Swansea Print Workshop | Annual General Meeting| December 1 | 7.00pm
19A Clarence Street | Swansea SA1 6BS
AGENDA
1. Directors Annual Report |
2. Any matters arising from the report
3. Set date for Annual Members Show | either at in house gallery at the studio / or Volcano Theatre Gallery in the High Street. May or July a possibility
4. Set date for a fundraising week
5. AOB
Swansea Print Workshop AGM December 1st 2017
Present – JF,ADR, LLW,KR,AG,SP,YH,JS,HL,AF,CM,CAR,GJ,RP,KS,JJ.
Chair- JF.
A
review of the year showed that some things undertaken had been
successful, like the Open Day, other things like the membership fees
being collected although having improved due to Rose and Claudia’s
efforts, still needs attention as does advertising/ communication on
social media. Kelly Hill has kindly offered to take over that aspect.
The Directors’ report was as tabled [see below]. One addition is the Outreach project planned for March – IPad to print.
Finance – We have a healthy bank balance for once, due to membership fees coming in, workshop fees and other money making activities.
Improvements
– An A3 scanner was bought/ JF completely refurbished the dark room as a
screen coating a drying room, she has revamped the light box and
organised the type faces, making made to measure trays and a lockable
cupboar
Needed in 2018 – New computers.
Fundraising –
The Open Weekend and week was very successful, bringing in £2,500. Th
majority of the profit was from the generosity of members donating their
prints for sale. Therefore another Open day event was agreed for June 2018, the exact date to be confirmed in the next few weeks.
Now The Hero –
Sept 25th-29th is a Swansea based project to commemorate WW1,
culminating in an multidisciplinary event in the Brangwyn Hall. It will
be a performance art piece. Iohannes Iohansen has written a new
composition and will be included in the event. AF suggested members used
WW1 in their work, possibly looking at the poetry written about the
war. Andrew Baldwin has done work in this vein therefore his planned
workshop would fit in well.
John Abell was another possible artist to include.
In participating in this project, the profile of SPW would be raised, though there is no funding available as such.
The venue for an exhibition could be the drawing room at SPW. Claudia brought up the point that we need to be mindful that WW1 is a sensitive issue due to our mix of nationalities and that we need to express a balanced approach. One example of this would be to use the white poppy to celebrate Peace as opposed to war.
RD and HL are liaising this project.
AOB
Jackie
Ford was thanked for her hard work in arranging the workshop programme
for 2016-17 and ongoing, plus all the refurbishments.
The meeting closed at 7.30.
C.Roberts.
Directors Report | October 2016 – September 2017
Our financial year runs from October 1 to September 30
This has been one of the first full years where we have not applied for an Artsouncil grant and has been a test of our ability to survive on the efforts of our members alone. It has taken considerable effort to re-organise some of the necessary administration tasks but progress has been made. We are also still solvent without any debts. Considerable savings have been made on our utilities and fundraising has also given us some stability for the immediate future.
I. Summary of Events
II. Membership
III. Finance
IV. Future plans
I. Summary of Events
Workshops
Our workshops are offered by a combination of invited artists from other organizations and countries, and our own experienced members. We have continued our policy of paying our workshop leaders an Arts Council recommended rate of £150 per daily session. This has now gone up considerably and we will have to re-appraise the remuneration level. We aim to keep our process as low as possible and they are still very competitive.
This also means that there has to be a minimum number of people on each course, not only to cover the teaching and materials cost but also something towards the running costs of the building. This is why, if there is a last minute cancellation we are unable to refund the full amount unless we can find a replacement participant. For this reason we do keep a ‘reserve’ list whenever we can.
In October 2016, we offered a series of workshops at both introductory and intermediate level, covering a wide range of expertise and approaches. Judith Stroud gave a collagraph workshop, Nina Morgan covered an introductory screen printing, photo screen printing and printing from designs made on the Ipad or tablet. We had excellent feedback on all these courses. Then in January we had a great week with visiting Californian artist Vinita Voogd. Again we had great feed back from these workshops as Vinita is a generous and patient teacher.
A workshop with Andrew Baldwin introduced some new artists to this pioneering printmaker. SPW has adopted BIG Safe Etching as its standard approach to etching. BIG (Baldwins Ink Ground) is a vegetable-based ground used as a safer alternative to traditional intaglio materials. It was created by Andrew Baldwin, a practicing printmaker with an ambition to reduce some of the more hazardous processes in printmaking. The ground has been embraced across the printmaking world and adopted by Edinburgh Printmakers, leaders in printmaking developments. Andrew Baldwin is based at Trefeglwys Printmakers in Mid-Wales. www.printmakingstudio.co.uk.
BIG Safe Etching at SPW offers the printmaker a safer alternative in etching with the same level of creative opportunities as traditional materials without exposure to hazardous chemicals. For the beginner, BIG provides an accessible process for spontaneous and diverse mark-making. For the experienced printmaker, BIG provides a medium for consistent, excellent results.
