NEA

AIRetc… Samantha Dick

Over the last 5 months as Artist In Residence (AIRetc…) in the Art & Design Team  Samantha Dick has made significant impact and having successfully gained a role as part-time Learning Assistant it seems likely that impression will be last well beyond their tenure as AIR…  Samantha started with us in September 2019 and within days was giving an excellent talk on her journey through Edinburgh College as a students and on to Glasgow School of Art to HND Contemporary Practice.

It wasnt long before Samantha was working very closely with the CAP team and students by joining tutorials and group crits offering great advice and support to everyone. It wasnt long before they were maticulously planning a series of workshop examining “The Body as Material” through which the participants and Samantha explored the potential of their own phyisicality as well as that of the spaces and circumstances they were in.

The second of the 3 workshops took place at our partner organisation in Newhaven at Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop (ESW) (see above) and the works developed by the participants was presented at North Edinburgh Arts Centre (NEA) our partners in Muirhouse. (see below) For most of the participants it was their first experience of performative artwork and for Samantha it was their first experience of developing and delivering a workshop of this kind yet the standard of the work was very high indeed and testiment to the quality of the workshops and the confidence developed by Samantha’s approach.

Many people would take time to relax and take stock after such an intensive set of workshops and outcome but for Samantha it was time to capaitalise on the experience and the confidence and energy it gave by immediately starting work on new work for their first solo exbition at the recently opened hubCAP Gallery at Edinburgh College.

It has been an absolute pleasure to have Samantha Dick as our first AIRetc… of the 2019 – 20 academic session.

www.samanthadick.co.uk/

LOCAL: New art / community project launched in North Edinburgh

NESHG & CAP_ETC first meeting at North Edinburgh Arts

LOCAL is a recently launched ongoing collaborative  project which seeks to establish community links between Contemporary Art students and staff from  Edinburgh College (Granton) and the local communities of North Edinburgh. The project was launched at North Edinburgh Art Centre in September when we met with the North Edinburgh Social History Group (NESHG). The group and local  Community Learning and Development worker Lynn McCabe, gave a fantastic presentation about the ares surrounding the Granton Campus from its time as land of gentry as part of  the Duke Buccleuch Estate, through the industrialisation of the forth ports, the relocation of the Leith Street slums through to the rent strikes and activism of the last 40 years. After a lively Q&A session which spilled over into lunchtime the group brought the history to life during a bus tour of the local area.

At the end of the tour students were given the task of developing artwork/s in response to the presentation the tour and their discussions.

This week the group; Roberta Blaikie, Brian Eddington, Anna Hutchison, Ian Moore, Brian Robertson and Lynn McCabe joined us at the Granton Campus for lunch followed by a presentation of the work the students had produced. The response from the group was overwhelmingly positive and the discussions were fantastic. Speaking on behalf of the group Lynn said;

“We were all blown away by the creativeness of the students work and the relevance of their art  to many of the issues which North Edinburgh has experienced over many years.  It was a really inspiring afternoon and great to see such a positive relationship flourish between the college and  the community”.

Everyone at ContemporaryArtETC is equally delighted with how the project is developing;

“The students have responded extremely well to the brief and we are very happy that everyone has resoponded so well to the project. This is only the first part of what we all hope will be a long, strong and creative relationship”. Alan Holligan Lecturer at ContemporaryArtETC

Images from the initial meeting and the presentation by the students are viewable below. LOCAL will continue and we hope the next stage will involve a public presentation of the work and workshops within the community.

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AH