Tag Archive for: higher education

Wonderland – 2023 Art Exhibition and Scholarship ceremony

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Wonderland

As we approach the Summer break it feels like the perfect time to look back at the incredibly special summer showcase event we held at the beginning of July. Sponsored by MTD Group and hosted by Conductor London, One Crown Place and Sun Street Hotel in the City of London, we celebrated the creative achievements of all our participants in the last year.

Wonderland Exhibition –  July 2023. Big thanks to Patrick Fry for the amazing graphics!

The exhibition was absolutely brimming with incredible art, all produced by our participants during our programme of creative workshops throughout the year. Guests on the night viewed ceramics, visual art, fashion, film and photographs. All created by people affected by homelessness.

Headpieces on display from our ‘Wearable Art as Fashion’ series of workshops

Beautiful ceramics designed and created by participants

Images from our Analogue Photography workshops

This year we wanted to make the exhibition as interactive as possible so we treated our guests to live screen printing workshops run by the wonderful Nicole Line as well as drawing workshops led by Joshua Beatty. We even had our own DJ booth, designed, built and painted by a group of participants along with Poor Collective.

Screen printing workshop so guests could give it a go too!

One guest loved the print so much that she printed it onto her trousers! Looks so good!

Our DJ booth created together with Poor Collective

As we all gathered together to celebrate the creativity in the room, we felt so privileged that participants Sam and Deon agreed to speak to the audience about their own Accumulate experiences. Sam, as a participant and scholarship winner in 2022, and Deon who is taking part in the MATTA programme, working so hard to inspire creativity in others. Listen to their stories in their own words via our Instagram posts. Sam’s is HERE Deon’s is HERE

Sam spoke about this Accumulate journey

Deon spoke about her experience as a participant on our MATTA course.

As part of the evening were just so excited to present certificates to each participant who attended our workshops as well as the highly anticipated scholarships to selected participants so they can continue their developing their creativity in higher education.

Participants were all presented with a certificate by Chair of Trustees Michelle

After a heartwarming speech from our Director and Founder Marice Cumber, our Chair of Trustees Michelle presented the scholarships to each winner along with their delighted sponsor.  They will study, fully funded, on Access to Higher Education courses in Fine Art, Design and Digital Media and Fashion at either Ravensbourne University or Morley College. Huge congratulations!

Stuart won the Accumulate Ian Shaw photography prize and also received an award of a camera and a year of mentoring by tutor Giulio Mazzarini.

Congratulations Alicia and thank you to sponsor Debra from Grove End Housing

Congratulations Ya’aesh and thank you to sponsor Debra from Grove End Housing

Congratulations to Alexandria and thank you to BOP Consulting for their sponsorship

Congratulations also to scholarship winners Hayley and Sana (not pictured) and sponsors AHMM Architects and EC Bid London.

To round off the celebrations, we were treated to a fashion show of participants all modelling the incredible headpieces they created in our series of workshops ‘Wearable Art as Fashion’. The show was led by previous Accumulate scholarship winner Nikol who really got the crowd going! Check out a video of the show HERE

Nikol led the fashion show!

Amazing pieces! Well done to all the participants.

Accumulate, after it all, is about community. We are so thrilled that so many participants past and present attend our events. A true testament to the experiences they have taken part in and the lasting friendships they have formed.

This was a truly special evening. The perfect showcase for all our participants for their achievements this year. We can’t wait to see what’s next for you all.

Photo credits: Ben Peters Photography

 

 

 

 

 

 

Utopia: A New World for Everyone

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Design, Make & Build Your New World

Brand new for 2022, this project started in April this year. The brief for our participants, to create their own ‘New World.’ Over ten sessions, the final works will be displayed at this summer’s Waterloo Festival which is attended by around 500 people each year. By completing this series of workshops, participants also have the chance to win one of our annual Accumulate scholarships to attend an Access to Higher Education course at either Ravensbourne University or Morley College!

Workshop poster

We are thrilled to partner with Allford Hall Monaghan Morris Architects on this project, giving our participants the chance to work with professional architects and designers to bring their vision to life. We are also so grateful to our funders Arts Council England and Foyle Foundation for their support.

Collage inspiration

Building up their own ‘Utopia’ ideas using collages, sketches and mood boards was a great starting point. So much imagination and thought going into each individual design. Each participant has their own sketchbook so they can carry on developing their ideas and creativity in each session and outside the workshops. The group also worked on models creating ‘mini me’s’ that will live in their own ideal world.

