Journeys Mixed Media Project

For this textiles, visual arts, digital and mixed media project GemArts' artist worked with GVEMSG Women's Feel Good Group - a support group for women from diverse BME and wider communities that meets at Bensham Grove Community Centre on Mondays 12pm - 3pm. The group worked with professional artist Cath Walshaw to develop new textiles, embroidery and decorative arts skills, and were also introduced to new digital and online skills and how they could use these to enhance their creative work.

The theme of the project was decided as Journeys, and the sessions began with women sharing their experiences and stories about their own Journey with the rest of the group, and collecting materials and items they could use to create a piece of art work to represent this. To introduce the participants to new online tools, a short session on Pinterest was delivered, and the group created their own Board on GemArts' account, visible here. Through this project the women also learnt how to use digital cameras, scan and transfer their own images onto a computer to be manipulated in Photoshop and print onto fabric to create the basis of their own individual artsworks. After developing these skills the group are now working on a large collective piece which will bring together their different Journeys and stories. 

Sessions were divided into 2 seperate sections, with peer mentoring taking place in the second set of workshops for new members joining the group.  

To document their learning and record the work they were creating, the women also developed a blog which includes posts from the artist and the women who took part in the project. The blog can be read here.