Last week Bristol art gallery Arnolfini announced an ambitious programme of free public events to accompany its forthcoming exhibition Threads. Unusually for the arts venue, though, this series of activities for adults and young people held throughout the summer holiday will be funded entirely by a crowdfunding campaign.
Arnolfini is part of the Arts Council's portfolio of cultural projects for 2023 to 2026. However, to be able to offer public events with the frequency and accessibility being proposed with Threads, the organisation is hoping to raise £20,000 in the coming weeks using the platform Art Happens, which allows members of the public to pledge donations with a range of rewards on offer including tote bags, artist embroidered cushions and studio visits.
Keiko Higashi, head of engagement at Arnolfini, explained to Bristol Live what the extra money would allow the organisation to achieve. She said: "If we are successful with the campaign, that would really help ramp up our [events] programme and allow us to involve more artists as well.
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"We always offer free workshops for families during all of our holidays. But this helps us to take it to another level where it will feel like there are opportunities for anybody of any age to be able to make and take part in activities across all of the floors and within the gallery spaces as well.
"Our aim is for everyone to see us as a really welcoming Art Centre for anybody, and Threads really lends itself to this; it's in the summer, it's going to be really gorgeous tactile show, and very accessible. But it is something that we want to be able to achieve throughout all of our exhibitions that people feel like they can take part in, in many different ways.
"There really will be something for everybody. We want to create the community workshop space as a textile workshop. So there'll be weaving machines, and there'll be looms and all sorts that people can just come along and add to, and craft materials so that people can just knit, crochet, embroider whenever they want."
The project would see the installation of a gigantic, interactive weaving machine in Arnolfini's theatre space as well as the creation of a new textile workshop space, open every day. There are also plans for free, weekly family activities throughout the summer holidays and opportunities for people to come together to knit as a group in Arnolfini’s spaces.
It also allows Arnolifini to involve more artists in the exhibition, including Celia Pym's Mending Project, which uses visible mending of textiles to tell personal stories, and Farwa Moledina's Majlis, a sitting room open to the public filled with bespoke textile patterns and cushions. Women from refugee and asylum communities will also be invited to work with exhibiting artists and share their traditions and skills with visitors.
So far, more than £1,600 has been raised, with 19 days still to go. Ms Higashi says this sum is vital for the programme to go ahead. She said: "We absolutely won't be able to do it without reaching this target. We will always try and offer free workshops during the holidays, but it would be limited to our usual offering, which is family workshops, maybe one or two sessions a week, whereas if we're successful with this campaign, there will be something every single day for adults as well and young people."
If the project is successful, it's a method of raising money that Arnolfini may use again, but Ms Higashi said it's unlikely to become the norm for the organisation. She said: "We recognise that people are being really generous. So we don't want to take the mickey out of them constantly doing crowd funders.
"But I think it's got us changing our mindset and thinking about different ways we can raise money to help fund our programmes. It's really sparked something for us."
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