Open Circle Community Arts are honored  to have receive an award for Creative Place in the 2018 all Ireland Pride of Place awards .  IPB Pride of Place is an all-island competition that acknowledges the work that communities are doing all over the island of Ireland.  The competition focus is about people coming together to shape, change and improve daily lives in their communities.

Citation from the Judges
“…………the key to this entry is that it makes the arts accessible to women of all ages engendering mutual encouragement and inspiration in those involved and a very palpable sense of community……….”

Pictured in the photograph collecting the award are Katherine Rossiter 2018 Open Circle participant, Mary Butler arts officer Kilkenny Co Co, Sheila Jordan community development worker Open Circle,  with Collette Byrne CEO Kilkenny Co Co and Cathaoirleach Eamon Aylward.

Open Circle Arts information evening at, Arts Office, 5 Dean Street Kilkenny on Thursday 11th Oct 2018 at 6pm.

Come along if you are interested in applying for the 2019 programme, and would like some more information, application forms will be available. Contact Sheila 087 1355318 to let us know you will be attending.

Open Circle will be in the Castle Yard on the evening of 21st September for Culture Night, in the Gallery and also outside as part of the festivities of the night, with a drop in lino printing workshop.

Open Circle Community Arts is showing a short video at the National Design and Craft Gallery in Kilkenny for Culture Night, from a series of workshops which happened in the summer of 2018.

Two groups of women came together through Kilkenny Arts Office and Open Circle Community Arts, to work with visual artist threadstories, to coincide with False Hoods, threadstories solo exhibition at Kilkenny Arts Office, during the Kilkenny Arts Festival.

The workshops offered the opportunity for discussions around privacy, and how we share images and portray ourselves in the digital age. Working intuitively to explore sculpture and form in textiles, using stitch and fibre manipulation each woman created their own mask and unique portrait.

Creative Writing with published author Tara Heavey,  https://taraheavey.com/about-2/  at Open Circle for 6 Monday mornings starting on Monday 17th September 2018 at 10am.

If you are interested contact Sheila 087 1355318 or email opencirclearts@gmail.com

We had a very enjoyable afternoon at Open Circle Arts on Tuesday 14th August for the judging of the Pride Of Place –  Creative Place award.  The Open Circle House was looking wonderful, our exhibition for the AKA Alternative Kilkenny Arts Festival on show for our guests and judges to see

Following a presentation of the programme of activities and projects past and present at Open Circle, the judges had the opportunity to talk to some of the women involved, about their time at Open Circle.  They chatted about Open Circle and the various project they were involved in, including the Social Fabric Portraits where over 90 Kilkenny women stitched their portraits and a selection were unveiled on Interantional Women’s Day on the Lady Desart Bridge.  The Consuming Project , a collaborative theatre project investigating our relationship with clothes and the fashion industry.  Our Paper Cuts and Memory Doll outreach workshops for 2017 and the Textile Explorations  workshops which ran in conjunction with threadstories  exhibition at the Arts Office during this years AKA Festival.  On the day we were all given a  first hand account of the importance of Open Circle Arts to the women of Co Kilkenny.

A very big thank you to all the women who make Open Circle such a success, and in particular to those who came to Open Circle House on Tuesday to tell their stories.  Thank you  to Kilkenny Co Co  for nominating us for the award, and for all their support over the years, in particular to our Arts Officer Mary Butler, who’s continued support enables Open Circle to thrive.  And of course thank you to the judges William Beattie and John Fitzgerald,  Collette Byrne CEO of Kilkenny Co Co, and other guests for coming to our presentation and  for listening to our stories.  Also  Ronan Ryan for all his hard work in supporting all the nominees in their preparations for the awards.

And now we wait to hear in November the outcome of the judging!!! so fingers crossed.

Drawing with Julie Cusack

Natural objects

Intro to textiles (3D) with artist Threadstories

sD with Julie Moorhouse

Open Circle  Community Arts has been nominated for a Pride of Place award.   The purpose of the competition is to acknowledge the work being done every day by communities all over the island of Ireland.   Open Circle is delighted to be  representing Kilkenny in the Creative Place category in the competition.

Open Circle Community Arts celebrated International Womans Day on 8^th March 2018 with an Open House for the women of Kilkenny to drop in and meet other women at the Open Circle House in the city, for a creative morning of art activity, chat and refreshments.

We had a lovely group of women in for the morning, past and present members and some new faces.  Following our papercutting workshops at the end of 2017 with Paul Bokslag we used the skills to make some small papercut work and turned them into cards.

Yvonne Craddock one of the current members of Open Circle then facilitated a Tai Chi & Qi Gong lunch time session at McDonagh Junction.   It was a lovely introduction to this form of exercise /relaxation.

The celebrations continued in the afternoon with many past and present members of Open Circle meeting in the National Craft Gallery for a Crafternoon Tea session that included tote bag printing with Print Block Studio, and an opportunity to view the two wonderful jewellery exhibitions  Rudolf Heltzel and Bounded + Unlimited.