presents her microphone performance at the grand opening of Pool Arts studio in Oct ‘09
Congrats Platts Field
2010 will be the centenary of this wonderful people’s park which was opened on May 8th 1910.
For the centenary, we’ve a host of different creative projects - for many of these we need help from enthusiastic volunteers (we are all volunteers too):
EVENTS
Sat 6 Mar
at the Lakeside Centre, Platt Fields Park, M14 6LA 1-5pm, FREE
HOLI Spring festival of Colours - A mixed bag of activities including the wonderful Hindu tradition of “playing with colour” - mass dancing with brightly coloured paint pigment, banner-making, painting a holi posterboard, sowing seeds etc.
Sat 13 Mar
at Platt Hall Gallery of Costume, Platt Fields Park, M14 6LA 1-5pm (times tbc) FREE
Launch day for 2 centenary exhibitions in re-furbished Platt Hall. 100 years of Costume and Platt Fields - the First 100...
Sun 17 Jan, 21 Feb, 21 Mar
Meet at the Lakeside Centre, Platt Fields Park, M14 6LA 1-4pm Once a month volunteer activity day. Open afternoon with different activities every month - choose from gardening, construction, maintenance, creative arts... Wear old clothes, sensible shoes and bring gloves if possible. Tools & equipment provided - no special skills required... Come & help out, get fresh air and exercise, meet friends! Refreshments provided in the warm at the end!
PROJECTS
We’re collecting your memories of Platt Fields for the centenary exhibition in Platt Hall costume gallery, Mar-Sep. Please can we have any memories, photos, stories you or your friends, neighbours, families or colleagues may have of the park and visiting it?
Mural-painting, a giant mosaic, designing/bricklaying barbecues, constructing water containers, laying platforms for a dipping pond...
Friends of Platt Fields are running a series of projects in Platt Fields park with volunteers aged 16-25 leading up to the centenary in May 2010. Sessions throughout the week during the day & evenings. We welcome young people from across South Manchester... Dozens of different activities. Learn new skills, get stuck in - serious feel-good factor!
Contact Anne Tucker, Sec FOPF 0161 224 0020 / 07740 428629 www.plattfields.org / email@plattfields.org
OPPORTUNITIES
PoWWow will be working away furiously in Platt Fields in 2010 to generate lots of projects to support the park’s HUGE centenary year including carrying out an eagerly anticipated whole building mural and an array of other creative & environmental projects.
We’d like to work with as many young volunteers as we can to carry out this colour-drenched-magic, so if you’re either 18-25 OR a volunteering organisation that can supply groups of young people then please get in touch! anna@powwow-ecoarts.org.uk - the project runs from Jan-early Apr so there’s lots of scope to get involved!
We’ve also just finished building our new bicycle-powered sound system, a new not-for-profit strand of PoWWow(Pedal PoWer) created to encourage huge realms of positivity- including inspiring more people to ride bikes, create green renewable energy, muster up super healthy community participation in outdoor spaces events... the possibilities are endless! If you’re a nice ethically sound company & want to hire us to power your event please contact us! info@powwow-pedalpower.org.uk or for more of an idea about what we’re about visit www.powwow-pedalpower.org.uk
Training
Toolkit Training
There'll shortly be another series of FREE Toolkit Training taking place. If you don't currently receive information, please email Adelle on toolkit@can.uk.com or join the Artsnet Google Group to find out when the subjects and schedule have been confirmed.
We particularly welcome refugees & asylum seekers and Manchester-based groups to attend.
Hot Bed Press training
Japanese Woodcut
Sat 16 & Sun 17 Jan, 11am-5pm
You’ll be shown all the techniques involved from carving, to printing by hand with a baren on Japanese paper. By the end you’ll have carved & printed a multi-colour print.
Cost £125 (£110*) (Course fee includes a pack of specialist materials.)
Print Starter Pack
Mon 18 Jan-Mon 8 Feb, 6.30-9pm
An ideal introduction to printmaking. Over 5 evenings you’ll learn monoprinting, drypoint, collagraph & lino printing. We’ll even throw in a month’s membership to Hot Bed Press after the course to allow you to experiment more and gain further experience.
Cost £125 (£110*)
Photo-screenprinting
Tuesdays, 2 Feb-2 Mar, 6.30-9pm
Taking contrasted photographic images transfer them to screen and start printing. By making simple stencils to create base colours the image can become more sophisticated & complex. You can also experiment with overprinting and combining images.
