Volunteering at Sprout arts

I've been volunteering at Sprout Community Arts for a few years and helped set up their award-winning ArtLoan scheme in 2018 as well as doing promotional social media work. It has been very rewarding to be part of this project during the crisis.

2020 was a very different year but still a creative and eventful one. Considering Sprout was closed for more than half the year, we crammed as much as possible in when we could!

Sprout began the year with our Artists in Residence in January followed by our winter Art Loan event, launched a local Book Swap initiative, created window displays to brighten up Moyser Road whilst we were closed and showcased Graveney School's Year 10 art students’ talent in the summer.

In the Autumn we hosted our annual Secret Postcard community fundraiser after rescheduling several times - many of the mini-masterpieces were done over lockdown and so it was a fantastic way for the community to show off their creativity, we also managed to host some of the scheduled artist exhibitions, albeit briefly.

Then ended the year with a Christmas market, which unfortunately came to a halt sooner than planned when Tier 4 rules came into force, but it was very successful and helped support local artists, designers and makers who hadn't been able to market their products.

Next year the ArtLoans will be one of the first events followed by an exhibition of work by Art Grads who weren't able to have their final show due to Covid. There will also be a special 'Lockdown' exhibition with the whole community being asked to look back and share their experiences.