After finishing uni I finally managed to get a part time job, and started looking around for some volunteering work that could fill my days off. I looked up the galleries in Somerset and found one called Black Swan Arts. It appealed to me mainly because after doing so much job searching and CV writing, I was relieved to see somewhere where volunteering was easy to get into. They were looking for people to give a hand and had an email address where I could simply ask if I could help. If anyone out there is in the same situation as me, with a part time job wanting to do bits of vounteering on the side, I do suggest you look into working with the Black Swan Arts. They have recently lost all their funding so this year (their 25th Anniversairy) was geared towards an appeal to raise as much money for the next year as possible and keep their gallery running! Therefore they love people who are willing to volunteer, and were really appreciative of my interest. I was immediately put through to Amanda Sheridan- the curator for the upcoming exhibition called 'The 25 Years of Christmas', and she asked if I would be interested in working with her to organise the exhibition. Obviously this was a dream come true; direct work experience in curating a fundraising exhibition! I could already feel my CV start to glow!
The whole thing has been great fun. Being busy with my job and this exhibition I haven't had much time to keep an online update on things, so it's all coming out now. The open evening was on the 2nd on December, with all the other volunteers and trustees attending alongside the artists and everyones guests. It was a lovely night and Amanda seemed really happy with the exhibition. The Black Swan has guest curators for each exhibition, and since this exhibition was about fundraising and looking back at the history of The Black Swan Arts, Amanda had to work very hard to get donations from as many artists as possible. The artists were really generous, and there were some absolutely beautiful pieces in the show, with one selling even before the show was hung!
Working with The Black Swan Arts has been great. I got to know some of the community of artists in Somerset, became friends with lots of lovely people at the gallery, and had a great time with Amanda Sheridon who is a great mentor and just a lovely person generally. I was given the task of designing the poster/ leaflets, making labels and giving advice to Amanda when needed- she was very sweet in asking my opinion on things!
To sum up it was fab, and I'm looking into working with Amanda on other projects. I will provide some photos of the exhibition, and some I took of its preparation, as well as the poster I helped design.
For more information on the Black Swan Arts Centre visit: http://www.blackswan.org.uk/
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