Harborough Artist Cluster

The Harborough Artist Cluster (HAC) is an artist-led group promoting the work of visual artists and crafts people in the Harborough District, Leicestershire. Their diverse arts activities include open studios, art in shop windows, exhibitions, drawing events and school workshops.

For Drawing Inspiration HAC artists mentored local Art Foundation students, giving them hands on experience of planning and delivering creative workshops. Together they helped adults with learning difficulties, and support staff, to develop Photoshop and Power Point skills and create a ‘Virtual Tour of Market Harborough’. For ’The Big Street’, participants made maps of the town centre in 2D, 3D and on-screen, focusing on past, present and imagined shops, buildings and people. The project followed on from earlier work with schools and an open-air event for families.

Weekly sessions using simple painting and mark-making, printmaking, textiles and digital media were specially designed for hard to reach adults with motor and concentration issues. Maintaining concentration is often difficult for this group and the variety of activities was found to hold their attention for longer. Computer-based artworking allowed those uncomfortable with ‘messy’ art and busy rooms to fulfil their artistic potential. This platform enabled drawing to be incorporated with other found images.

Printmaking Sessions

Participants drew on polystyrene tiles and printed from them with block printing inks. As staff and service users became more confident layering and colour mixing was introduced. Staff were impressed that even adults with profound learning difficulties were able to enjoy this activity.

Mentored by the artists, some students took part in a compilation session, exploring surface texture with paint and mark-making tools. They were introduced to simple painting and mark-making techniques and new sensory tactile elements, encouraging observation, experimentation and collaboration whilst building confidence in individual expression.

Service users with poorer motor skills needed assistance in holding the rollers but the soft polystyrene tiles were easy for most to draw on.  
Once the session was under way some of the more confident service users began to work on canvasses and other surfaces. They began building layers of images to create street scenes using drawings of buildings in Market Harborough. One student was particularly experimental and was able to try different processes with smaller tiles and detailed sections overprinted on larger images. This prompted other service users to try similar ideas in their own work.

Computer Sessions

These sessions began with a beginners’ introduction to Photoshop for adult learners with motor and learning difficulties, and their staff and volunteers. The key Photoshop concept of ‘layers’ was made tangible by participants drawing onto acetates to create images of their town centre, supported by one-to-one basic Photoshop tuition on placing and manipulating images.

In another session service users learnt how to use pens, fingers and smiley face symbols to draw straight onto an interactive white board and to combine those elements with images selected and manipulated on screen using Photoshop tools. As participants became more practised in using the on-screen tools they were able to start exploring the programme for themselves. Some participants found using the mouse very difficult but others slowly gained more confidence; especially when reassured that they could undo their choices.

Final Outcome

The planned public exhibition of the artwork on site at the Roman Way Day Centre proved not to be possible, although the process of making the work had been generally visible in the building. A CD from the project, ’A Virtual tour of Harborough’, was widely shown and larger and more accessible exhibition venues were secured through other partnerships. A new partnership with Market Harborough Building Society enabled work to be shown there, and all the work created during ’The Big Street’ was subsequently exhibited in the foyer of Harborough Theatre in November 2009.