The Awards for All funded Family Art Project workshops were held over consecutive weekends in July and August last year. We worked in partnership with local organisations including North Devon Arts, the Museum of Barnstaple and North Devon, Dartmoor National Park Authority and the Centre for Contemporary Art and the Natural World, to set up and publicise the workshops widely .

The Barnstaple workshop run by Paul and Tanya Morel used natural and found materials such as pine cones, shells, seaweed, fleece, twigs, leaves, flowers and bits of plastic and metal to create animals and fantastical creatures. The finished objects were displayed in a perspex fronted Curiosity Box built specially to house them.

Yuli Somme and Tian Kalouli ran their workshop at the Postbridge visitor information centre on Dartmoor and taught participants how to make felt using local Dartmoor fleece in different colours.

The felt was shaped into leaves each with a unique design. The leaves were then tied to a specially built ‘tree’ created by basket maker Linda Lemieux using local birch and willow.

Exeter artists Lucy Rockcliffe, Jess Carvill and Lucy Burch ran workshops in mosaic and ceramic tile making at CCANW. The mosaic panels, ceramic tiles and footprints were used to decorate a large door and door frame.

The front showed the positive aspects of Devon open countryside, recycling, wildlife and the back showed the negative aspects such as waste and pollution.

Feedback from all the workshops was extremely positive and they were hugely enjoyed by all ages. The youngest participants were infants of 3 and the oldest was a gentleman in his 80’s.

The opportunity to work alongside professional artists and learn new, enjoyable skills was much appreciated and many people commented that they would like to attend similar workshops in future.

We are planning a further series of Family Art Workshops for summer 2009. Details will be available on the website later this year.