Have You Ever Felt Like Starting Your Own art Group?

Some 20-25 years ago, I took a short nightschool class in painting. Afterwards I wanted to continue in a less formalised group but found that local groups did not cater for what I required. A few other students from the class felt the same way and so we decided to start our own group. A momentous decision since none of us had any experience of thjis sort of thing.

This was to be called The Knowle Art Group, read our web page to find out about us

I have been involved in running that group for most of this time, and in fact also joined a second group for a few years where I was involved with committee work and so had my share of experiences from there. This was a learning experience, I had never done anything like this before but it has worked out very well and that first group has become a successful, not-for-profit undertaking. It has gone up and down in numbers ( 6 to 40 at various times) but has proved an ability to last the course. Only last month a similar, small art group requested to amalgamate with us as they could no longer finance themselves due to a fall off in numbers. This has improved our own situation and so we were glad to agree for them to join us.

How do you start such a group, and how do you manage it? With this experience I thought I could answer the main questions and so have written an article on Squidoo to explain how we did it and also how you could too. Read: How To Start And Run You Own Art Group. This covers deciding on the aims, the venue, financing, administration and building the membership.

I did it, you can too

Some of the members concentrating on their latest art work.

For us one of the biggest benefits is the ability to hire professional demonstrators three or four times a year to help with development of our skills. This supplements the support and encouragement we provide for each other. But there is nothing like hanging your art in an exhibition for the world to see and admire and maybe even buy the odd piece of art. In order to make it easier (and less expensive) to hold exhibitions the group designed and created  our own exhibition boards. I have also written a Squidoo article explaining how and why these have proved very useful and giving details if you find that you would like to make some for yourselves. Read: An Inexpensive Display Board For A Leisure Painter's Group.

 

The boards in use at an exhibtion:

 

 

Hope these articles help you to start your own group successfully.