The best part of working in the Crafts Team at HI-Arts is that I get to know the work of so many great makers from throughout the Highlands and Islands.

  Time Out This is the time of year when many of us try to take a break and escape from our usual routine by relaxing with family and friends, hoping to return refreshed and inspired. How many of us devote that same attention to our working practice and take time away  to consider the […]

Assemble   On Tuesday I was in a very hot London for the Craft Council Conference, Assemble. Set in the lovely surroundings of LSO St Lukes, I had high expectations for the day, hoping to come home inspired and informed! The Craft Council used the conference to launch research papers as well as the giving […]

Eileen Gatt, beaker On the 4th June we had our afternoon event to Celebrate Craft and our Mentoring Project, Making Progress. It also saw the opening of our exhibitions, Made It! and Laura West’s Spotlight.  As promised, the sun shone, tasty food, refreshing fizz and good conversation was in order! As part of the mentoring […]

HI-Arts Mentoring to Market visit to Collect, London.

Having read through the selection of events and talks in the Stroud International Textile Festival brochure, I was thoroughly looking forward to our visit to this event, but what I was also particularly looking forward to was spending some time with the designer/makers who were exhibiting and selling their work at the festival and were also coming along on this trip.

Highlands and Islands visit to Stroud International Textile Festival

Producing new work is demanding. It requires investment in time, money, focus, inspiration, invention and hard work. The first two of these things, ‘time and money’ are usually in short supply. It is easy enough to ‘buy in’ custom made tool and materials if you have enough money to flash in front of your suppliers, […]

I always love getting new images sent through to me, whether it is for the crafts newsletter which we send out every month, the online galleries or for Making Progress web pages on the HI-Arts website – it’s great to see examples of makers work from throughout the Highlands and Islands. We are also putting together […]

Taking Time   Taking the West Highland train home from Edinburgh takes around 6 hours compared to 3 ½ hours in the car. It is a spectacular journey in daylight and one I have done numerous times since childhood but more often I drive because taking 6 hours out of my life somehow seems wasteful. […]