NOVEMBER/December NEWSLETTER
Our Annual General Meeting was attended by a small number of our now large memberships - as of today we have over 570 artist members and 26 Friends members. Below is my report made to the meeting which gives an outline of where we are now:
Our second full year as a volunteer-run organisation has seen the scope of our activities increase and our membership too increase to over 557. We also now have twenty-four “friends” who have paid either an annual (£10) or a three-year (£25) subscription to receive Julia Vella’s excellent e-bulletin as well as to be invited to private views and artists talking events.
Exhibitions we have held during the year have been at the DNPA High Moorland Visitor Centre in Princetown, at the Flavel Gallery, Dartmouth and we are currently exhibiting at the Northcott Theatre, Exeter, an exhibition extended from its original end-date of 31 October to 5 December. DAN members were recruited through our e-bulletin also to mount exhibitions at Hatherleigh Festival in July. An ongoing exhibition is the Northcott Plinth project where a DAN member shows work on the empty plinth there for a month at a time. Jo Thompson has been running this but needs to step down due to professional and family commitments. We need one of you to take it on – please volunteer, it’s not onerous, it just needs co-ordinating.
At Hatherleigh also we held the second of our free Family Art Workshops this year – a print workshop run by member Tim Salter and funded by West Devon Borough Council and by the Elmgrant Trust. DAN and South Hams District Council funded a painting workshop run by Sarah Lotto at Delamore House, Ivybridge, during their annual exhibition. We shall be extending this initiative during this financial year thanks to Devon County Council continuing to fund us (having originally said our funding would be totally cut this year) but asking, as a condition, that we run workshops to encourage disadvantaged people to participate in the arts. As a result we have been able to offer Hatherleigh Festival a free workshop again (rural isolation the deprivation here?!), and have suggested that we could do so at the Northcott Theatre family fun day planned for 30 April 2012 which will take place during the DAN Spring Exhibition to be held 12 March-14 May. We plan to pay a co-ordinator to run up to five such events planned during this financial year, with others, if the funding is available in 2012/13 also, in the next.
In April 2011 we held a big art fair in the wedding marquee at RHS Rosemoor. All those who took part enjoyed themselves, but not enough made enough to want to do it again. We are now trying to negotiate something similar at other venues in the region, with the idea eventually of trying to go out to such events in other parts of the country.
Hugely enjoyed by all those who took part or attended were the artist talking events held in Topsham and in Brixham – let’s try to do more of those. Thanks to Jackie Wills and Jane Perkins for the work they put in to all these.
Finally, we are exploring partnerships with Arts and Health and with Arts and Business, aswell as expanding an initiative started in East Devon to create a “hard” portfolio of local artists’ work that can be taken round art venues, galleries and shops to show what our members do and hopefully find them sales – it has worked in East Devon and we would like to extend it to other areas of Devon. Again, please volunteer if you would like to take this initiative in your own locality.
None of this would happen without our volunteers – so do consider becoming one of these. Thanks to the Board – Denny Dormer, Kate Evans, Yvonne Johnson, Jan Petitjean and Jo Thompson as well as those who have attended meetings during the year and offered their advice and help. We have managed to reduce the number of meetings we hold so we meet every six weeks or so instead of once a month, but we need more of you – and we are trying to find a cheap/free venue in Exeter so the meetings are accessible to people in the further reaches of this huge county.
And of course, Devon Open Studios is still the flagship event of the Network and would not happen in its excellent professional form without Linda – it’s going so well now that it has lost its challenge for her and she has decided to give up the role. We are advertising for her replacement and she has very kindly said she will nurse that person into the role. To thank her for everything she has done since 2008 we would like to present her with this strong and long service certificate and a voucher to spend at any Open Studio in 2012. Thank you Linda for raising the bar for DAN and giving us the standard to aspire to in our other activities.
And the Minutes of the meeting can be accessed here: here
Finally, I took a photo of member Amy McCarthy installing her rain drops and cloud sculpture at Exeter Northcott. Bob Dawson's work should be up there any day soon.