Then in June, in collaboration with Gower Gallery, Mumbles we once again worked with Kelly Stewart of Edinburgh printmakers. This kicked off with a free introductory talk open to the public, a great drawing day at Mumbles where much of the material was gathered for an intensive day of screenmaking and printing the following day. Great results from this intensive three days. Sarah Hopkins, well known local artist and one of the prime movers in the development of the workshop over the years finally found time to put on a workshop in her unique approach to screenprint. This workshop was oversubscribed and features in our Future events programme.
Anne Gullick arranged for the Workshop with visiting American Artist Chris Carter | Enhanced Colour for Artists and Printmakers . This was extremely well received by all participants and we hope to see her come back again to work with us.
Exhibitions
· Oystermouth Castle
· Art Matters Gallery | Tenby
· Members Exhibition |This coincided with a fundraising week at the Studio.
· New Traditions in Print | An Art and ICT Project for Schools |Exhibition of Childrens outreach work | County Hall
II. Membership
We have been wrestling with finding an efficient system to keep track of membership, send out reminders, keep track of payments that can be run by volunteers now that we have no staff member to keep an eye on things. We also have to conform to data regulations and our old system had a large amount of data clogging up the system.
We hope the new system will improve the service as we rely heavily on the membership subs to keep the studio going. Quite a few membership subs are overdue and reminders have been sent out. Membership numbers atand at around 64 at the moment.
III. Finance
Current Position |
With the excellent fundraising event in June together with a grant from Brecknock Trust and membership payments we are now in a position to move forward with developing our website and social media. Our current estimates will still leave us with a reasonable ‘buffer’ of £5000 against the eventualities of the new year.
Grants/ Fundraising
Brecknock Trust £1500 |
Our present website is extremely important to us as it is an archive of our achievements and continued presence in the cultural life of the area. It is regularly recorded by the National Library of Wales as part of their process of documenting the activity of organisations they have chosen to represent a profile of the cultural life of Wales.
Websites also need to work proactively and link with social media for disseminating information and we also see the opportunity to sell more work on the internet. At the moment our website is on a very much outdated platform which is no longer supported technically which makes it very vulnerable to hacking as well as being very limited in its capability. We cannot put a ‘shopping basket’ on it for instance.
The gallery element is very limited also – an absolute must for selling images effectively.
Alongside this situation, our computers and peripherals which were acquired over 10 years ago have become so outdated that they cannot communicate with the Windows platforms currently being supported. This includes an A3 scanner and printer. The scanner is used to prepare work for the website and marketing and the printer is used to make transparencies for the screenprinting process.
Thanks to Robert Macdonald’s efforts on our behalf. He approached Brecknock Trust and asked for £2500 towards this process and were very grateful for £1500 they were able to give us. There is further work to do on the website and social media and we are grateful for any help we can get.
June Fundraising event
This was a very successful week and raised over £2,500. Many thanks to all the artists who donated prints for this event. We also had new people sign up to our mailing list which is also very welcome
Improvements
· The old darkroom has been gutted and made into a screen room for storing and drying screens.
· We have purchased a very good A3 scanner which is available for anyone to use to record their work. This can be booked by anyone wanting to digitise their work before it is framed. If you need an initial instruction on this process contact Jackie Ford
· We now have a large light box in the screen area. This is also a good clean area for preparing paper.
Maintenance
· The studio is fitted with Emergency Lighting on the event of a fire. These have to be tested every year. Several of the original lights have had to be replaced.
· Roof and gutter problems continue to plague us. These now have to be cleared twice a year as we now seem to be seagull sanctuary attracting nests and all the attendant debris.
IV. Future plans
Members Exhibition at the Tower Gallery, Crickhowell | January 2018 | Thanks to Lesley Lillywhite for arranging this
Swansea Print Workshop Members Exhibition 2018 | to be held on the High Street in Volcano’s Gallery. This has a big ‘shop’ window onto the High Street, with a big footfall through to the whole range of events held there
Workshops
Sarah Hopkins screenprinting workshops coming up in January and February 2018
January 13 and 14 | Printing with paper stencils | Fully booked
February 10 and 11 | Screenprinting Monotype
Visiting Artists
Vinita Voogd will be coming again early in the new Year. is coming again – linking with an exhibition of work with Atif Khan in Llanelli and her Saturday morning group of students. So she will do a workshop preceding this
Kelly Stewart coming in May | Creating Artist Books with Kelly Stewart
Things of Joy | Screenprinting and Bookbinding
Now the Hero | September 26-30 2018
Rose Davies initiated contact with the group organizing this prestigious immersive art event led by international artist Marc Rees in July this year. Hannah Lawson has continued these discussions and we are negotiating to be part of this collaboration.
Thanks to all our Volunteers
Many thanks to all of you who have given your time to volunteer for the Workshop in some way. We are completely dependent on volunteers to keep running. If you have any thoughts on how we could do better – please let us know. If you want to be part of the team in some way, we offer studio time as a small reward. Come and talk to us at the AGM or email the workshop with your ideas and concerns.
We are also looking to increase the number of Directors we have at the moment.
If you think you have something to offer in terms of administration tasks/ programming events/ computer skills etc. and would like to help please contact us.
Directors
Jackie Ford
Carys Roberts
Alan Roberts
Alan Figg
Peter Spriggs
Robert Macdonald
Hannah Lawson