Saturday Club

Arnolfini, Bristol

(1998 - 2002)

Saturday Club was a weekly artist led session aimed at 8 - 13 year olds that Lindsey Fryer (Education Officer) set up at Arnolfini in the early nineties. After volunteering and working as an artist on the project, 

I became Coordinator when Lindsey left to take up a post at Tate Liverpool.

 

The focus of Saturday Club was to enable young people and artists to experiment with art making. It was often related to the exhibitions and live programmes. I viewed Saturday Club as a space for artists to develop and test out their own distinct learning methodologies and connect the sessions to their own practice. Outcomes were often temporary and emphemeral. For two years I documented each session in depth. Download further Saturday Club Documentation. 

 

Saturday Club took place before there were defined training opportunities for early career artists working in education at Arnolfini.

I was very clear about enabling artists to develop workshop planning and delivery skills centred around their practice. Artists who took part include Lucy Pedlar, Shani Ali and Tom Marshman. 

 

Saturday Club was mainly funded through  ticket sales. One consequence of charging participants was they tended to come from postcodes associated with good household incomes. When Michael Prior started as Access and Education Coordinator in 2001 he rethought the model and put Mash Up in place. Mash Up was researched and produced by Jenny Rintoul. It was still artist led, experimental and connected to the programme, but was free and encouraged families to work together rather than providing ticketed activity where children were dropped off for a couple of hours.