Impact Arts is a national community arts charity based in Scotland. They work with a diverse range of people, helping them to use the arts to create positive lasting change in their lives. We come up with creative solutions to social challenges like improving future life prospects, reducing youth unemployment and preventing isolation amongst older people.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLhPhfN7oN0

Impact Arts are crowdfunding for The Young Gallery project. Based in Glasgow’s East End, it is Scotland’s first and only space dedicated to exhibiting children’s art work. 92% of children in areas of multiple deprivation do not take part in any arts activities and in the East End between 30-50% of children are living in poverty. The Young Gallery is Impact Arts’ vehicle for helping children experience the importance of creativity and for celebrating their boundless imaginations.

The Turner Prize nominated artist, David Shrigley is supporting The Young Gallery project. He said:

“I became involved with The Young Gallery because I want to give something back to the city that I live and work in. Through The Young Gallery, Impact Arts gives a quality artistic experience to 300 children living in the East End of Glasgow each year, and to over 1000 members of the local community and I’m excited to be involved with such a brilliant project.”

Lynne Carr, CE Impact Arts said:

“We are over the moon to have David as the patron of The Young Gallery… We’ve got some exciting things planned with David, including an exhibition and auction of postcard sized artworks at The Young Gallery in 2014. Individuals supporting our Crowdfunding campaign on Indigogo will have an exclusive opportunity to be invited to the exhibition and auction event. We can’t thank David enough for his invaluable support.”

Please visit here to support the campaign.

More: Website | Facebook | Twitter

Who:
Glasgow based photographer, Andrea uses the alter ego Flannery O’Kafka for what she terms as Melancholy Merry-Making. This mother-of-five documents her ‘making’ process through daily life on her blog where you will find a mix of family snapshots, portraits, commercial/editorial work often featuring her children.

Harris Tweed Fashion Show, Hillhead Bookclub, Glasgow’s West End

Why we like it:
Flannery O’Kafka blogs openly in a photo-diary style. Her strong talents as a photographer are plainly evident in all of her work, whether it be an editorial shot or a quick snapshot of one of her kids; her compositions are well-considered and beautiful.

Sisters in Babiekins magazine published

Hidden treasure:
Amongst all the photos of O’Kafka’s children, we stumbled across this rare and rather striking self-portrait of O’Kafka herself.

Self-portrait

Where to find out more:
Website | Facebook | Twitter

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Want to take a look at more suggested blogs by artists? Look here.

Tutt Tutt is the alter ego of Lincolnshire based illustrator Sonia C Whitehead who works in graphics, publishing and print.

What’s in the blog:
Tutt Tutt’s blog is a mix of documentation of works, as well as posts about her current Degree Show.

Why we like it:
As well as pleasing patterns, we like that Tutt Tutt’s blog is really all about her work. Tutt Tutt is new to blogging and sees it as a “virtual journey.” We hope she continues on this journey as we sure do like seeing her work.

Hidden treasure:
Tucked away in one of her posts, Tutt Tutt’s illustration for children’s book Alice in Wonderland is so good, we just had to share it:

Where to find out more:
Read Tutt Tutt’s blog here.
Follow Tutt Tutt on Twitter.
Like Tutt Tutt on Facebook.

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Want to take a look at more suggested blogs by artists? Look here.

BIG Kids Magazine is a creative arts magazine that features the work of kids and artists curated SIDE by SIDE.  It is a biannual publication of creative ideas and response-driven projects printed on draw-ready paper with a pull out artist print in each issue.

Born from the late night musings of two mother artists in response to the lack of creative children’s magazines in Australia. Artists Jo Politt and Lilly Blue first dived into the making of BIG Kids Magazine in September 2010 despite living on opposite sides of Australia and having not having seen each other for 12 years. They documented the journey and madness creative process from the outset with an exposing ‘making of a magazine’ blog, and by September 2011 BIG was available in all major Australian Art Galleries. Their 9yr old ‘senior’ editor, Luca and a BIG kids team of various ages and interests oversee all the BIG work.

BIG stands for Bravery, Imagination and Generosity and these are the underlying principles of the magazine. They showcase the work of children and artists side by side and invite children to participate in conversations that might otherwise seem elevated or out of reach. BIG have featured the work of some incredible artists across visual, conceptual and performative art forms and are always on the lookout for artists with a rigorous practice to participate in their ongoing Child Artist Response Project. They encourage kids (and grown-ups!) to make their mark, offer a perspective, develop an opinion, collaborate on an image, co-author a story and explore new ways of thinking and seeing the world. Where many children’s experiences are becoming screen based, BIG fosters an immediacy of response and make it possible for kids to draw, contribute and colour directly onto the pages in the moment. The magazine is designed to be personal to each child and importantly is able to be read under the bedcovers with a torch.