Joanna Radford
14 November 2011
Our Annual General Meeting was attended by a small number of our now large memberships - as of today we have over 570 artist members and 26 Friends members. Below is my report made to the meeting which gives an outline of where we are now:
Our second full year as a volunteer-run organisation has seen the scope of our activities increase and our membership too increase to over 557. We also now have twenty-four “friends” who have paid either an annual (£10) or a three-year (£25) subscription to receive Julia Vella’s excellent e-bulletin as well as to be invited to private views and artists talking events.
Exhibitions we have held during the year have been at the DNPA High Moorland Visitor Centre in Princetown, at the Flavel Gallery, Dartmouth and we are currently exhibiting at the Northcott Theatre, Exeter, an exhibition extended from its original end-date of 31 October to 5 December. DAN members were recruited through our e-bulletin also to mount exhibitions at Hatherleigh Festival in July. An ongoing exhibition is the Northcott Plinth project where a DAN member shows work on the empty plinth there for a month at a time. Jo Thompson has been running this but needs to step down due to professional and family commitments. We need one of you to take it on – please volunteer, it’s not onerous, it just needs co-ordinating.
At Hatherleigh also we held the second of our free Family Art Workshops this year – a print workshop run by member Tim Salter and funded by West Devon Borough Council and by the Elmgrant Trust. DAN and South Hams District Council funded a painting workshop run by Sarah Lotto at Delamore House, Ivybridge, during their annual exhibition. We shall be extending this initiative during this financial year thanks to Devon County Council continuing to fund us (having originally said our funding would be totally cut this year) but asking, as a condition, that we run workshops to encourage disadvantaged people to participate in the arts. As a result we have been able to offer Hatherleigh Festival a free workshop again (rural isolation the deprivation here?!), and have suggested that we could do so at the Northcott Theatre family fun day planned for 30 April 2012 which will take place during the DAN Spring Exhibition to be held 12 March-14 May. We plan to pay a co-ordinator to run up to five such events planned during this financial year, with others, if the funding is available in 2012/13 also, in the next.
In April 2011 we held a big art fair in the wedding marquee at RHS Rosemoor. All those who took part enjoyed themselves, but not enough made enough to want to do it again. We are now trying to negotiate something similar at other venues in the region, with the idea eventually of trying to go out to such events in other parts of the country.
Hugely enjoyed by all those who took part or attended were the artist talking events held in Topsham and in Brixham – let’s try to do more of those. Thanks to Jackie Wills and Jane Perkins for the work they put in to all these.
Finally, we are exploring partnerships with Arts and Health and with Arts and Business, aswell as expanding an initiative started in East Devon to create a “hard” portfolio of local artists’ work that can be taken round art venues, galleries and shops to show what our members do and hopefully find them sales – it has worked in East Devon and we would like to extend it to other areas of Devon. Again, please volunteer if you would like to take this initiative in your own locality.
None of this would happen without our volunteers – so do consider becoming one of these. Thanks to the Board – Denny Dormer, Kate Evans, Yvonne Johnson, Jan Petitjean and Jo Thompson as well as those who have attended meetings during the year and offered their advice and help. We have managed to reduce the number of meetings we hold so we meet every six weeks or so instead of once a month, but we need more of you – and we are trying to find a cheap/free venue in Exeter so the meetings are accessible to people in the further reaches of this huge county.
And of course, Devon Open Studios is still the flagship event of the Network and would not happen in its excellent professional form without Linda – it’s going so well now that it has lost its challenge for her and she has decided to give up the role. We are advertising for her replacement and she has very kindly said she will nurse that person into the role. To thank her for everything she has done since 2008 we would like to present her with this strong and long service certificate and a voucher to spend at any Open Studio in 2012. Thank you Linda for raising the bar for DAN and giving us the standard to aspire to in our other activities.
And the Minutes of the meeting can be accessed here: here
Finally, I took a photo of member Amy McCarthy installing her rain drops and cloud sculpture at Exeter Northcott. Bob Dawson's work should be up there any day soon.
Joanna Radford
14 November 2011