Artweeks 2023

Trio Watson

Karima Brooke, Carol Lange, Anthea Clark, Anthea Richards, Trio Watson, Rebecca Howard, and Juliet Henderson shared paintings, prints, poetry, 3d imagery, and weaving, with the world.

It was a successful experience for us as artists, and we feel the outreach effect for Oxford Meeting was positive too. Two hundred and sixty people came to visit the Meeting House, most of them for the first time. This figure does not include the eighty-five people who came to Stephen Yeo’s book launch that week. We have shown that creativity is a quality we nurture at Oxford Meeting. Bringing everything together for a show strengthened my connection with our community, and our community’s connection with the wider world.

We fielded some interesting questions from the public – do you have any taboos? What are your views on Christianity, environmental concerns, and noisy neighbours? (Our garden was much appreciated.) And now they’ve clocked a few faces (middle aged women, of varying degrees of idiosyncrasy but no wimples or pointy shoes with buckles, or porridge, to be seen), I think we’re not an unknown quantity now. Surely this is good.

My favourite part was connecting with my mates from East Oxford, with members of my MfW, and being in our lovely Meeting House. It has been a helpful process to apply the Artweeks process to my own practice for the first time. Many thanks to our fabulous staff who encouraged us with the helpful picture hanging apparatus, the coffee brewing technology, and the spade we needed to open the sliding doors. I felt grateful that our physical premises are of a contemporary professional standard, supporting our hopes of a good standard in our creative work.

Participating in Artweeks is an activity that has brought people into contact with us in a comfortable and positive way. I think we should certainly consider doing this again.


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Forty-Three Newsletter • Number 531 • July 2023
Oxford Friends Meeting
43 St Giles, Oxford OX1 3LW

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