Irvine Camera Club will host public photography walks in North Ayrshire, providing photographic help and advice (artistic and practical) to anyone who attends.
We will follow this up with a Photography Competition open to enter to anyone residing in North Ayrshire. We will judge the competition and award prizes to the winners. As a result of this work, we propose to curate an exhibition of the best images at the Harbour Arts Centre (HAC)
Description
It has been proven that engaging with photography can have a dramatic and positive impact on one's mental health. It encourages mindfullness and fulfilment. It can be a solitary activity but it can also be practised in the company of others in a social setting.
Irvine Camera Club (ICC) has a proven record of working with vulnerable people to deliver positive mental health outcomes. Our latest initiative was a collaboration with Ayrshire & Arran NHS to provide photography workshops for patients in recovery in order to give them a new focus in their lives. This was very successful. We are also an active contributor to the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival. We work closely with NAC Arts & Culture Team team to support their wider activities and to provide photography services for their activities.
Our proposal is that ICC will host a series of photowalks during the summer of 2025, on weekday evenings and at weekends. These walks will be free for anyone to attend and will mainly take place North Ayrshire. We intend to advertise the walks on social media. We will use our regular pages in the Irvine Herald to advertise the photowalks, again at no cost.
The club has the facilities to gather the submissions and to evalutate them. ICC will self fund modest prizes for their chosen overall winner and runners up.
The costs of this project will be in the production of gallery edge-to-edge prints to be displayed at the HAC. We estimate that this will be in the region of £20 for printed artwork on A2 foamex board. We would aim to curate and exhibit 50 images at the HAC.
The overal funding required is therefore £1000.
Once the exhibition at the HAC has finished the art work will be available to be exhibited at other venues across North Ayrshire.
Lots of community and personal benefits from this very simple project, great value and satisfaction from seeing a photograph you created in a public space.
Lots of community and personal benefits from this very simple project, great value and satisfaction from seeing a photograph you created in a public space.