The weekend of 1st and 2nd of July saw Horsforth buzzing with lots of artists opening their homes, hubs of activity in different spaces, and many expressions of art from all sections of the community. This year it also included the My Leeds 23 culture activities with lots going on at Calverlands Day Centre, and Climate Action focussed activities at The Grove church and centre.
Here are just some of the ways our church community enjoyed
being very much part of the action:
Climate Action Hub at The Grove
The Grove Church decided to allocate their church and Centre spaces to the Climate Action activities, even foregoing the normal use of their church space for worship on the Sunday morning in order to facilitate this – the result was an amazing two days of activities and displays including kids making bug hotels and art, a ‘treasure trail’ about wildlife around the church, postcards made by local people plus art displays by local groups displayed, and also stalls of interest. Many people came through the doors and took part.
Volunteers from The Grove pitched in to provide a creche space for the little ones and a lovely ‘tea room’ for people to have a rest and a cuppa on their way round the Walk of Art:
Textile Map of Horsforth
Local artists Marianne Huntley and Kath Rolls had the idea of a collaborative community art project making a textile map of Horsforth and they approached us to help link with all the churches so that each one could make a piece to represent their church on the map, as well as making other items such as flowers and vegetables if they wanted to.
We were delighted with the fantastic response by talented individuals in each of the churches making such a range of beautiful pieces to add to the map – each one is different including cross stitch, tapestry, feltwork, sewing, embroidery, crochet and even buttons! You can see them all here!
The map will be displayed in the new room in the Horsforth Museum so many more people will see this lovely piece of art showing the many textile talents of the Horsforth community brought together into a map of our town.
Horsforth Farmer’s Market 1st July
At the market we enjoyed great music by groups from Horsforth Music Centre and we ran a kid’s activity on the Walk of Art theme of ‘Our Horsforth’ (whilst pinning things down to stop them blowing away in the gusty winds!)
Local groups enabled to take part in ‘Art of Going Green’ Project
Artist Penny Lewis asked us for suggestions of church based or connected groups that could take part in artist-facilitated sessions making art displays on climate action themes. Two resulting examples were The Cragg Tots group taking part focussing on a Green for Food theme, and people seeking asylum thinking about a Green by the Water theme – they had great fun, found out more about nature, and were very proud of their resulting art displays which you can see here:
There were 6 fantastic displays in total as you can see below, the others being made by MHA Communities, the Ukrainian Support group, Creative Support and visitors to My Leeds 2023 on 1st July:
Other churches and many individuals were involved in the activities of the weekend as well – such as St Margaret’s hosting some displays and Emmanuel Baptist hosting several artists. It was great to play our part in so many varied ways, working alongside the committed organisers, sponsors and volunteers who worked so hard to make it all happen.
A big thank you to everyone involved for making this such a wonderful community event!