Adult Learning offer a range of other evening classes, details of which can be found on their website www.learnshetland.com where you can also enrol online.

Music Technology

Pro Tools 101 – An Introduction to Pro Tools.

Introduction to the industry standard digital audio production software package. The course includes Pro Tools functionality; digital audio theory, recording, editing and mixing; MIDI sequencing and software synthesizers. Included in the course is the official ‘Pro Tools 101′ book and instructional DVD. Students are eligible to undertake the Pro Tools 101 exam to gain an industry certified qualification. Tutors: Fraser Mouat, Thomas Cockayne and Bryan Peterson.

12 week course from 14 September (Tuesdays, Lerwick) – more details

Cubase for Beginners

Learn to use Cubase software to record and edit digital audio and midi, apply effects, mix down tracks and produce your own CDs. Tutor: Fraser Mouat.

4 week course from 15 February 2011 (Tuesdays, Lerwick) – more details

Digital DJ’ing – An Introduction

The course covers software and hardware setup, loading music from an iPod or USB drive, beatmatchining, EQ use and set construction. Tutor: Fraser Mouat.

4 weeks from 11 January 2011 (Tuesdays, Lerwick) – more details

Graphic Design

Graphic Design for Digital and Print

The course covers an introduction to graphic design skills for digital and print formats, featuring practical exercises using pencil/paper and graphics software. Tutor: Jono Sandilands.

6 weeks from 20 September (Mondays, Lerwick) – more details

Creative Writing

Creative Writing – Beginners

The hands on leaner centred course covers creative writing techniques and how to employ them, such as looking at different ways to start writing and to access and develop ideas.  Tutor: Jen Hadfield

10 weeks from 13 September (Mondays, Lerwick) – more details

Creative Writing – Advanced

The course covers poems and short stories, developing and improving creative writing, increasing confidence and skills and preparing for publication. Tutor: Donald Murray.

10 weeks from 13 September (Mondays, Lerwick) – more details

Crafts

Creative Needle Felting

The course covers needle felting onto silk and other fabrics.  Needle felting is a creative process, which can be used to embellish a garment, scarf etc. Tutor: Mary Thomson.

5 weeks from 21 September (Tuesdays, Brae) – more details

The Process of Design

The course covers the whole design process, from sketchbook to final product. Tutor: Emma Blain

10 weeks from 14 September (Tuesdays, Scalloway) – more details

For more information see Gman

and follow the intriguing story…

view images of the work on show

A Craft Research trip to Orkney, including a Makers’ Day at the Pier Arts Centre, Stromness 23rd-27th September 09 in collaboration with HI- Arts, Orkney Islands Council and the Pier Arts Centre, Stromness

Craftmakers from Orkney and the Highlands and Islands of Scotland are meeting together in Stromness on the 25th September. It’s an opportunity for Shetland makers to join them and to add value, do further research on craft marketing and development in Orkney, to gather information, share our successes, and learn through shared experiences.

Shetland Arts is part-funding 10 places for Shetland-based craftmakers to attend the weekend events in Orkney. See below for further information and application form

info and application form

Shetland Arts’ Creative Connections is a marathon, seven-day and night festival, celebrating the contemporary creative culture of Shetland, incorporating four summer schools, cultural and creative visits across the islands, showcase concerts and dances, a specially curated exhibition and an artist residency.  This event is part of Scotland’s Year of Homecoming and takes place throughout Shetland between 3 – 9 August.

Now into its sixth year, Fiddle Frenzy is Shetland’s renowned fiddle school using top exponents of their craft to teach tunes and techniques drawn from the unique island traditions as heard world wide by our contemporary performers. In addition to the daily workshops held throughout the week in Lerwick, Whalsay and Fetlar, Fiddle Frenzy provides seven days of concerts in Lerwick’s Garrison Theatre, at the Clickimin Centre, in the village of Voe and on the island of Fetlar. This year’s showcase concerts include performances by Aly Bain and Phil Cunningham, Fiddlers Bid, Bryan Gear and Violet Tulloch, Fullscelidh Spelemannslag, Kevin Henderson, the Heritage Fiddlers and many more.

For 2009 there have been additions made to the week long summer school event.  ‘Art Craft Experience’ is based on Shetland’s well known textile culture, grown from our knitting techniques and continuous creative development. During the workshops the tutors will teach basic Shetland knitted structures and their contemporary application for creative textiles.  Afternoon visits will take students to the studios of some of Shetland’s visual artists, craft makers and applied artists, to see their work and share in their experiences of working as an artist in Shetland. Students will visit the Bonhoga Gallery for the ‘Diaspora’ exhibition featuring four Shetland artists who have chosen to live outwith Shetland, and four artists who have made their home in the islands.  An artist in residence with family connections in Shetland, Hazel White, will spend a month at The Booth, an artist living/working space in Scalloway.  She will take part in some of the workshops while developing a project around her work in digital jewellery.

‘Makkin’ Wi Wirds’ is the title of the writing workshops with T.S. Eliot Prize winner, Jen Hadfield, exploring ideas of place through praise poem, myth and music. Shetland has a well respected literature scene, and these workshops will give students the encouragement to realise their ideas and visit some of the dramatic sites that have inspired some very high profile writers, from Robert Louis Stevenson to Will Self. Students will have an opportunity to share their compositions by stepping up to the ‘open mike’ at Creative Connection Club nights.

