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News

October 2007

We would like to introduce Jack Lewis and as our new Press and Marketing Officer.  Jack joins the team at a crucial stage in developments and just in time for this year's annual Open07 exhibition.  All at ArtSway welcome Jack and look forward to a good future working relationship over the forthcoming months.

ArtSway is pleased to announce a number of successful bids which will once again take its status both national, and international.

Art Fund International

On the 5th of November The Art Fund International winners were announced.  Art Fund International is one of the most important and ambitious schemes The Art Fund has ever launched. The scheme will fund the creation of collections of international contemporary art over the next five years, whilst encouraging a radical change in the scale and ambition of contemporary art collecting in the UK.  The Fund was extablished in 2003 when the Art Fund, a leading British charity, began researching a century's worth of works it had part-funded for the nation's consumption. 

Five successful Art Fund International partnerships will each be awarded £1million and these are as follows:

- Bristol Museums, Galleries and Archives in partnership with Arnolfini
- Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow in partnership with The Common Guild
- Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art (mima) in partnership with
The Drawing Centre, New York
- Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne in partnership with Photoworks, Brighton Photo Biennial and Artsway
- West Midlands partnership: Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery and New Art Gallery Walsall in partnership with Ikon

ArtSway is delighted to be a part of this exciting and influential scheme.

A&B Investment

ArtSway are happy to announce a successful bid from Arts and Business organisation for the next three years of operation.  Arts & Business are a company that aims to promote mutually beneficial relationships between business, the arts and the public sector in order to increase private sector investment into the arts.  ArtSway’s partner in this scheme is Lashmars Accountants of Lymington - providing the ‘business partner’ side of the project to ArtSway’s creative dimension.

Lashmars have agreed to sponsor ArtSway’s Annual Open and Open winner’s exhibition for the next three years commencing this December.  In addition, the Managing Director of Lashmars, Peter Lashmar, has agreed to undertake three-days of free tax-planning and accountancy advice sessions for all the artists who will be exhibiting in the Open exhibition.  This is a most generous offer and something that will benefit up to 100 artists in the Investments duration.  As more and more artists are now working for themselves, tax advice and money matters are something as key to their practice as the artwork itself.

Arts and Business Investment is designed to strengthen and develop the relationship between business and the arts by giving real benefits to both partners.  This is a fantastic scheme and both all at ArtSway, and Lashmars, look forward to a great working relationship and mutual beneficial results over the next few years.

Ernest Cook Trust

ArtSway has once again benefitted from the generosity of the trustees of the Ernest Cook Trust, who have awarded the gallery a grant of £10,650 to continue its education work with schools, teachers and youth organisations in the local community and further afield. The original programme funded by the Trust throughout 2006 - titled 'Artists into Schools/ ArtSway as a Rural Educational Resource' - saw 30 creative workshops take place in local schools such as Priestlands, Netley Marsh Infants School, Bellemoor Secondary in Southampton and St Luke's in Sway. The programme also saw a series of educational workshops take place with 'at risk' young people - many who are excluded from school and have learning difficulties - in partnership with Hampshire and Isle of Wight Youth Options.

The new programme of workshops - now titled The ASSIST Project (Artists Into Schools, Supporting youngsters, INSET Sessions for Teachers) will run throughout 2008 and will once again see a range of creative workshops take place in 8 local partner schools. ArtSway will also be able to continue its recent work with potential and actual young offenders in collaboration with the Wessex Youth Offending Team and ISSP (Intensive Suveillance and Support Programme) based in Southampton - as well as with Youth Options. A new strand to the programme is a series of INSET sessions for teachers - aimed at equipping teachers with new skills that they can utilise in the classroom, and to help them assist their students more fully.