Welcome to Arts Development
Arts development is about engaging people with the arts, developing its audiences and empowering individuals and communities.
Arts Award Welcome
The Art Gallery & Museum is proud to support young people working towards the Arts Award by offering relevant opportunities. These include access to world class collections of paintings, sculpture, Arts and Crafts furniture, decorative arts and historic artefacts plus a lively and stimulating changing exhibtions programme.
Drawing from Life exhibition 15-27 April
This is the first annual open drawing exhibition organised by Cheltenham Fine Art and Crescent Artists' Network to support the practice of drawing. The 2010 event is also sponsored by Cheltenham Art Gallery & Museum and In2digital and Mailing.
Please see the press release for further details.
MEANTIME
MEANTIME is an artist-run project-space housed in a small building on Oxford Passage behind The Brewery in Cheltenham. It operates as a cross-discipline arts platform for the production and presentation of experimental new work – engaging, discursive, collaborative, critical, subversive… See separate website for all the latest information, directions and up-to-date programme details.
M. A. S. H. - Music, Art, Sport & Health
This was a day when Cheltenham Art Gallery & Museum and Leisure @ Cheltenham threw open their doors and hosted a day of free activities for the whole family. It was about encouraging people to try something new - dance workshops, sports taster sessions, a Samba band workshop, as well as street entertainment, live music, exhibitions and free health checks.
It was a great opportunity to showcase the two venues and the types of work that the Wellbeing and Culture team get involved in. In the space of just eight hours we held 22 separate activity sessions and 23 performances across the two sites and received some great feedback from people of all ages, who saw and experienced many new things.
Music Development Project
From January to March 2009, George Moorey, a local creative thinker was enlisted to set up and deliver music development projects and support existing music work in Cheltenham for the Borough Council. The project was a great success. Many interesting and creative people with ideas and enthusiasm were able to work with George in identifying ways to support, enable and promote the music they are involved in.
The blog will remain as a lasting record of what was achieved in three short months and will be added to over the coming months as the good work started is continued and new projects are identified. Have a read. http://chemusdev.tumblr.com/
The Open West
Supported by Arts Development, The Open West is an annual open competition and exhibition, inviting submissions from national and international artists practising contemporary and conceptual art, inclusive of painting, installation, film, photography, print and sculpture. We co-hosted their first exhibition with the Summerfield Gallery, Pittville Studios in February 2009. Read a review in Artists Newsletter about their 2010 exhibition here.
Arts and Health
Arts Development supports the use of the arts to improve patients well-being in Gloucestershire hospitals. Students from the University have spent their industrial placements helping patients to engage with the visual arts in various wards for the past 2 years. The poet Brenda Read-Brown continues to work with cancer patients at Cheltenham General Hospital and has produced an anthology of poems, Sofa for a Crowd, written by the patients and their carers:
'In my experience, the physical trauma of cancer diagnosis and treatment are only part of the story. Restoring psychological wellbeing is of equal importance. I have found that encouraging patients to express their experiences and feelings in poetry allows them to move more successfully to recovery. Being able to help patients achieve this would be a major step forward in cancer care.'
Dr Sean Elyan, Consultant Oncologist and Medical Director, Cheltenham General Hospital
Artlift
Now in its second phase, Artlift sees artists working in GP surgeries across Gloucestershire, using creativity and the arts as an additional and complementary means to address ongoing medical conditions. Why not watch a short film about the project (approx 10 mins).
For information and advice and assistance, contact the Arts Development Officer on .