  Allotment GalleryCheck out the Artist Commissions on the Allotment Gallery page. Open until 15th March 2024
With the support of James (breaking pallets ) and Wonder Women (sawing) at Plot 33, Festival Stoke have been working at Queens Hospital in Burton with patients and staff to create a series of giant upcycled pallet birch leaves. Working at bedsides Anne & Rachel have been chatting to patients & encouraging them to draw images from photos taken in the hospital’s Badger Wood. The images will be transferred to the leaves and the leaves installed on the fencing of the recently created hospital ground’s sanctuary for patients, visitors and staff ‘The Halo Garden’. We'll post photos of the finished fence!  We are delighted to announce that we have been awarded Arts Council England funding for our ‘Allotment Gallery’ project.
Anne and Rachel have been working hard on Plot 33, Richmond Street allotments for three years now, to nurture and grow produce and flowers and bring their unique creative touches around the site. They first took-on the allotment in January 2021 and quickly improved the site and began creating growing spaces. We were fortunate to secure the plot right next door to the large community hut, garden and orchard. These spaces have been a brilliant space for us to host creative and gardening activities. You can read about the early years at the Greening Stoke blog site (link), and see photos of how the allotment has been transformed over the years. During the past couple of years Festival Stoke has supported the allotment committee to secure funding from Stoke on Trent City Council to pay for improvements to the community hut, including better accessibility, solar panels and a compost toilet. These upgrades mean that more people are able to join in the activities at the site. The Arts Council funded project ‘Allotment Gallery’ brings together our enthusiasm for gardening and nature together with our skills in getting local children and adults involved in creating art for the community spaces of Stoke. As with our previous projects there’ll be opportunities to get creative alongside our artists at free workshops. The Allotment Gallery activities will begin in May this year and run through until the end of September so keep your eye on our social media (Facebook and Instagram) for updates on how you can get involved. We are delighted to announce that we have been awarded Arts Council England funding for our ‘Allotment Gallery’ project. Anne and Rachel have been working hard on Plot 33, Richmond Street allotments for three years now, to nurture and grow produce and flowers and bring their unique creative touches around the site. They first took-on the allotment in January 2021 and quickly improved the site and began creating growing spaces. We were fortunate to secure the plot right next door to the large community hut, garden and orchard. These spaces have been a brilliant space for us to host creative and gardening activities. You can read about the early years at the Greening Stoke blog site (link), and see photos of how the allotment has been transformed over the years. During the past couple of years Festival Stoke has supported the allotment committee to secure funding from Stoke on Trent City Council to pay for improvements to the community hut, including better accessibility, solar panels and a compost toilet. These upgrades mean that more people are able to join in the activities at the site. The Arts Council funded project ‘Allotment Gallery’ brings together our enthusiasm for gardening and nature together with our skills in getting local children and adults involved in creating art for the community spaces of Stoke. As with our previous projects there’ll be opportunities to get creative alongside our artists at free workshops. The Allotment Gallery activities will begin in May this year and run through until the end of September so keep your eye on our social media (Facebook and Instagram) for updates on how you can get involved. Festival Stoke are delighted to once more be involved in the Hi!Stoke* festival weekend in Stoke town centre at the end of September. There's lots of heritage-themed creative activities taking place for you to join in with. Festival Stoke's artists will be hosting moth-themed activities at Stoke Minster. Join them to get creative and learn more about the pepper moth in the city. Friday 29th 6.30 - 7.30pm - Join Festival Stoke artists to help create a sheet moth trap. Warm drinks will be available. Saturday 30th 11am - 3pm - Drop-in to the moth-making workshop to create origami and collage moths from upcycled materials. Both events are suitable for children and adults and are free to join in. * Hi!Stoke is an event for the Heritage Stoke Action Zone  We recently worked with patients & staff on Ward 4 at Harplands Hospital ( an assessment ward for older people with dementia) to begin to add colour to their garden area. As well as planting up planters, the patients created collaged decorative flowers and bunting while using reminiscence to prompt individuals to talk about and share their life stories. It's been great to have some of the enthusiastic gardening volunteers from Hanley Park helping us with the planters at St Marks in Shelton. We're 'Greening St Marks' as part of the Under One Roof project. It's looking lovely! We are delighted with the striking mural of Plot 33's resident fox created by artist Ben McManus. Ben involved people from the groups we support in workshops at the allotment, to create the stunning design. The fox is well loved by allotment holders and the people who visit our communty allotment.   Have you seen the gorgeous marigold display at Stoke Market? We installed the marigold plate images earlier in spring and local people helped to plant seeds in the planters. Look what's happened! How beautiful the marigolds look now!
Greening St Marks is well under way now and artists Anne and Rachel led a session in late May with children from the local school. The year 1s and year 5s brought across the pots they planted up with seeds a few weeks ago …carrots, lettuces, spinach and herbs, planting them out into the planters that form the community garden and also planted some potatoes and tomatoes. They made signage and some fabulous windmills so we can start site vibing the garden. It was a very busy but fun afternoon! April has felt like a strange month this year in part due to the long cold wet spring but the weather held fine for our event last weekend Picture We love this event, seeing lots of plants going off to new home, the opportunity to try something new and most of all seeing what other people have brought along. This year we've had everything from house plants to pond plants. we've gained some beautiful flowers for plot 33 and some extra broad bean plants which is really good as ours had failed to germinate Big THANK YOU to everyone who came along and made it such a great day. We had a fab time chatting, swapping things, so good in fact we forgot to take many/any pictures till the end so if you have any you'd like to share please send them to us. |
AboutFestival Stoke is a collaborative of creative people working together to make good things happen. Archives
August 2024
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