Another integral part of Creative Connections is ‘Shetland’s Storytelling Festival’, our top storytellers accompany the afternoon cultural trips and provide an insight into the folklore of the islands and the contemporary yarning that still flourishes in day to day Shetland life, act as hosts for the concerts and the festival club and provide that invaluable insight to Shetland past and present.

Clickimin Comedy is a stand up comedy event on Friday 7th at the Clickimin Centre, Lerwick, featuring visiting comedians Michael Redmond, Steven Dick and Eilidh MacAskill together with local comedian Les Sinclair and compère Sandy Nelson. The event is part of Shetland Arts comedy development programme which has so far included events such as Stand Up At Sound and Stand Up Helly Aa.

Creative Connections ‘Festival Club’ at the Garrison Theatre, provides a chance, each evening after the concerts, for all students and visitors to mix and enjoy traditional music and storytelling sessions until the early hours.

Bookings can be make from Shetland Box office 01595 745555 or in person from Islesburgh Community Centre, King Harald Street, Lerwick.

Contact us for more information on Creative Connections.

Alison Willoughby, established and innovative textile designer, selling and exhibiting both in Britain and abroad opens Shetland Arts Bonhoga gallery exhibition programme for 2009 with an exhibition entitled ‘Skirt’.  The exhibition opens with a preview on Sunday 11 January 2009, 2.30 -4.30 pm, and everyone is welcome.  Renowned for her highly individual and hand constructed intricate skirts; she was initially known as ‘skirtgirl’.  However, she has since branched out into menswear and womenswear, and more recently into shop and gallery installations.

Alison became interested in textiles whilst studying Foundation Art and Design at Trowbridge College in Wiltshire.  She started by experimenting with pattern, working on different types of paper, using dyes, inks and textures and it quickly became apparent that textiles was an area in which Alison had great talent and it was suggested by her tutors she specialise in the discipline at university.  She was accepted into the Glasgow School of Art to study a BA in Printed and Knitted Textiles and it was here she was able to work with fabric, focusing on print techniques, knitting and deconstruction, and incorporating haberdashery materials, such as mourning pins from her grandmother’s attic, into her work to create interest and pattern.  On graduation, Alison went on to gain an MA in Constructed Textiles Mixed Media from the Royal College of Art in 2001.
It is of no surprise that Alison turned her hand to art and fashion. As relative’s occupations included tailors, boot makers, artists, architects, photographers, gardeners and seamstresses.  Alison recalls her mother’s dressing-up box – full of old petticoats, taffeta skirts, ostrich feathers and clothes from the 1930s to 1960s passed down through the generations – and the fun she and her sister would have wearing them around the house.  Bonhoga will copy this idea and provide a dressing up box in the gallery for children to dress up and be photographed in their chosen ensemble.

It was while studying at the Royal College of Art that Alison began her career as a skirt maker.  For Alison, a skirt is more than just a garment – it is a work of art in its own right.  Made without darts, they are flat, unaffected, timeless, classic and simple; they are the canvas on which she works, and she enjoys adding structure and interest to them with three-dimensional objects such as glass spheres, hat pins and lighting filters.  She experiments with various techniques: moulding and illuminating, screen printing with paper stencils, foiling, mark making, embroidery, hand stitching, ruffling, tailor tacking, cording and cut work with scissors to create sliced, carved, shaved, chiselled and sculpted pieces.

Much of the inspiration for her pieces comes from the depths of the inner city: lanes, alleys, passages, streets and terraces – places that are neglected, ever-changing, disintegrating and subsiding.  Crumbling walls, fly posters laid one on top of the other, weathered peeling paint, marks and stains, the kaleidoscope of colour, texture, tone, scale, shape, proportion, pattern, line and placement. She records these images through photography, amassing hundreds of stills to dissect then translate into fabric samples, and later into skirts.  Once the process is complete, the finished skirts are designed and made by Alison herself.  She works in a variety of materials and is constantly collecting unusual textiles, such as the insides of ties, hats or jackets to use in her work.

Part of her process is to layer fabric samples, one on top the other, then cut shapes out of them.  These are then sewn down the middle and opened out to create a three-dimensional object, which is, in turn, placed in situ on a mannequin, sketched, and eventually sewn into position on the finished skirt. No inspiration or technique is let unexplored.  Alison likes to work and handle her fabric by ripping strips, gathering ruffles, corrugating squares, scoring lines and shaving circles.  There may be accidents with a drop of ink or printing pigment, but these are incorporated into the finished product.

Artists such as Armand Fernandez, Robert Rauschenberg, Niki de Saint Phalle, Jonathan Miller, Dorothy Bohm, Walker Evans, Sean Scully and Antoni Tapies all use surface, patchwork and repetition, as well as the accumulation of materials to form their work.  All are of great inspiration.

Alison’s skirts have been worn as garments and displayed in glass cases on the wall.  She would now like to venture into installations.  She was awarded the prestigious Crafts Council Development award in 2002 and has shown at the Chelsea Craft fair, and more recently at Origin.  She previously completed commissions for Liberty and the Arts Council of England.  Her solo shows include the British Council’s window gallery in Prague, visited by the Ambassador of the Czech Republic; Urban Outfitters in both London and Glasgow, Black Swan Arts in Frome, Somerset and The Atrium Gallery, Glasgow.  She has designed for Oilily, ZPM, Susan Cianciolo, Julian Roberts, and Tait and Style Knitwear in Orkney.  She also regularly undertakes private commissions.

Further information:
Mary Smith 01595743737