After all the preparation and planning we have finally arrived in New York after an early start, straightforward flight and taxi to the hotel. ‘We’ are a group of twelve Craft curators/officers who are […]

Before I went on my travels, my son took it upon himself to organise my MP3 player – alphabetically, by genre and with a special section of music for New York! The one song that keeps playing through my […]

September has been so jam packed with events, I felt it best to chart them from the beginning and work my way through!

From Skye to London via Inverness, I have seen work that has ranged from community knitting […]

One of the many great plus points about my job as Craft Development Coordinator for the HI-Arts is that I get out and about throughout the Highlands and Islands to meet many inspiring and positive people.

On […]

When I was a girl growing up in Arisaig, a friend of my mothers came to stay. Norma Morgan was an artist from NYC who was on a sabbatical to the UK as she was fascinated by moors and mountains and wanted to […]

In the depth of winter, we planned a Makers Day with An Tobar on Mull.

May would be lovely we agreed, as we battled against snow and gales and thought of spring, sunshine and calm seas! Little did we know […]

I always look forward to visiting Collect – ‘the international art fair for contemporary objects’- in London. For the past 5 years it has been held at the V&A and at the beginning of the year, around the end of […]

Wheweee! I now know that I wasn’t stupid about the blogging, just BLIND.

The menu bar is right at the top of my screen, which being a Mac, all the tab lines and catagories are on a grey bar which is EXACTLY the […]

Today I am going to try to add a picture to my blog. This will be a challenge for me, but I do have a friend visiting (I hope) who will help me through this. But just on the off chance that she can’t make it, here goes!

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 […]

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 […]

Travelling Makers

From Shetland, Westray, Iona, Lochaber and Inverness, we arrived by trains, ferries, buses, taxis, planes and in some cases, all five!

Organising Highland invasions like this seems to be an […]

Collect

Our group visit last week was for makers who aspire to participate at Collect in the future. It was good to have a group who, once more spent time together catching up, discussing their own practice […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Crafting Together

Many of our projects address the need for our makers to get together; sometimes in a formal way through events such as Makers Days and at other times it just happens that the people involved […]

On Wednesday I spent the day in Edinburgh with a group of colleagues discussing, amongst other issues, curating craft exhibitions.

Amongst all the doom and gloom of funding cuts and the difficulties of making […]

On the first hot and sunny day for several weeks makers came from far and wide to listen to inspirational speakers for our summer event in Inverness.

‘Selling the Sizzle’ was Tina Rose’s suggestion for a […]