£23,000 awarded to Jersey residents in the latest round of Rivington Funding
Over £23,300 has been allocated to help 21 Jersey residents embark on arts and culture related trips, in the latest round of Rivington funding. Two group applications from local charities were accepted as well as an individual submission from a local artist. Clients from JAAR (Jersey Action Against Rape) will be embarking on a collective pottery course in Wales, while clients from Youthful Minds will head to Edinburgh for thirteen individuals to experience arts and crafts. Finally a local artist who would refer to remain anonymous will be visiting Marfa, a remote contemporary arts hub in the desert
of western Texas.
THE RECIPIENTS & THE TRIPS
JAAR (Jersey Action Against Rape) will be using the funding to take a group of their clients off the island for a two-day pottery workshop at Penrhiw Pottery in Wales. The studio is run by a talented potter with over 25 years of experience and another who has more than ten years experience of working with adults teaching social and emotional skills through the medium of art and drama.
Of the trip, a JAAR spokesperson said “This pottery workshop will provide a unique opportunity for JAAR clients to fully emerge into the creativity that hand-throwing pottery can provide. The experience would also allow for our clients to add their own personal touches to their work by glazing their products and gaining immense satisfaction from their work. This would also allow for collective bonding with a group of clients that would generally choose to isolate themselves in their day to day lives. It’s our hope this gives them the chance to really connect with others who too have experienced, serious life-changing trauma.”
YOUTHFUL MINDS is a group of young people aged between 11-25 who are working on a campaign to tackle and reduce the stigma associated with mental health for young people in Jersey. They applied for funding to take a group of 13 people on an arts tour of Edinburgh. Choosing the Scottish capital for its cultural breadth and density, the group plan to explore a mixture of painting, sculpture, music, theatre, literature, architecture, cinema and photography.
A spokesperson for Youthful Minds said “This opportunity will help the group appreciate culture and art in a way that they would not ordinarily have the opportunity to do. Youthful Minds have also discussed using their experience to share with other young people how it supported them. Using art can support good mental health in many ways, particularly for
young people. Some of the potential mental health benefits of creativity and art are increased self-confidence, self-esteem, finding a sense of purpose and meaning and a way of coping with difficult and distressing emotions. Really, this trip could help young people reach their potential and empower them to move towards their goals and aspirations for the future.”
A LOCAL ARTIST in Jersey with an interdisciplinary practice that spans choreography, sound and sculpture. Research-led, she’s previously worked in collaboration with
geologists, composers and chefs. She will be heading to Marfa, a small desert city in west Texas, where she’ll attend The Chinati Foundation, founded by artist Donald Judd, which displays huge indoor and outdoor installations. It is the site of the artist’s first large-scale architectural projects. Activities will include exploring an extensive collection of Judd artworks and selecting records from The Judd Foundation Archives which contain over seventeen thousand slides, transparencies, negatives, and prints that serve as records of Judd’s life to inform her research. And finally she’ll be attending the Chinati Art Weekend, a cultural event of exhibitions, artist talks, lectures and site-specific performances.
The anonymous artist said of the trip ahead “I'm interested in how the art and the surrounding land are inextricably linked. I’ll be recording my experiences of art, architecture and landscape through writing, photography and drawing to take back to my studio to reflect and in turn inform a variety of artworks to share through exhibitions and in the curation of innovative community projects/workshops. It will be incredibly valuable to experience influential artworks that have shaped the course of art history. This trip will give me a greater understanding of the historical context and contemporary understanding of sculpture, land art and architecture. Ultimately I hope the experience will strengthen and deepen my practice.”
