PAST PROJECTS

In the last few years, we have worked with a variety of schools and community groups. Some examples of our projects are shown below:

2007

Opened by the Mayor of Camden, Dawn Somper, our biennial education exhibition, the Big Picture, showed the work of a wide range of participants from both our schools and community projects over the past two years.

Sew What? A textile arts project led by Lara Hailey and Sally Taylor ran for a year in partnership with the Young People's Unit at University College Hospital. The project, funded by Children in Need, was aimed at engaging teenage patients in the exploration of a range of textile techniques, materials and art forms informed by contemporary textile art practice. The sessions were designed to be accessible to teenage patients with low physical energy and in some cases limited mobility.

Heritage Lottery funded project A Bitter Aftertaste used the October Gallery's exhibition From Courage to Freedom as a catalyst for art and storytelling workshops in Kingsgate Primary School, Camden, and at the African and Caribbean Elders' Centre nearby. Tuup and Kiran Chahal led the investigation of the transatlantic slave trade and its aftermath, which culminated in an animation, performance and exhibition.

Family Art Days We continued our successful monthly art sessions for young children and their parents. These took place at the gallery and at 1a Children's Centre - the local Sure Start service. Avigail Ochert and Carlos Cortes led our regular sessions. Funded by the Bromfield Educational Foundation.

2006

Aimed at the diverse cultural communities using the holiday playscheme at Camden's Calthorpe Project, Monica de Miranda worked with local children to look at the visual geography of their locale, creating two personalised maps of the UK and a video about themselves. Funded by Awards for All.

Recast. A project that explored ceramics and sculpture with young refugees. Three artists - Susan Swartzberg, Duncan Hooson and Jehan Haddad - led a series of workshops for young people, who sculpted self portraits using a range of materials such as plaster and found objects, created investigative research pieces in ceramic, and built six beautiful, deeply carved ceramic stools for the garden at  the Medical Foundation for the Care of the Victims of Torture. This was a partnership project between October Education and Pan Centre for Intercultural Arts. Funded by Camden Council.

Pathfinder.  Participants from SHP , Kings Cross, who are homeless or in danger of homelessness, took part in a six month project to create mixed media works investigating Holborn, Kings Cross and their environs through photography and print led by artist Edori Fertig, culminating in an exhibition at the Foundling Museum. Funded by Camden Council. "It looks like it should be on someone's wall. I did this". SHP participant

Family Art Days.  These sessions, targeting families with under fives, proved to be a great success. Their aim was to promote the gallery to local families whilst developing children's art skills and creativity. The monthly events, sponsored by Sure Start and the Peabody Trust's Local Network Fund, introduced very young children to the October Gallery's collections through storytelling, song, movement and art. Carlos Cortes, Caroline Jones and Avigail Ochert led the sessions. “A good introduction to an interesting art gallery and space.” Parent. 

2005

Mural project with Richard Cobden School. Kiran Chahal worked with Year 6 pupils from Camden's Richard Cobden Primary School to use themes arising from Romuald Hazoumè's work to look at austerity caused by conflict. The children compared the life of children in the UK in the 1940s and now, creating a life size mural incorporating found, copied and made objects. Funded by ACE and JP Morgan.

Mosaic project with Fitzrovia Youth in Action. FYA near Euston needed to create a dramatic entrance to their basement offices in a narrow stairwell. Vanessa Benson, a mosaicist who has worked with many Camden schools, led workshops where young people from 11 to 19 took part in designing and then painstakingly creating a mosaic that represented what the youth project does. Funded by the Local Network Fund.

Artist Carlos Cortes worked with children from local Holborn nursery, the Thomas Coram Centre. They designed and made translucent panels of coloured drawings for the roof over an exterior play area.

Memory lamps: a project in collaboration with Pan Intercultural Arts. Artist Susan Swartzberg worked with young people referred from the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture to design and make a special lamp. This was painted and embossed with symbols invented by and representing them, based on the calligraphic work of exhibiting artist Rachid Koraïchi.

Adults from the Single Homeless Project, based in Kings Cross, took part in a project to design and make metal ‘memory boxes', engraved with images derived from the complex Sufi symbology of Rachid Koraïchi's work. This project was led by Susan Swartzberg. Funded by NIACE.

The Big Picture exhibition showed the work of users of October Education's programme from mid 2003 to 2005, displaying artworks by pupils from early years' centres; primary, secondary, special needs and hospital schools; and also by young people, adults and the elderly from various community organisations.

Signs of our Times. Creative Partnerships funded Gospel Oak Primary School to work with October Education to investigate the effect of art on literacy. Christine Robinson (calligrapher) and Ndidi Ekubia (silversmith) worked with a year 4 group who engaged in an intensive course of carefully focussed workshops using Rachid Koraichi's calligraphic prints. They learned how to make daffodil stems into paper, and used calligraphic inks and pens for their written pieces. They also designed their own individual crests, which were made into metal ‘flowers', which went into their school garden amongst the real flora, to create a permanent art work as a legacy of the project.

Miriam Zadik Gold, a mosaic artist, and Imogen Ward, a ceramic artist, worked with pupils and staff at Mary Paterson nursery in West London, to teach and develop new techniques of texturing and firing clay. These were used in the creation of five one-metre wide mosaics for the exterior wall of the nursery, based on the theme of ‘habitats'. Children designed the circular panels, and parents, staff and children made the mosaics up over several months. Volunteers worked with the artists to put the mosaics in place.

Susan Swartzberg worked with the children at Thomas Coram Early Learning Centre to design and make a withy hut in their garden, decorated with animals and insects created from recycled polythene bags on circular woven ‘spiders' webs'.

At the Great Ormond Street Hospital School, a group of young people looked at Frantz Lamothe's paintings, and with textile artist Lara Hailey made felt ‘paintings' using the bold colours and imagery based on graffiti, which informs Lamothe's style.

Elderly participants from the African and Caribbean Elders Luncheon Club in Maida Vale took part in story telling workshops both in their Centre and in the October Gallery, led by Tuup. Participants listened to stories from Africa and the Caribbean, and were then encouraged to tell their own.