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Posted on August 19, 2022August 19, 2022 by admin

Seacourt Summer

SEACOURT SUMMER

OPEN STUDIO WEEK 2022

OPEN TUESDAY 23rd AUGUST UNTIL SATURDAY 27th AUGUST 10AM to 4PM

Seacourt Summers is back! We are opening the doors of the old Ulster Bank in Bangor, Northern Ireland, once again to share the magic of printmaking! Drop in, say hello and try out some printmaking workshops. We have lots of fun activities for everyone to enjoy and an amazing new exhibition “Something for the weekend” by Jessica Hollywood.

PRINT YOUR OWN BANGOR SOUVENIRS
Totes and Tees – Buy a tote bag to print or bring your favourite t shirt and take home a limited edition design by Jessica Hollywood

BANGOR BY THE SEA POSTCARDS
Hand print a vintage postcard and paint it to make it your own.

PRINTMAKING TASTER
Pop in for ten minutes or stay for a few hours and add you own artworks to our BANGOR BY THE SEA bunting. You can try intaglio, letterpress, and monoprinting and our artists will be on hand to show you how.

Posted on November 24, 2021November 24, 2021 by Emma Drury

With Heart and Hand

In spring 2021, Northern Ireland Screen’s Digital Film Archive commissioned six artists from Seacourt Print Workshop in Bangor to make a creative response to With Heart and Hand, a UTV programme made in 1966 to commemorate the Battle of the Somme. For the programme, UTV recorded interviews with veterans who recalled their experiences in that famous battle, and throughout WW1. The footage also captures poignant stories from the home front during that time.

During the project, the artists viewed and discussed the footage and shared their thoughts and ideas with each other and they drew inspiration from this process for their own work.

The partnership project has resulted in a series of prints, where each of the artists has interpreted the rich source material in their own unique way.

Posted on September 16, 2021November 20, 2021 by admin

Seacourt Relocates To Bangor Town Centre

SEACOURT RELOCATES TO BANGOR TOWN CENTRE!

SEACOURT COMES FULL CIRCLE WITH RELOCATION TO ICONIC BUILDING IN HEART OF TOWN CENTRE

Seacourt Print Workshop is delighted to be taking up residence in the Ulster Bank Building, on Bangor Main Street.

The building has stood unoccupied since 2017 following the closure of the bank but many of the banking idiosyncrasies remain, such as the beautiful, caged vault, pneumatic tube banking systems, and the iconic front elevation, which is Grade B1 listed. The building was built in 1920 and in its 101st year we hope to bring it back to life, contributing to the regeneration of Bangor, and its revival as an arts and culture destination, locally and beyond.

As we celebrate our 40^th anniversary we feel extremely fortunate to be moving into such a well-known premises, at the heart of our hometown, where it all began, in 1981. Seacourt is an open access printmaking studio which is utilised by people of all ages with fantastic resources, ranging from etching and letterpress to lithography and screen-printing. A town centre location has been a long-held ambition for our charity and we hope to play a part encouraging more people to Bangor’s town centre with a dedicated exhibition space and programme of high profile exhibitions.

Our 80 members are looking forward to welcoming people to exhibitions, events, and workshops later in the year as we celebrate our 40^th anniversary in our unique new home. As early as next month, the public can expect to see a number of new courses on offer, such as ‘Print and Prosecco’, a new membership certification course, and lots of workshops and events in the pipeline for 2022.

As we have packed up our prints, our inks and equipment in our Balloo premises we have enjoyed rifling through our workshop uncovering lots of amazing equipment, interesting archive documents including a letter from Hilary Clinton to our co-founder Margaret Arthur, dating back to 1998, following her exhibition at the United States Capitol Rotunda, Washington DC.

Seacourt’s Director Emma Drury says, “We very much hope Seacourt’s new town centre location will place us back on local people’s radar. When we held our #bangorbythesea town centre pop-up event in 2019, we realised that many (local residents) didn’t know where we landed after we left the basement of the Carnegie Library. We hope that being in close proximity to transportation links will help us open up our services to more people during what will be a pivotal time for our organisation’s development.”

What the motivations were for moving.

The Ulster Bank is Seacourt’s fifth and forever home. We look back fondly to our time at Seacourt Teacher’s Centre and in the basement of Carnegie Library where we were close to the centre of Bangor. In the early 1990’s we hoped to secure a town centre location and undertook a feasibility study and drew up some ambitious plans but we were unable to find premises that worked and we relocated to Balloo industrial estate. Our services grew again and we took a larger unit but whilst we had lots of space we lacked passing visitors and community.

As Bangor moves towards regeneration we wanted to locate our organisation in the centre of things and play our part in the changes that are ahead. We believe that our town centre needs cultural organisations to help rejuvenate and attract people to have experiences.

We will be working over time to renovate and redevelop the Ulster Bank Building ensuring the building is improved and does not stand empty and fall into disrepair. We are excited about the potential the building offers for creativity.