Creating mini me’s! Photo Credit: Chez Christiealice

Discussing and presenting ideas to each other is an important part Accumulate, so everyone can engage, learn and support each other. Climate change and sustainability are major themes for discussion in this project, with tutors showing how they incorporate such important elements into building projects and how they would be central to a new Utopia. Participants took this expertise and then discussed how they would like to incorporate it into their own plans before starting to build their own Utopia models with a focus on the environment.

Photo Credit: Chez Christiealice

Photo Credit: Chez Christiealice

As the weeks past it has been incredible to see how much their model-making skills have developed and their confidence has increased – especially when it comes to discussing their own works and explaining their vision to others. They are an amazing group of people, giving so much support and encouragement to everyone. Our creative community is flourishing!

Photo Credit: Chez Christiealice

Within this project, participants have tried their hand at embroidery and textile design, creative writing, music and voice workshops. All of these elements have been incorporated into the final project including a song that the group have written and will perform at the festival!

Working on lyrics in the Music & Voice workshop

Ten weeks of hard work and creativity are now complete and we are so thrilled to be able to present the participant’s final works to our supporters with a private view event on 7th July, prior to the exhibition at the Waterloo Festival. At this event, we are also presenting the scholarships to selected participants so they can continue their creative education. Join us! We’d love to see you there to help celebrate. DM us over on Instagram for all the details!

 

 

 

Accumulate April Update!

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April 2021 has been a busy month for Accumulate with some exciting new and continuing projects and good news for Accumulate!

Return to The Barbican

We were delighted to be able to return to the learning space at the Barbican Centre early in April to resume our face to face workshops after such a long time. We are equally delighted to have teamed up with the global creative design advertising association D&AD who provided one of their student briefs to design a promotional campaign for lego bricks for this series of workshops.

A new series of workshops began in April 2021

We were very grateful to have a great haul of lego donated to us to use for this project through the generosity of the team at the Barbican and D&AD. The local community in Crouch End were also a huge help donating bricks after a Facebook shout out! The group were so excited to see this mountain of lego and to take part in an Accumulate project that is completely new and different.

Using Lego bricks as our creative medium

 

Our aim on this project is the reverse the hierarchy, bringing top-level creative expertise, teaching and knowledge to people who wouldn’t normally be able to access it. Industry experts Giulio Mazzarini and Natalie Prout from Jones Knowles Ritchie joined us to talk the group through how strategy and creativity work in an advertising environment. We are also very excited to welcome industry speakers from leading creative agencies including Saboteur, GEM, Bullet Proof and We Are Social to join us on this project in the coming weeks to share their expertise and industry insights with Accumulate participants. This will be an amazing opportunity for our participants to gain access to this level of knowledge and also be able to showcase their talent and potential.

Joined by industry experts from JKR Global

At the end of this project in June, there will be an exhibition of the participants work along with three scholarships awarded to selected participants to attend Ravensbourne University! Watch this space!

Donation from Grand Matter

Illustration agency Grand Matter organised a fundraising drive for Accumulate with their super-talented illustrators designing a beautiful collection of blankets which were then sold to raise money for Accumulate. We are so thankful and humbled by this support. Even more so in that it has meant that we can now purchase tablets for the group working on the D&AD project we are currently running, so all our learners can digitise their own creative work. Huge thanks to all the team at Grand Matter.

Students digitise their creativity

Accumulate Art Kit workshops continue

Our Accumulate Art Kits project is still going strong. We ran an excellent ‘Train the Trainer’ session this month with the team from London architecture firm AHMM who put together and led a model making activity with a group of support workers from homeless hostels across the country.

Train the Trainer session with AHMM

This session was so well received by the group and they are now ready to run their own sessions with clients from the hostels they work in using the kits that we provide. We are so pleased to have AHMM join us, giving their time, expertise and support.

Accumulate in Positive News

We were very excited to see the graphic novel that we published last year, Book of Homelessness, featured in an article by Positive News! You can read the full article HERE. We had such a great response to the feature with a great surge of support. The money we have raised from the sales of our book has meant that we have been able to fund a scholarship for an Accumulate participant to attend Ravensbourne University to study on the Access to HE course in Design & Digital Media. As our founder, Marice Cumber told Positive News ‘This is a very special thing. It means that the creativity of a group of people affected by homelessness will support someone else who is homeless to change their lives through creative education.’

Feature in Positive News

Click HERE to read more about Book of Homelessness and purchase your own copy

 

Follow @Accumulate_Ldn on Instagram, Twitter & Facebook!

