With huge thanks to everyone who visited and joined in one or more of the creative activities on Preston’s Flag Market on Saturday July 23rd, we certainly made our mark! Massive thanks also to all of the artists, creatives and volunteers who helped deliver and of course to Preston City Council and also the Arts Council for enabling us by funding the event. Whilst it was a quiet start due to the rain, as the skies cleared and the sun appeared, things quickly started to get busy.
A rainy start to the day’s activities but it didn’t keep people away or stop them joining in
This year’s Making A Mark event was fundamentally different to previous years, in which the emphasis has been on artists and creatives delivering artworks, installations or performances and visitors observing. This year was all about audience participation so every artist and creative taking part had to come up with ideas for involving visitors and letting them take part, join in, make or create things or generally get involved, whilst also meeting the theme “Immaterial World“.
Join us on July 23rd for Making A Mark 2022 from 12-4pm* on Preston Flag Market. Building on the success of last years’ event, this year everyone attending is invited to join in with artists, with opportunities to create music, drawing, poetry, writing, painting, crafting, drumming – your choice. The theme this year is Immaterial World with a focus on re-use, re-purpose and re-cycle.
So, let’s get green and sustainable with a day of fun and creative activities:
We were delighted to be given the opportunity to be one of the first to make use of The MET – the new Mobile Event Tent in Preston City Centre on Friday June 3rd, the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee bank holiday. It is a fascinating structure and makes a wonderful new addition to creative event space in Preston, although being new there were, as could be expected, a few minor teething issues but these were mostly overcome by the great events team from Preston City Council.
Oxheys artist Evelyn running crafts activity in preparation for Making A Mark
We ran a few activities during the time we were there, including the always popular life drawing, with our lovely model Ruby. Oxheys artists Evelyn and Caroline were also there providing on the hoof workshops for those interested in making using arts and crafts materials. As was Worldwise Samba Drummer’s bandleader Dr Jon Aveyard, running a shaker maker workshop. The samba band were also there to perform.
We are thrilled to have been invited to run some activities at the new MET – the Mobile Event Tent – in Preston city centre, on the site of the old Indoor Market next to the Flag Market. Our thanks to Preston City Council and to Professor Charles Quick at In Certain Places, UCLan for the opportunity.
We are busy putting plans together so watch this space for more info but following on from the feedback we received from Making A Mark 2021 and the most popular activities, it will include performance and drop-in workshops with the Worldwise Samba Drummers and Life Drawing with others still being planned, with opportunities for everyone to join in.
Meanwhile please put Friday 3rd June, the day of the Queen’s Jubilee, in your diaries – we’ll be at the MET all day with actual times to be confirmed. Do come along, say Hello and join in. See you then
After posting online and on Twitter last year that we had been celebrating our 10th birthday in 2021, Twitter decided we were under age and so suspended our Twitter account @Oxheys Despite reporting this error and numerous attempts to seek account restoration, their “support” simply goes around in endless circles – it is impossible to actually make contact with a human. We have pleaded with them to restore our account but still either get no response or a stock email saying the issue seems to be related to a previous report so has been added to that. 6 months later we still have no active Twitter account!
Plans are ongoing for running Making A Mark 2022 on the Flag Market in Preston city centre on 23rd July 2022, for which we are grateful to Preston City Council for their ongoing support. The event will be on a smaller scale this year due to uncertainties ongoing from the pandemic but please do put the date in your diaries, come in to Preston City centre and enjoy some art, some samba and some creativity. More detail will be made available soon. See you then
Our Making A Mark event this year although successful, did not go quite as we had originally planned due to Covid-19 lockdown measures and having been postponed from 2020. Some of the activities could no longer go ahead and some artists could not take part while others were no longer practical or possible, so a complete rethink was needed. The participating artists were fantastic, in most cases adapting their proposals to meet some ever changing guidance as we waited until just a few weeks before the planned date before things could be finalised. We are very grateful to them for their flexibility and support and for being part of such a fantastic event on July 17th.
Worldwise Samba Drummers lead the parade through Preston City Centre on Saturday 17th July as part of Making A Mark 2021. They received second place in the public vote for the favourite activity on the day and were followed by dozens of people as they marched through the city, holding up the traffic down Fishergate and then down to the main road and back up through Friargate to the Harris Museum and Gallery.
At the recent Making A Mark event on Preston Flag Market, we asked visitors to leave their feedback and to vote for their favourite artistic activity or installation. We had an amazing response, with lots of very positive feedback so huge thanks to everyone who filled in and left their feedback forms. Over 98% of visitors said they would attend a similar event in the future with over a third mentioning the lovely atmosphere. We were very lucky with the weather however and being the first event as lockdown lifted that no doubt helped.
The results have been checked and verified and we are delighted to announce the winners are:
At Oxheys we have always firmly believed in community and making or facilitating art in the community is what we do and what we enjoy. In the lead up to our Making A Mark event on Preston Flag Market on 17th July 2021, some of our artists ran workshops in the community which were even more important when so much activity had stopped due to the pandemic.
Evelyn and Caroline ran two pre-event workshops at Preston Market and covered various book making, card making and related subjects. An unexpected opportunity then let them run two more workshops, one at the community cafe in Ashton, which was a great venue and was welcome as not much activity had been taking place in the area due to the pandemic.