Recently, Politt and Blue also launched the Mother Artist Network (MAN), with Rachel Power, author of ‘The Divided Heart’, opening the conversation of the slippage between motherhood and art practice. It received an overwhelming response and now they just need the time to get the posts up.

Right now BIG are changing design hands and are very excited about the shift toward more readable chaos while they finalize Issue 3 –Game On! and prep for issue 4 – Into the Dark. The latest edition Treasure Maps is available now with Game on! available for pre-purchase and both feature an awesome array of kids and artists including Jacqui Stockdale, Stormie Mills, Ingrid Darbinger and Lea Redmond (World’s Smallest Postal Service).

The BIG info:
Editions 2 -Treasure Maps, and 3 – Game On! are currently available for online purchase here (We deliver worldwide) or see our stockists page
Keep up to date with BIG news on our BIG Facebook page

BIG are currently accepting submissions for their 4^th edition Into the Dark. Deadline for contributions is 30 November 2012.
SEND your work via print quality jpeg images, 600 dpi scans, or Word documents. Download, fill in, save and send with the completed submission form to submit@bigkidsmagazine.com

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Find more zines we’ve featured here.

Talbot Rice Gallery, Until September 25th.

‘There is a sweetness about these paintings that can immediately make you think that they are just sentimental, historicised images of children from the 1950s- with their buckled shoes and their party dresses- but you need to look again.’ Pat Fisher, Exhibition curator.

Staying Together, 2010

Seventeen children gaze out from a large bank of pencil drawings- some stare absently into the distance, others squint oddly, whilst some confidently look the viewer straight in the eye. They resemble normal portraits of happy children, posing for their annual school mugshot- but something here is not quite right. Julie Roberts’ works have a disconcerting quality- an awkward dual impression of contemporaneity and out-of-time-ness that creates a sense of the uncanny that is not instantly possible to equate or resolve.

There are no adults here. One young girl prays alone at the edge of her bed, another carries a bouquet of flowers as an unexplained offering, three adolescent boys tuck-in to an anonymously prepared meal- all sharing a contented commitment to their respective mundane pursuits. There are none of the traditional vibrant primary colours of childhood here- instead the work is realised in a stern, muddy palette that Catriona Black describes as being ‘evocative of urine, vomit, and nicotine stained minor’s clubs.’  However, in spite of (or perhaps as a result of) the austerity of their surroundings, there is no sense of despair or longing- each child exhibits a level of mature self-sufficiency that is at once as admirable as it is disquieting.

Will Bradley notes that Roberts ‘builds up meaning in a network or relationships between paintings that extends across her whole body of work, apparently innocent images taking on new overtones as they echo more sinister set-ups’. A consideration of the artists’ early life and previous works is vital in fully appreciating the paintings in Child. Having spent periods of her own childhood in care- Roberts brings an autobiographical implication to the work and, tracing back her previous artistic exploration of institutional structures of power, renderings of medical equipment and apparatus, as well as her depictions of various corpses and cadavers- the works adopt a richer, foreboding aura that resonates around the yawning main gallery space.

There was an initial proposal to adopt Feral Child as title for the whole exhibition- an idea that was rejected for being too emotive and limiting, in favour of the more arresting and ambiguous nature of the shortened Child. Whilst ‘feral’ evokes immediate wild and animalistic connotation, it also defines an organism that leaves or escapes from domesticity to return to a more natural, intrinsic condition. For Roberts’ children, who have been displaced from their familial environment, be it through evacuation, being orphaned and/or taken into care- the description rings with a poignant aptness. (It is interesting also to note that the word feral has a second, unrelated meaning from the Latin ‘feralis’ meaning ‘belonging to the dead’).

Advocation of childhood independence was among the main principles taught by Italian doctor Maria Montessori in her pioneering child education work in the early 19^th century. She promoted a hands-off approach to teaching, allowing for the child’s inherent natural directives to guide their development. Roberts overtly introduces the method in Refugees at the Montessori School, depicting children within an environment designed for this development to flourish; tables and chairs are of a proportionate size and pictures and tools are hung at an appropriate level, allowing the children to function and learn without adult interference. In this instance however, they have been disturbed- all activity is paused, replaced with a collective outward gaze towards the intruding spectator. Their stares filled with puzzlement and annoyance at the unwelcome interruption.

Roberts works from photographs, both found and from her personal family archive, a fact that accounts for the uneasy composition of some of the work here. In Human Material a young boy sits in a stark bathtub- he has no toys, no bubbles, no potential for fun. Curator Pat Fisher invites the viewer to ‘consider the position of things like the soap. Now that is obviously not within the child’s reach’. Reasoning that ‘it could only be me who could reach that soap and wash him.’ Since the original photographs where presumably taken by an adult, this is the perspective offered to the viewer- they are unwittingly implicated as the absent grown-up in the scenario, cast frustratingly in an unfulfillable position of responsibility.

