It's taken us a long time to get here but we've finally managed it- life drawing in the beautiful Billiard Room! This evening class took place just in time for Halloween, which is perfect as Margaret Macdonald was very much inspired by fairytales and all things 'Spook School.' Life drawing was part of our CLE strand 'Supporting Local Artists' which waives room hire fee so that professional artists can earn a living wage from their craft. Keep an eye out for our next workshops: bookbinding, lampshades and Winter Eco crafts.
Abercorn ASN School Visit
Abercorn School returned for another visit this year, and we were especially delighted as they are neighbours! A visual treasure like this is a perfect learning resource and this time my favourite part of the exploration of the building was everyone laughing at how the curved stained glass in the fireplaces distorted their faces. Abercorn made some beautiful works of art in our stencil class, sampled the tea and cakes in the tearoom and finished off their day dressing up. We give the underskirt+parasol look a 10/10!
Supporting Local Artists: Painting Edition
Our second 'Supporting Local Artists' workshop was painting and what a success it turned out to be. Led by artist Karin Hepburn 11 painters turned their hand to Frances Macdonald's beautiful 'Spring.' But before the brushes came out there was a tour of the building for inspiration, and a glass of prosecco for courage! Half time cakes helped everyone when it came to adding the colour.
In 1903 and 2014 this building benefitted from incredible artists bringing it to life, so we're more than happy to provide ways to support local artists in any way we can.
Keep an eye out for more workshops coming up, including lifedrawing, paperfolding and more painting.
Bus, train, bus, seaside! Residential home outreach programme
It was a very early start for our Creative Learning Manager recently when she left the Southside of Glasgow for an outreach session in Cramond, Edinburgh this month. Of course the old truism of Scottish weather (if it's raining in Glasgow it's sunny in Edinburgh) proved the case when the bus finally pulled up in Cramond village.
One of the strands of our 3 Year Creative Learning Strategy plan is to tackle social isolation in older people by providing outreach visits, and most especially to care and residential homes. We kicked off the programme with this visit, and what a lovely one it was. Residents enjoyed a talk and presentation about Mackintosh At The Willow, and it was great to hear folk's memories of shopping on Sauchiehall Street back when it was a bit more upmarket than it is nowadays (Daly's department store, anyone?)
Supporting Local Artists: Paperfolding Homeware Edition
As part of our 3 year Creative Learning Strategy Plan we are committed to supporting local artists in their careers. As any freelancer will know, it's almost impossible to make ends meet when you have to pay for transport, materials and room hire for workshops. Many of Scotland's incredible artists end up earning less than minimum wage after they've covered all these costs.
Here at Mackintosh At The Willow we are fortunate enough to have a dedicated Creative Learning workshop room that we use for schools and community groups. It makes sense that we offer this for free to Glasgow's artist community, to mitigate the cost of teaching crafts. This A-listed building wouldn't exist without all the talented original and 21st century craftpeople who have contributed to it, so it feels like the right thing to do to lend a hand where we can.
We were delighted to welcome professional paper artist Kate Colin to the building to run our inaugural workshop. Her incredible homewares (lampshades, vases, baubles) are both eyecatching and unique. It's truly amazing what you can do with a piece of good quality paper and a scoring tool!
ANOTHER SUCCESSFUL DOORS OPEN FESTIVAL
September is a very special time in the city's calendar as the wonderful Doors Open Festival takes place. The ethos of Doors Open is 'access to heritage buildings for everyone' so places such as ourselves open for free for folk to come and explore. This weekend we ran early bird and evening tours for free, which allowed around 100 people to come and visit this masterpiece. Most folk had never been here before, most were local and lots said 'ach, I've walked past loads of times and never come in and now I'm so glad I did" so hurrah for Doors Open!
This year the theme of the festival was 'sustainable communities' so we also made a digital film showing off how we upcycle our chipped Burleigh crockery into lovely new jewellery (well, Jon from Crafted glass does all the hard work...) If you'd like to watchit just pop onto the Doors Open Glasgow 2021 website: https://glasgowdoorsopendays.org.uk/activities/no-name-6/
Roll on Doors Open 2022
Take A Seat: Mackintosh and Chairs- podcast edition
Episode 7 of our podcast, Time For Tea:1903 is now up on the website and this smonth we are learning all about Mackintosh Chairs. We're very proud of the brilliant Scottish furniture makers Kelvin Murray (Character Joinery) Bruce Hamilton and Angus Ross, who together made 400 pieces of furniture for this building.
If there' a heritage topic you'd like us to cover in future episodes feel free to drop us a line and we will see what we can do.
Tactile Tours For Deafblind Visitors
It's been a longtime coming but we're delighted to be able to launch our special tactile tour for blind and deafblind visitors! It's been an absolute revelation to plan the touch-based tour as it turns out this building is full of incredibly tactile objects. Starting in the main tearooms there's the baldaccino, the fireplace and sconces, the ceramic tiles, the chairs, the linen walls, the stencilwork and the stained glass. Upstairs in the Salon de Luxe of course the main focus are the outstanding leaded glass kimono doors, but let's not forget the coat stands, crockery, window handles and of course more original stained glass! We finished off in the Billiard Room, where Miss Cranston's silk dress and Mackntosh's wool coat proved big hits for dressing up, and the tea smelling station added that extra sensory experience to round off the visit.
Thanks so much to Deafblind Scotland for visiting and for Flynn and Sia, the VIP guidedogs, for helping to guide visitors through the building and let us pet them. Who doesn't love a guidedog?!
Out With The Paint for Family Workshops
Our summer holiday workshops continue to prove popular, with every place being snapped up so far. These workshops are free and it's been lovely to hear kids and parents chatting about how they feel getting ready to go back to school after Covid19 disruptions of the academic year 2020-21.
Since Mackintosh is often on the curriculum, a visit to the building to do some art inspired by the architect and artist is the perfect way to bring this Glaswegian to life.
SUMMER HOLIDAYS STENCILLING FUN
It's the summer holidays so we've been running some free stencilling workshops for kids and grownups in our Creative Learning Room. The key is to remember you don't need too much paint! Mackintosh used stencils throughout the building to create wonderful decorative effects and the Gallery area is probably the best place to sit if you want to admire his handiwork. During term-time our stencilling workshop is one of main reasons teachers and pupils love to come visit.