 

 

 

Accumulate – The Art School for The Homeless

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A new academic year and brings fresh focus for Accumulate

We are Accumulate and we are the first Art School for the Homeless. Based in London, we provide art school level tuition by professional tutors for people who often feel excluded from the regular education system. We work with participants from hostels from all over the capital. We offer each participant the opportunity to find empowerment and the chance to further their education through creativity.

Our course offer is extensive. Joining the Accumulate course means a participant can study a wide range of creative mediums. Our workshops include photography, fashion, visual arts, illustration and film which gives the group room to fully explore their creativity. We work in collaboration with major cultural institutions, universities and industry professionals to support our group’s learning.

This year Accumulate is super ambitious! Our course starts in October running all the way through to June 2020. We offer progression routes via our scholarship scheme onto the Access course at Ravensbourne University London. From there the Accumulate participants go onto the BA course. This is significant as it gives participants the chance to gain a university education which otherwise may not have been possible.

Thank you for following along on our journey. We can’t wait to share with you our new programme of workshops starting this Autumn. Watch this space….there is SO much to come!

Youth Culture – An Accumulate Exhibition

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The Accumulate 2019 Exhibition launches April 2019!

On the 9th April, ‘Youth Culture’ the Accumulate exhibition for 2019 launches at Autograph in Shoreditch, East London. We are so looking forward to showcasing the incredible creative achievements of the group of participants who have taken part in the Accumulate programme this year.

Our group have covered a wide range of creative mediums in a really short space of time, given we only started with the group in January! We have introduced new workshops this year including fashion and sculpture which the group have absolutely loved. Collaborating with some big industry names which has been an absolute thrill for all of us involved.

The Road to Youth Culture

The start of the year brought together the group of participants. Each person taking part is affected by homelessness. Participants have come to from 7 hostels across London. For the first of our workshops we worked with our exhibition hosts and long term collaborators Autograph. Participants got to hear about the context and background to their extensive photographic archive as well as learning new skills with the camera before shooting on location around Shoreditch. Getting out of the hostel environment is a very important element to our project. Participants enjoy the experience of visiting and exploring new places as a focus to their workshop, helping them gain confidence away from the hostel.

On location in Shoreditch (Photo credit Sabela Peinado)

Fashion Workshop

2019 was the first time we have worked with a fashion theme in the Accumulate programme. We collaborated with international fashion brand Levis, London cultural space Somerset House and the photography archive, Youth Club Archive on this workshop. Participants got inspired, working with the theme of Youth Culture, reviewing Youth Club’s amazing social history archive of images. They then went on, using these influences to customise the iconic Levis Trucker Jacket to give it their own unique and personal look. An amazing outlet for self expression, learning new skills and finding inspiration working together as a group. The levels of creativity and imagination was just outstanding!

Customised denim jackets (Photo credit sabelapeinado.com)

With the jackets complete, the group took part in photoshoots outside Somerset House and on location at the Printworks venue in East London. The group were fashion models and photographers for the day! The took  it in turn to photograph each other, perfecting their newly learned camera skills!

Shannon Stevenson Glowing Out Of Turn

Photo Credit Shannon Stevenson, Accumulate Participant

Sculpture Workshop

Along with a fashion workshop, we were so excited to introduce Sculpture to the programme this year. This workshop was kindly funded by Art UK as part of their ‘Art is all around you’ UK wide sculpture project. We also partnered again with our friends at Autograph. We were very excited to hold part of the workshop at the BBC Broadcasting House! Inspired by the sculptures and history surrounding this iconic building, our participants worked on themes that influenced their identity and own ideas of youth culture. They began modelling their sculptures first from cardboard then covering them in plaster before finally painting them with breathtaking results!

Adding plaster to a sculpture (Photo credit sabelapeinado.com)

Zine Making

Amongst all this we also found time to create Issue 4 of the Accumulate zine Decay!! The creative ideas were first produced by our group, putting their own thoughts and feelings down on paper. This work was then passed on the 60 graphic design students at Ravensbourne University who worked to create the final spreads seen in the zine.

Creating at the zine workshop

 

The Youth Culture pop up exhibition will feature all the work our participants have produced during these workshops, including a show of the stunning customised Levis jackets and the official launch of Decay 4. As part of this event we will also be awarding scholarships to selected Accumulate participants, giving them the opportunity to further their creative studies on the Access HE course in Design and Digital Media at Ravensbourne University London. A life changing opportunity.

There is still time to register for this free event – click here.  Please show you support for our participants and come along. We would all love to see you there!