Anne and Margot Frank, 2010

A strong notion of kinship is fostered in Child. The work Staying Together depicts a brother and sister hand-in-hand, strong in the face of their shared isolation and many of the ‘feral children’ exist in bonded pairs- siblings in matching jumpers. Exemplification comes in the painted portrayal of Anne and Margot Frank. Anne (who herself attended a Montessori school) is generally recalled as a lone-figure, but here she is found alongside her elder sister Margot- bound together by a striking facial likeness, matching tunics and grins. The girls, iconic figures of childhood resilience in the face of extreme adversity, remained together through their years of hiding and incarceration before they both finally succumbed to illness within days of one another. Knowledge of the tragic future awaiting Anne and Margot haunts not only their own carefree faces, but extends to the other children in the room, prompting bleak contemplation of what similar fate may lie ahead of them. 

Upstairs in a cabinet of curiosities are old photographs, swatches of aged patterned fabrics and artists’ sketchbooks- as a ‘good housewife’ from the 1950s beams beside her sink in vivid retrocolour, Roberts’ pencil rendering of her stands alongside like an eerie, pallid twin. This offered glimpse into Roberts creative process goes some way to aide the understanding of the uncanny tension found in the final works. This collated material, themselves already depictions of the real, are then subjected to further transition by Roberts through her re-drawing and interpreting them into her stylized paintings. Each stage of the process, from research and collection to the development and realization of the finished works, are directly mediated by the artist, thus being subtly yet indelibly impregnated with traces of her hand and private experience. The results are images that whilst holding a familiar sense of the real, remain inexplicably off-kilter. 

Other works on the upper floor reflect Roberts’ exploration of traditional gender roles- namely within the family institution; daughters act as domestic apprentices to their watchful mothers, folding sheets on wash day and peeling vegetables- at the far end an infant girl tenderly cradles her doll, preparing to train the next generation and perpetuate the established domestic cycle.

The final child to meet is Edna (British Evacuee). Orphaned in the galleries round-room, she is surrounded by an unwieldy floral wall-painting that feels somewhat incongruous to the archaic and autonomous worlds captured elsewhere. Regardless, Edna boasts a now familiar, stoically confident complexion- hat donned and duffle coat fastened to the neck- fully prepared for whatever she is set to face.

Edna (British Evacuee), 2010

I grew up glued to the TV, particularly American cartoons funded by toy manufacturers to flog their products, and playing a lot of video games that didn’t do me any harm. However, cinema was, and will always be, my first love.

Our local cinema was the mythical ABC Muirend Cinema. Designed by William Bereseford Inglis in 1933, the building exterior replicated a Spanish style hacienda while inside the auditorium had lots of Flamenco style motifs, such as balconies, amber lanterns and images of matadors painted on tiles dotted along the stairwells. Looking back as I write this, Muirend Cinema seems a bizarre prophecy of my future; I studied Spanish at Glasgow University and somehow I’ve ended up working for Glasgow Film Theatre as Learning Projects Coordinator for Young People. The range of the films it offered were the standard box office fare but I relished them all regardless. My seminal movie moments included watching Jurassic Park on the opening weekend, my mum convincing the box office grump that I was old enough to watch The Man Without A Face and stuffing my face with the cheaper sweets bought next door in Safeways to the bombast of Independence Day.

Sadly like a lot of old cinemas in Glasgow, ABC Muirend shut down in 2001 due to shrinking audiences that preferred the industrial comfort of a multiplex and the cost of maintaining a building that was well past its prime. Each time I pass it, I can’t help feel a wave of sadness for an important community relic that now functions as luxury apartments for a select few. My memories of Muirend remain but families in the Southside of Glasgow have to travel elsewhere these days for their cinematic outings.

Hopefully some of these families come to the GFT for our free Take 2 family screenings which screen every Saturday morning. I try to programme a range of films that appeal to a wide audience while sneaking in a few classic and foreign gems, like The Boy From Mercury, Mr Hulot’s Holiday and The Belles of St. Trinian’s. Unfortunately a lack of distribution of foreign titles for children and availability of prints makes screening non-Hollywood films a lot harder than it should be.

Although 41% of 15-24 year olds visit the cinema once a month* and are exposed to moving images on a daily basis, young people are often the least catered to by art house cinemas. More often than not, they tend to select films that appeal to older audiences with their youth remit left solely to ‘parent and baby’ screenings. Consequently, children and young adults miss out on the wealth of different contemporary perspectives offered by world cinema and so remain quite happy to settle for whatever is showing at their local Cineworld.

