Dorset Art Weeks

The bi-annual Dorset Arts Week is upon us and I’m busy this week getting ready to invite visitors into my studio.

Dorset Art Weeks is a fabulous festival of the arts across the whole of Dorset that spans 2 weeks starting on 25 May 24 and ending on 9 June 24. During this time you can visit hundreds of working artists and crafts people in their workshops, studios or at exhibitions. The county is divided into 4 sections so it’s easy to find out what is happening near you or take a day out to visit new places.

Dorset Art Weeks is the forth open studio style event I have taken part in starting with Open Up Sheffield almost 15 years ago. That event pretty much launched me in Sheffield and I can’t recommend taking part enough. It’s a great way to meet people, talk about your work and receive that valuable feedback. For my fist Open Up I scrubbed by studio to within an inch of its life and presented a pristine environment. I received a lot of commissions during that event and over the next few weeks, my customers came back to collect their work. Over this time the workshop had slowly returned to chaos and to my surprise, everyone told me this was much more interesting, half finish projects littering the benches and pretty much every tool I have out amongst the jumble. After that I never over cleaned by workshop for Open Up events again, I let my visitors see what really happens in the workshop.

After a good few and enjoyable years of Open Up Sheffield, I moved to a workshop in Sherwood Forest, Nottingham and joined their open studio event Open Studios Notts. As the Sheffield event ran over two weekends across one city and it’s surrounding areas, Open Studio Notts ran across the whole county of Nottinghamshire over a month. I participated in that event for two years before moving to Sutherland in Scotland. 

Sutherland and the West Coast of the Scottish Highlands attracts a lot of creative people practising many disciplines due to it’s rugged beauty. After a few years living and working there I become part of a collective that launched an open studio trail across the parishes of Assynt and Coigach and so the Assynt and Coigach Creatives was born. I only had a chance to take part in one trail before Covid hit and the group, like many open studio events were forced to take a break.

After the birth of my daughter and move to rural Dorset, I took part in my first Dorset Art Weeks when Lily was just over a year old and I was returning to work. Like my first Open Up Sheffield, I saw this as a chance to re-launch myself, meet new people and network with other artists and makers in the county. This weekend will be I believe, the 10th open studio event I’ve taken part in across 2 countries and 4 counties. It will be a little different this time as I won’t have my full workshop at the location. When I signed up to Dorset Art Weeks, I worked from my home studio in Drimpton and since then, I have taken on a fantastic new workshop at Rampisham Down. Visitors to Drimpton over the next few weeks will still find me working on silver jewellery projects and a display of my silver jewellery so it’s still worth the visit and all will be invited to my open day at Rampisham on 21 June. 

Visiting open studio events is a great way to meet the artist, learn more about their the person and their work and I can highly recommend it wherever you are in the country, there will be an open studio trail near you. I look forward to seeing my visitors at Drimpton and please take a look at the website for places to visit near you.

Dorset Art Weeks https://www.dorsetartweeks.co.uk/

Open Up Sheffield https://openupsheffield.co.uk/

Open Studio Nottinghamshire https://www.osnotts.co.uk/

Assynt and Coigach Creatives https://assyntandcoigachcreatives.co.uk/index.php,