Ryde Arts Festival received some very welcome news this month, after it was revealed they’d succeeded in a bid for a £30,0000 Arts Council grant for their next major project, called GROW.
Part of the funding will cover an artist in a Ryde allotment shed, working with diverse community groups.
Artist in residence
The bid was successful with the aid of some pump priming from the Ryde Town Council and will see Isle of Wight artist, Joanne Hummel Newell, in residence in an allotment shed. Carol told OnTheWight that Jo’s response to the Briddlesford Farm project made her “an excellent choice”.
Musicians, composers and poets will all be contributing towards 18 months of exciting projects to explore, produce and exhibit across a wide spectrum of the arts. It’ll be a celebration of growing, both practically and metaphorically.
An evolving project
Ryde Arts Festival will be returning this summer and these early months are the “seedbed time” with commissions going out and partners planning their contributions.
Jo will be working with Ryde’s local primary schools in May to produce paper-engineered blossoms.
Festival organiser, Carol Jaye, told OnTheWight,
“A selection of the IW Stanza group poems are going to our previous contributing composers: Balch, Wendon, Courtney and Dean to use as inspiration for each composer to come up with a Quartet, which will be performed next year by musicians from Isle of Wight Symphony.
“This year we are starting our Festival week with Linda Filby Borret’s singers, all home-grown talent. The Library garden will be transformed into a wild flower parterre, thanks to Eccleston George we’ll have a mobile garden making its way from the Pierhead to Appley and other venues.
“There’ll be creative writing, painting and 2017’s summer will see “Horticultural” show with fruit and veg made by community groups from ceramic, felt, stitch and knit.”
Congratulations to all involved, we can’t wait to see how the project evolves over the next 18 months.
To stay up to date with the Ryde Arts Festival check the Website.
