From Urban to Rural… Space Makers workshop is coming to Eastend, Northleigh (west Oxfordshire) Sunday 8th July!!!

The Urban Interactive will be bringing a version of the Space Makers workshop to the tiny village of Eastend in rural Oxfordshire, for the villages first ever, self organised art event. East End Open Studios; Arts, crafts, Gardens and villa mosaic will run 10am-6pm, (to find us follow directions on the A4095 to The Roman Villa and East End) with free entry to all venues and consisting of around 20 events/open studios cellebrating the talents and creativity of this small community…

The Spake Makers workshop will occupy the driveway of Craigmore, 7 Eastend for which both children and adults will be encouraged to engage in this fun and creative process. With an additional dimension of  facilitating creative discussions (over a tasty locally produced treat) about how the community functions and can suport itself socially, in particular considering it has no fixed meeting place (no pub, no shop.) This event will be the first of it’s kind for Eastend, and the first time for lots of the neighbours to meet each other and exchange their skills, home baking and create new friendships. The workshop aims to question where this community can go next in sustaining the connections created by this event?

Advertisement

60 Kids take on London’s Square Mile : Spacemakers workshop

Junior Open House Festival weekend finally arrived and despite the rain, the Spacemakers workshop proved a massive success with 60 kids building 9 public spaces over the two days. Participants got hands on and, for many, had their first go at designing and building at full scale. Spaces ranged from a great feasting table to a cafe serving air and an outdoor theater complete with audience seating and blankets.

To our delight the workshop method was far more flexible than we had anticipated, working with over 20 participants at once and a wide age range from as small as 3 to young teens and even wealth of excitable adults getting involved! We received positive feed back from parents throughout the weekend and we even got a brief mention in the guardian! http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2012/jun/22/week-london-festival-architecture-olympics

See the full Spacemakers Workshop article for more info, gameplay instructions and photos

The Urban Interactive win Open City’s Opening Up competition

Well technically we didn’t win. But Open City were so excited by our proposal for the Spacemakers workshop that they decided to prematurely delve into their larger pot of Arts Council funding to award us twice the original budget! The build process for the Spacemakers kit was all hands on deck with an Oxford team designing and constructing reusable bamboo frames and sourcing vast amounts of cardboard boxes while Hannah prepared fabrics, bunting and a giant dice up in Glasgow.