Reflective blog by Combine to Create Programme Coordinator Elidh Brown about the Combine to Create Collective’s summer gathering.
Last week the Combine to Create Collective, Findhorn Bay Arts team, and Michael Johnson from Glasgow School of Art (GSA) gathered for a day together at the beautiful GSA Campus on the Altyre Estate.
We spent the morning listening to one another, weaving words, as well as threads, paper and fabrics, through conversations on each artists’ residency, and the Combine to Create programme as a whole, as we progress through the year making voices visible and looking towards legacy.
The warm breeze tempted us to picnic outside at lunchtime, returning refreshed for our afternoon session with Michael, who walked us through the next steps of working together with Glasgow School of Art to produce a learning report.
As a multi-year programme made up of many different strands and residencies with people and communities in Moray, Combine to Create offers an abundance of possibilities. The partnership between Glasgow School of Art and Findhorn Bay Arts through Combine to Create now takes one step further.
Findhorn Bay Arts is commissioning the learning report to use rigorous academic methods to hone into and select key stories and impacts, that can then be shared and communicated.
These will help inform and shape how this work can be embedded in the way we all work: as individual artists; as people and communities in Moray; for FBA as a leading and learning cultural organisation; and it’s partners, as part of the vibrant and creative community and cultural sector in Moray, Scotland and beyond.
The connections and relationships built through the programme are resulting in an array of great stories to tell, whilst the mindful weaving activity on our day together kept us present, attentive to one another, focused on the now and next steps, with a sense of hope and optimism for the future.
Photographs: Jason Sinclair
Find out more about Combine to Create on our project page.
