Dear Members,
I am delighted to say we are gathering a pace as we head into the Spring of 2022.
We are looking forward to welcoming you to this month's lecture on Thursday.
West Midlands (WM) Area societies are engaging with the UK’s best-known prison arts charity to bolster their efforts to change prisoners’ lives by participating in the arts.
Thanks to the generous donations made by individual societies in the WM Area, Koestler Arts are hoping to launch a pilot project in late spring organised in HMP Birmingham and three other institutions in the region.
Update to the arrangements for our lectures going forward. We are now able to return to full seating as we had before the pandemic and in keeping with government guidance, as long as we all follow sensible procedures we are returning to ‘normal’. We are very much looking forward to seeing our members back again for the interesting lecture programme we have arranged for the year ahead. We also hope to be offering members some interesting extra events again as we move out of the pandemic situation.
The Arts Society Welwyn Garden ushered in the New Year with a lecture by Gavin Plumley about Pieter Bruegel the Elder and his series of paintings charting the course of a year.
Gavin led us into the world of these paintings and opened our eyes to the message that Bruegel was trying to convey. We learnt how Bruegel's world of hard-working peasants, suffering the the vissicitudes of harsh winter months, or their rare moments of leisure, having a picnic after bringing in the harvest, was unknown to the wealthy merchants on whose walls these paintings were destined to hang.
The Arts Society Welwyn Garden were delighted to take part in the St. Francis Church Christmas Tree Festival on the 4th and 5th of December. It was a welcome return of the Festival and an excellent way of promoting our Society to the general public.
Our committee creative team, Cheri, Sue and Christine worked well designing wonderful figures depicting the Nativity. Thank-you to each of them for their magnificent efforts, the tree looked wonderful.
When I visited on the 4th I was most impressed and our tree certainly stood out among the many entries.