Cost £125 (£110*)
Colour Separation Monoprinting
Sat 6 & Sun 7 Feb, 11am-5pm
The process of 4 colour/mutli-colour mono-printing, involves the use of acetate sheets to over-print coloured layers. This produces very “clean” colour images, with a limited number of coloured layers producing a wide range of tones.
Cost £105 (£95*)
Monoprinted Textiles
Sat 13 & Sun 14 Feb, 11am-5pm
Explore ways of mono printing on fabric by transferring hand painted marks from a silk screen on to cloth using dyes, hand-painting motifs & pattern directly onto cloth and using a selection of dyes to explore small-scale patterns & coloration of fabric.
Cost £125 (£110*)
The Rudiments of Letterpress
Sat 20 & Sun 21 Feb, 11am-5pm
This introductory course in which, working with your own text, you’ll learn to properly handle metal type & a table-top printing press. On day one you’ll finish with your own business cards, headed notepaper or note-cards, and on day two with a two-colour broadsheet.
Cost £105 (£95*)
Etching
Tuesdays, 2-30 Mar, 6.30-9pm
Spend a weekend learning the essentials of etching from applying wax grounds and drawing up your image, to etching & printing.
Cost £105 (£95*)
Poster Printing
Mondays, 8-29 Mar, 6.30-9pm
Designed specifically for bands this course will show you how to screenprint your own gig posters, giving them a unique, hand-made quality. Over 5 evenings, you’ll produce your own 3-colour posters, learning to vary the design & colours as you go, as well as being shown how to register your prints to go into ‘mass production’.
Cost £110 (£95*)
Expressive Screenprinting
Sat 13 & Sun 14 Mar, 11am-5pm
Bringing autographic hand-drawn marks to screenprinting and a loose approach, this course is a good contrast to the more hard-lined nature of hand-cut stencils & photo-screenprinting. Cost £125 (£110*)
Hard-backed Books
Sat 13 & Sun 14 Mar, 11am-5pm
This 2-day course will show you how to use a combination of found papers, ephemera and your own artwork to make beautiful French-sewn, hard-back books complete with headbands & bookmark ribbon. The course is ideal for those who already have experience of making sewn books and Coptic stitching, but is also suitable for anyone new to bookmaking.
Cost £115 (£105*)
Reduction Lino
Saturday 20 & Sun 21 Mar, 11am-5pm
This process involves printing a number of colour overlays from a single block; each cut away is another colour. You’ll learn cutting, inking & printing methods on our beautiful Albion presses, and come away with a handful of multi-coloured prints.
Cost £105 (£95*)
Portfolio making
Sat 27 Mar, 11am-5pm
Learn to make perfect presentation folders for your prints, drawings & collected paperworks, all in 1 day.
Cost £55 (£45*)
To book, phone 0161 743 3111 or email info@hotbedpress.org
Jobs & opportunities
Exodus Coordinator
Community Arts North West is seeking a key member of staff to support the continued development of the Exodus Greater Manchester refugee arts programme.
You’ll be the central point of contact for the project and will coordinate, administrate and develop Exodus project activity 2010/11; as well as organise most of the Exodus refugee arts events.
Full-time, 13-month, fixed-term contract: 1 March 2010 - 31 March 2011. £25,736 per annum.
The post will be based at CAN’s office in Manchester city centre and will involve some travel.
Application deadline: 5pm, Friday 22 January 2010 Interviews: Thursday 28 January 2010
Please apply using the application which can be found at www.can.uk.com/about_us/about_opps.htm CVs will not be considered.
We positively welcome applications from disabled people and all sectors of the community. CAN is an equal opportunities employer.
To submit completed applications, or if you have difficulties downloading the documents, please email Sabbi on admin@can.uk.com or ring 0161 234 2975
Internship programme
Queer Up North International Festival has four exciting internship opportunities:
- Marketing Assistant
- Producing Assistant
- Artist Liaison & Operations Assistant
- Participation Assistant
The festival commissions, produces & presents a diverse annual programme of live performance, art and ideas.
This year we’re celebrating 18 years of ground-breaking work. We’re looking for exceptional people to help us deliver the 2010 festival.
The internship programme is both challenging and rewarding, and we’ll support you throughout to make sure you get the most out of it. The programme runs between February & June in Manchester.
For more information on the roles, including how to apply, visit www.queerupnorth.com/getinvolved/internships. If you have any queries about the internship programme, contact Emma Ryan on emma@queerupnorth.com.
Submission deadline for next issue
Mon 15 Mar 2010 for early Apr to end Jun 2010 activity
