Bradford, Aire and Worth Valley Open Studios 2012

The Aire Valley Arts Association has decided to take the lead and organise an Open Studios event for Bradford this summer.

Kath Bonson, as Secretary of AVA, has agreed to be the main co-ordinator for this. In addition to a Fine Art degree, she also has a Business degree specialising in Marketing, over 20 years business and event management experience and skills in IT and design and print production.

This will be taking place over the long Bank Holiday weekend 2nd-5th June 2012.

The provisional title for the event will be the ‘Bradford, Aire and Worth Valleys Open Studios’ – with the attractions of places like Saltaire and Haworth also highlighted to hopefully get more people interested in visiting.

It will be open to artists in all visual mediums in the Bradford Metropolitan area, including 2D, 3D and photography, and although we would hope to get as many actual working studios involved as possible, we are also happy to include galleries and other types of visual art spaces and to also encourage ‘space-shares’ between those with suitable premises and those without.

It will be publicised as a map based ‘trail’ to encourage a sense of journey and exploration.

We will be working on a low budget, funded by contributions by the exhibitors – keeping this as low as possible - and will aim to get the maximum possible value for money. The budget will be used primarily for printing and signage and we will be aiming to make the most effective possible use of PR, social and online media and networking to get the message out.

Organisations that have so far expressed an interest in helping and being involved include;

• Artworks Creative Communities
• Bingley Gallery
• Bradford Art Studios
• Bradford Council
• Bradford Libraries
• Bronte Media Services
• Butterfly Rooms Studios
• BVan
• Cottingley Cornerstone
• Fabric
• inc.Creative, Keighley
• Kala Sangam
• Kirkgate Studios, Shipley
• Artists from South Square

The Plan

• Having put the word out to potential artists, organisations and venues to gauge levels of interest, we have been able to establish that there is a real enthusiasm for this event.
• Next, an open meeting – This has now been organised for Tuesday 28th February at Artworks.
• We will then begin the initial publicity stages – to make sure that it featured in local and regional event calendars
• At the same time we will be asking artists to formally sign up to the event and confirming the days, times, venues etc where they wish to show. The deadline for this will be mid April.
• We will then finalise the lists and details of artists and locations to be involved. Details of this will appear on the Website
• Printed publicity would begin to be issued 4-6 weeks before, with a final PR and online push in the last couple of weeks

 

.If you would like to be involved - or just find out more - please fill in the form;