During February 2023, 7 awards between £500–750 were distributed to assist professional artists, craft makers and designers in their creative development.
Renuka Ramanujam
Emma Henderson
Image: Emma Henderson
Renuka Ramanujam received support in 2023/24 to create their own artist pigments, inks and brushes using a suite of plant and food waste-derived colours in the forms of inks and prototypes such as ‘natural pigment crayons’. Renuka also engaged in several knowledge-sharing events, including an Ink and dye-making demonstration as part of cultural textile workshops in collaboration with The National Archives (Manchester) and a circular economy workshop at Easdale Primary School.
'VACMA has been instrumental in enabling me to take time to learn a skill that can benefit my practice in so many ways. I am so excited to be able to take what I’ve learned into further projects and continue to develop more opportunities for myself with it.' Renuka Ramanujam
Emma Henderson received support in February 2023 to develop skills in screen printing with natural and botanical inks. The award will enable her to undertake an online course and experiment with locally foraged materials.
'I’m really interested in the different ways in which we can, as a society, navigate what I believe is an important question. What happens when the urgent need to protect our environment and the challenges of sustainability come head-to-head with consumerism and our desire to express ourselves as individuals? I want to use this question as an opportunity to work in a different way. My ambition is to transition to natural and botanical inks rather than continue using water-based inks for screen printing. I’m drawn to the tactile quality of screen-printed fabric, the layering of shapes, textures and colours which blend into each other to become something else. These are qualities that I also see in the environment around me. Scotland’s rainforests, most of which sit within Argyll and Bute, are a rare and threatened habitat. They are fascinating other-worldly places, characterised by the layering of plant varieties which all grow in harmony with each other. I use bold colours, shapes and textures to represent the rare mosses, liverworts and lichens that grow in these damp and temperate environments' - Emma Henderson
Find concerts, exhibitions, archives, walks and talks, contemporary dance, theatre and more
Search Jobs, funding, residencies, volunteering & more. If you have an opportunity to share with the network upload it here
