It’s all beginning to feel a bit “Groundhog Day” isn’t it? Add another notch on the lockdown tally and prepare yourself for the daily “Boris Briefings” because apparently something went wrong New Year’s Eve and January has confirmed we all in fact time travelled back to the start of 2020.
Always keen to jump on the bandwagon, if the 2021 trend is to repeat oneself, we thought we’d take the opportunity to retread some positive ground from our pandemic response, with two cultural initiatives that we set up that have been helping support the arts in Torbay.
The first, is our Postcard Collections. This all started as part of our plans to help artists take part in our Winter Open Exhibition. With the anticipation the exhibition might not even be able to go ahead, we decided to run free submissions to the show, instead asking artists to donate small postcard works that we could use to fundraise or otherwise help promote the exhibition.
What we didn't expect, was the generosity of all the wonderful artists taking part, because what they donated in many cases can hardly be described as "postcard artworks" and we now have a stunning collection of small, unique, gift pieces exclusive to Artizan.
After a bit of a rethink, we came up with a fundraising initiative which has been really popular. Somewhere between a raffle and a blind auction, anyone who wants to support us and our artists can make a donation of as little as £10 to have the chance to select work from the collection.
You can find out more, make a donation, and get your hands on a stunning piece of original art at art-hub.co.uk/postcards
The second, is the Artist Support Pledge. This one’s a little bit bigger than us, a global initiative established on Instagram in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Creatives can post their artworks using #artistsupportpledge giving details of their works and price (no more than £200 or equivalent). Buyers then simply message the artist to make an enquiry. Every time an artist reaches £1,000 of sales, they pledge to buy £200 of work from other artists through the pledge.
We're supporting our artists by working with #artistsupportpledge and promoting exhibited works under £200. Starting with our Winter Open Exhibition, we regularly shared posts from the show with #artistsupportpledge and every time we reached £1000 worth of sales, we reinvested in work from our artists. The piece would then immediately go back on display, but the artist will receive payment straight away and see the benefit of a sale.
You can find out more, view works under £200, and make a purchase that contributes to our pledge fund at art-hub.co.uk/artistsupportpledge
