Community Arts News

TASH has supported an even wider range of deserving organisations with grants during 2024.
These are made possible by Gift Aid which TASH claims on membership subscriptions. TASH is a charity and Gift Aid is a government scheme that allows TASH to reclaim 25p of tax for every £1 if members have made a Gift Aid declaration. We also claim a Community Grant of £250 pa from The Arts Society. This is used for a new organisation we are adding to our ‘list’.

Sixth form Art Awards:

Many of you will be aware of the sixth form art awards we make each year. The national Arts Society runs an Art competition each year. TASH submitted seven works by Sixth Formers in our local area. One of these, Self Portrait by Rosie Birchmore of The Piggott School, was short-listed. The public vote for the 2024/25 competition is now open. This is your chance to vote for Rosie! The deadline for voting is 28 February and the winners will be announced in March. Click here to vote.

We also make a grant for art materials and events to Henley College and The Piggott School. Valley Road and Trinity Primary Schools also receive grants for art materials. Special grants are made to Henley College for the Pathways course for SEND students and to The Chiltern Centre which is attended by young adults with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities.

Pathways at Henley College

TASH makes an award of £350 for art materials to the Pathways course at Henley College which is much needed and appreciated. Pathways is a two year course for SEND (Special Educational Needs and Disabilities) students. This work is from their final year show and reflects the dedication and enthusiasm of their art teacher, Joanne Cutts.
The students might move on to the Chiltern Centre, which TASH also supports (with £500) or to Berkshire Agricultural College.

Here are their masterpieces and captions:

The artist Jacob Lawrence 1917-2000 is known for his portrayal of African American contemporary life and historical subjects. The artists learned to paint like Lawrence by looking for shapes within the artworks.

Inspired by The Water Lily Pond at Giverny by Claude Monet 1840 -1926.

The artists have mixed the colours to capture the mood of the original.

These images of The Scream are inspired by the acclaimed painting

by the Norwegian artist Edvard Munch 1863-1944.

Self Portraits by some of the Pathways students –

who could be easily recognised from their artwork!

The group’s award winning Bug Hotel project.

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Henley Music School:
TASH continues to award a grant to Henley Music School, and we look with interest at reports of a possible new home for HMS at Trinity Hall.

The School thrives. They are offering full class music in all schools and have begun with Badgemore, Sacred Heart and Valley Road. They have started using a new registration system for music teachers to use that will enable them to link to pupils, parents and teachers. This means that timetabling, practice notes, correspondence and invoicing can be held in one place. In addition they hope to take part in the Living Adventure Calendar again this year.
Photos of the children from Christmas 2023:

What charming, talented children they are.

New for 2024 was a grant to support the ArtSpark competition run by Henley Arts Trail in conjunction with the Henley Youth Festival.
Bishopsland is a wonderful post graduate educational trust for silversmiths which TASH supported at its home in Dunsden. In September 2024 Bishopsland relocated to the National Trust Rural Skills Centre at Buscot in Oxfordshire, which has workshops for a variety of heritage skills. We hope TASH members will be visit individually or perhaps as a group.

Koestler Arts News:

Our largest award was for Koestler Arts, which helps ex-offenders, secure patients and detainees in the UK to express themselves creatively. TASH has chosen to support Koestler Art’s work with young offenders during 2024. There is an annual exhibition at the Southbank Centre for award winning work. Some members will recall the lecture by Angela Findlay in January 2023 that created great interest in Koestler Arts. Click here to remind yourself of it.

We support Koestler Arts through collected Gift Aid donations. Apart from the initial amount of £800 donated by TASH we have recently been able to donate an additional £600! Needless to say Koestler Arts are thrilled as this additional amount significantly helps them with their core work of running the awards. They have been working hard on preparing for their annual exhibition which you may like to visit.

The exhibition ran from 1st November to 15th December at the South Bank Centre (closed on 13th and 18th November).

Our plan for 2025 is to continue to support each of these organisations - except Bishopsland which is now outside our area. We will instead add another organisation and welcome suggestions from members. Please send your ideas to Marilyn Sturgeon.

The Arts Society Henley rewards local talent 2023

Each year members of The Arts Society Henley are delighted to congratulate the ‘Star Student’ winners of our A level Art Award and to see their work.

We select one or two of the very best pieces from the end-of-year A level shows at Henley College, The Piggott School and Shiplake College for this award. This time the standard of work was incredibly high, and the judges had a real struggle to restrict their selection to just two pieces of art from each school. They chose six exceptional and diverse works of art. The creations also show a real variety in the media used by the students: textile, ceramics, oil paint, acrylic and porcelain, gouache and collage.

This year our winners are Aelenor Berry with ‘Burning Love’, an Elvis inspired white denim cape with appliqué and machine embroidery and Laaiba Rajas with ‘Dying to Live’, a textile wedding bag with machine embroidered tea bag covers, from Henley College;

Amber Harrison with ‘Sea Creature’, ceramic with low fired glazes and Shaden Bakayoko with ‘Self Portrait’, gouache and collage, from The Piggott School;

Rudi O’Keeffe with ‘The Flock’, oil paint and Freddie Carlsson with ‘Fragile Seabirds’, oil paint, acrylic and porcelain, from Shiplake College.

Top from left to right:

The Flock – Burning Love

Bottom left to right:

Fragile Seabirds - Self Portrait – Sea Creature – Dying to Live

Although some students were away at university, we were delighted to be able to meet Aelenor, Shaden and Rudi at the start of our recent lecture at the Rugby Club where they each gave us a short presentation about their work. They all received an award and certificate from the Arts Society Henley (TASH) in recognition of their outstanding artistic achievements

All six pieces have been entered into a national competition run by the wider Arts Society, a leading arts education charity which has a network of 375 local societies in the UK.

One of the aims of The Arts Society Henley is the advancement of the Arts in educational establishments and to encourage and support young people in their artistic endeavours.

We continue to be amazed at the quality and variety of the work we see at the A level shows.

Marilyn Sturgeon/Monnik Vleugels

Henley DFAS

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