Art Trail: Call for facilitators

We are hosting Sheffield Hallam Student Volunteers next month. Their brief will be to create an art trail throughout sharrow...

The workshops will be held on Friday 19th Feb and Friday 26th Feb from 12.30pm... We are currently looking for volunteers to help facilitate...

Our aims for the project are that:

1. The students find out more about the area- and therefore may be more likely to come here/ think more positively about what sharrow has to offer...
2. They draw people who live, work and play in sharrows attention to aspects of sharrow that excite them/inspire them and/or are critical of things- so perhaps comment on the way space is used/ link places together...
3. They have to talk to local businesses/ people at the potential locations of the signs and so converstaions start and negotioations start... people start talking about the area and what is distinctive/ important
3. We create a map of their signs and distribute it around schools/ shops/ local people/ students and get poeple walking aorund at looking at sharrow more generally...

We need facilitators for the two workshops- the first would be presenting the area/ themes in the brief and going for a walk around with the students, provoking them, getting then to look at/ know the area better... then help them to come back and discuss ideas for their groups signs... and begin to design them...

The second workshop would be the making of the signs... we have some bought materials as we have fairly substantial pot of money (about £400) and also will hope to salvage materials etc...

The students could also have a small budget per group (from hallam) of about £40 to buy extras if they needed them...

We are expecting 40-50 students to attend and i thought that they could form 8 groups of 5 students (two groups per theme and area- 'create'- the john street triangle... 'play'- the parks and schools, 'gather'... the community buildings (inc sufc!) and 'trade'- london road area)...

I think it is important for the facilitators to push with how the students would interpret these themes... and get them to be as creative as possible... (so play could be about lots of things- a full page of defintions according to the online dictionary- i like Quick, often irregular movement or action, especially of light or color: the play of color on iridescent feathers.)

so please drop me a line at sharrow_action@hotmail.com if you might like to be involved...

Action Group Events in January and February

Saturday 9th January 10am-1pm: Empty Shops and Artists Funding Workshop meet at the OJS

Saturday 16th January 10-1pm: Lloyds Corner Design Workshop at Action Group HQ, the OJS

Wednesday 27th January 5.30pm: South Yorkshire Energy Centre Training, meet at the centre, 5.30pm

Wednesday 24th February: Built Environment and Landscape Students Presentations and Action Group Social. At 6.00pm at the Action Group HQ, the OJS

Please contact me on sharrow_action@hotmail.com for more details about any of the above events. There are also more to come, watch this space!

briefs for hallam student volunteers

Lowfield My Place Consultation

Please visit the Lowfield Blog to find out about the proposals for the development of the open space and new youth facilities.

http://lowfieldmyplace.blogspot.com/

Next Meeting: Treasure Hunt

Our next meeting to make a series of clues for the treasure hunt will be on Saturday 31st October at 10am... It will be held in the Distinctive Sharrow Action group room at the Old junior school. Please come along to help make clues...

Entry to the treasure hunt will be promoted at the Winter market and forms will also be available to download from the Sharrow Community forum Website and this blog. The prize for the winner will be a signed SUFC Shirt!

Please contact julia@sharrowcf.org.uk for more details...

Please RSVP for this Saturday's meeting

Hallam Volunteers?

We have very kindly had the offer of some volunteers from sheffield hallam univeristy for a day of intense creative project work. It would be great to get an exciting self-contained DS Action Group project for them to be involved with... please offer your suggestions here, (so far i have recived the following):

Dear Julia> > What a good idea and lots of potential. It might be useful to remain focus and> try to pursue some of the idea of our last meeting. How about to produce> robust noticable objects to position in strategic positions in Sharrow> identifying the potential sites for intervention and requesting people's ideas,> opinion about the site. A sort of letter box. This could be combined with the> art trail and the treasure hunt we talked about.> > Just an idea...> > See you soon> > Laurence

Distinctive Sharrow Action Group HQ

This is room is soon to be Action Group HQ- it has potential!

Last night we met to design our Sharrow Action Group HQ! I will circulate minutes, but if you are not on our current mailing list and would like a copy, please contact me on: julia@sharrowcf.org.uk

We will have a decorating day on 15th August 2009. Please attend if possible and invite anyone else you can! I will bring lunch... so please let me know if you can come so i know how much to bring...

We will need the following- please post if you can help with any of the items below:

· Paint! (Plus paintbrushes, rollers, roller trays, masking tape, turps etc) We may be able to get paint donated by Chris Stoke from Stokes Tiles (2589595) or Freecycle. We need people to follow up these contacts.
· Card. Loxley Print Limited may donate some to us- Paul German is Jean Cromar’s contact. This needs to be followed up.
· Display boards: Adam and Catherine have some a1 display boards which they will kindly donate. We may need some more in the future, but this should be fine for now.
· Furniture: We have access to plenty of furniture, which may need repairing/ patching up. We have a plan chest which will fit A1 drawings. but as the room is used we may find other essential items that we can find at a later date. When we have the painting day we can pick furniture and see what needs to be done. It is agreed that we will try to keep this to a minimum at the moment.
· Rugs/ plants/ lamps/ things to make it feel homely... From freecycle- keep a look out but we don’t want to over clutter...
· Base map on acetate/ projector to paint map on wall. (Julia will provide this)
· Sheet and sewing things and fabric pens to make portable map (This could be done at a later date)...
· Cleaning stuff (Julia will source this)
· Velcro/ picture fixings/ scissors/ tape/ pens, paper/ other crafty type things etc (Julia will try to provide as much of this as possible, but if you have anything, bring it along)
. Any other items you think will be useful (this may not be a comprehensive list!)

Flag workshops Jan- March 09

Creative Action Network have been going to local community groups and clubs to encourage the partciapants to put into pictures and words what they think makes a good community. We have been from the children's libraray to Abbeydale Grange, Highfields Adventure Playground to Sure Start and had a really lovely time meeting new people and getting an undertsanding of what people think of Sharrow.

There are lots of pictures of the park, the mosque and the library, but what was most interesting were the symbols people used to express their views. Hands, jigsaw puzzles and back to back houses expressed the unity and diversity that people feel gives Sharrow a great sense of community.

Client Team: Welcome to Sharrow Signposts

The client team for the 'Welcome to Sharrow' Signposts consists of the following memebers of the Distinctive Sharrow Action Group:

1. Dave Whitfield
2. Mel Pearson
3. Jean Cromar
4. Catherine Crompton
5. Julia Udall

There will be regular team meetings with Ryan Morley, the commissioned artist, exhibitions of the emerging ideas and a four day workshop to involve local people in the development of the project. If you wish to be involved, please add your comments below, check the blog for details of events relating to the project and/ or contact julia@sharrowcf.org.uk

Flags Update: London Road

Lantern making workshops

Flags- mock up idea for design..

In spring next year, flags, designed in workshops run by CAN, (who run the Lantern Festival Workshops http://www.creativeaction.net/), will be hoisted on buisnesses at the top of London Road.

The workshops will run early next year in venues around Sharrow. If you would like to be involved in the making workshops, or you have a business on London Road and would be intertested in hoisting a flag, please contact either Julia Udall at Sharow Community Forum: julia@sharrowcf.org.uk or Lu Golob at CAN sharrowlanterncarnival@hotmail.co.uk.