This isn’t helped by the fact that moving image education still struggles to be implemented across schools in the UK. Despite repeated efforts, teachers cite a lack of resources and adequate training to properly implement film into the classroom. As a result, DVDs can often become a babysitter for pupils rather than a key part of their cultural development and awareness. It remains to be seen whether the ambitions of 21st Century Literacy, a consortium set up by the UK Film Council and Film Education among others, can be achieved.

In response to these issues, GFT Learning set up the Glasgow Youth Film Festival to offer young people a chance to help devise, promote and run their own film festival. Programmed by a worryingly cool bunch of teenagers, GYFF aims to reach out to young Glaswegians through their love of movies while supporting their talents and aspirations. This year almost 7,000 young people attended GYFF events; it was such a refreshing sight to see so many young faces in our cinemas. (Previously, members of our Youth Group told me that they felt unwelcome by older GFT patrons who thought they’d only talk throughout the film.) The response we had was overwhelming and encouraging enough to safely say that there’s a youth audience in Glasgow interested in films from around the globe.

Over the next few years for GYFF, I hope to increase the opportunities for young people to talk to people who work in the moving image industries – not just directors or actors but writers, graphic designers, animators and editors who all make a living from their passion for film, TV and video games. Like the rest of the arts, the film industry remains horribly white and middle class, in spite of the occasional tokenistic scheme for individuals from underrepresented backgrounds. Anyone who aspires to work in this industry is expected to intern for free or live off small bursaries. I had to do this for almost 2 years and I doubt that it will change anytime soon, no matter how legally grey internships appear.

There’s more to young movie fans than a lucrative demographic to market blockbusters to. Exhibitors, distributors, not to mention teachers, should encourage young people to look at moving image in a reflective and creative way rather than be passive observers that we often assume them to be. Thankfully youth film festivals such as GYFF, Discovery and Future Film, alongside the exciting developments promised by 8 1/2 Foundation, demonstrate the growing commitment to future generations of cinemagoers. With the falling costs of HD technology and the increasing ease of distributing films online, I’m hopeful that all young people will continue to be inspired by the flickering images around them – from the glow of a TV, the hum of a projector or even the hypnotic whirl of your mum’s dirty washing.

*According to UK Film Council’s 2009 Statistics Handbook

Images of ABC Muirend taken from Scottish Cinemas site

A few months ago I was approached by my good friend and Stadium Rock collaborator, visual artist Katy Wilson, who is currently spending a year in residence at the Tramway in Glasgow making art for 0-4 year olds. She was planning an ‘experimental experiment’ to try and learn more about what music really appeals to that most miniature of demographics and was keen for me to drop some knowledge. (Initial discussions with a muso mate’s wee boy led me to Lightning Bolt and some digital dancehall, although he also expressed some admiration for High School Musical. You can’t win them all.) It wasn’t long before Katy had not only a talented team of performers, but also a catchy moniker, Sprog Rock. See what we did there?

Fast forward to January 30 and I found myself on the aforementioned stage before a pint-sized audience, in a beautifully decorated room at the Tramway. From this vantage point I managed to make the following observations:

Lesson one: a hundred or so kids are exceptionally noisy, even when on their bestest behaviour. I did not know this. So my crackly ‘found sounds’  literally didn’t quite cut it to start with, although Kim Moore from Zoey Van Goey soon came to the rescue with her bright yellow wellies and lullaby-esque looping skills. One smitten little audience member stood approximately two feet away from her for the entire show. Awww.

Lesson two: children love a trombone. Composer Greg Sinclair and his horn-blowing colleague George had prepared a beautiful five minute piece which had a hypnotic effect on the audience. Some enthusiastic young chap even had to be restrained from rushing the stage by the time Danny Krass started his melodic, sample-laden set.

Lesson three: Make ‘em smile. When Wounded Knee emerged from a tent (yes, an actual tent) wearing purple Y-fronts  over his trousers like some kind of possessed Hibernian superhero, the party truly started. With my dusty drum machine and questionable sense of rhythm for backing, he led the crowd in a rousing Scottish walking song, followed by his idiosyncratic take on Fleetwood Mac’s classic, ‘Dreams’. Truly a unique experience, and a far cry from The Night Garden…

Lesson four: An important one this. In spite of relentless tabloid scaremongering about today’s unsociable, apprehensive kids and their paranoid parents, the whole affair was remarkably relaxed, with the majority of the audience perfectly happy to explore, interact and dance their tiny socks off for entire the duration of the performance.

I haven’t even touched on the free bananas, kaleidoscopic animations and giant yellow parasols. Wait till you see what Katy has planned next.

Discover more about the project here
Find out more about Dougal here.

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Mix-Blog: A bit like a mix-tape but with blogs instead. Read more from the series here.