When will Seacourt be open again or hope to be open again.

Seacourt will be open to our members by the beginning of October and we will be offering exhibtions, courses and events over the coming months. We are celebrating our 40^th anniversary and will be welcoming people in to a series of celebrations between October and December 2021.

What the benefits are of the new Seacourt HQ.

Our new building places us in a landmark building in the town centre where we can connect people to creativity. We hope this will allow us to grow our membership, increase the health and wellbeing driven services we offer and give our artists the opportunity to share their amazing work with greater numbers of people.

We will also bring imagination and entrepreneurship to the town centre. Working with partners like Open House and Boom Studios we want to help the cultural life of the town consolidate and grow, providing employment for artists and engaging people of all ages in creative activities.

Our new building is 5 minutes walk from the train station and the excellent public transport links will help us be more accessible.

“We are thrilled to return to Bangor’s town centre and we will play an active role in rebuilding the Main Street and in the broader regeneration of the town. We think there is huge potential in the town and hope we can work with others to see it grown and develop.”

We have just launched a modest selection of courses for the Autumn based in our new premises. We have been carrying out some essential maintenance to the interior of the building to get it ready for our members to return and invite you all to visit our new home in due course. We will also be exhibiting Joanne Fitzpatrick’s ‘Reconstruct’ exhibition once we open, on the lead up to our annual members’ Christmas Exhibition.

You can travel to Seacourt by car, bus or train and there is plentiful, reasonably priced parking throughout the town including at the rear of Bingham Mall, the Seafront and the Vennel.

Posted on September 10, 2021September 15, 2021 by admin

Seacourt is moving!

SEACOURT ARE MOVING!

Four relocations later, Seacourt Print Workshop is moving again, for what will hopefully be the last time. We have been busy packing up our workshop, uncovering lots of historic artefacts and reminiscing about how far Seacourt has come over the past 40 years.

We found a number of interesting things in the workshop whilst we rummaged through, such as this letter from Hilary Clinton, addressed to our co-founder Margaret Arthur following her Exhibition at the US Capitol Hall Rotunda, Washington DC 1998 (below). This is a very exciting time for Seacourt as we move into what will hopefully be our permanent home.

We have been very busy as we have had a mere 6 weeks to vacate our Balloo premises, and have had some huge logistics to compete with, such as how to relocate (safely) 40 years worth of printmaking materials, presses, furniture, artefacts, exhibitions and artefacts to our their new home. Our members have come across a few gems from the archive during the packing up, including an etching of Seacourt’s first home, by the late Jean Duncan, gifted to Emma Drury on her appointment as Director of Seacourt Print Workshop in 2018. Jean was one of Seacourt’s co-founders, alongside Margaret Arthur, as they set about to create a print workshop close to their home town of Bangor back in 1981.

We look forward to sharing our new location soon as we focus now on some essential maintenance and getting our presses sitting comfortably in our new home, which could not be more perfect for our artists and artistic community.

We are ambitiously working towards our Autumn programme of printmaking courses that will be released next week. Stay tuned as I am sure you will all want the opportunity to create in our beautiful new forever home!

See you on the other side!

Seacourt Members’ Annual Christmas Exhibition

Seacourt members are delighted to invite you to their annual Christmas Exhibition at Bangor’s old bank this Christmas.

Seacourt Summer

Seacourt Summers is back! Drop in, say hello and try out some printmaking. We have some fun activities for everyone to enjoy!

With Heart and Hand

In spring 2021, Northern Ireland Screen’s Digital Film Archive commissioned six artists from Seacourt Print Workshop in Bangor to make a creative response to With Heart and Hand, a UTV programme made in 1966 to commemorate the Battle of the Somme.

Seacourt Relocates To Bangor Town Centre

From left: Ken Sterrett (Chairperson), Margaret Arthur (Co-founder), Emma Drury (Director), Nathalie Caleyron (Member) and

seacourtprints

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Posted @withregram • @sarabrownartist Somethin

𝙲𝚑𝚒𝚕𝚍𝚛𝚎𝚗'𝚜 𝙼𝚎𝚗

Prͬiͥntͭmͫaͣkeͤrͬs hͪeͤaͣvͮeͤn! How

Posted @withregram • @stephharrisonartist CMYK

🅜🅞🅝🅞🅟🅡🅘🅝🅣🅘🅝🅖 🄗⒠⒜⒱⒠⒩

These beautiful monotypes by @sarabrownartist and @ceciliastephens7988 are the result of a day of experimentation and inky play. Both Sara and Cecilia are long-standing members of our workshop and these prints reflect the totally immersive way in which they work.

We were speaking about how printmakers tend to collect objects and artefacts that become invaluable towards the creation of a perfect texture or form and how upsetting it is when those are destroyed or go missing.

You can see here, on image 8, how Sara has actually scribed into the ink on her work surface to create the texture of the fish she then transferred via the roller onto her plate. All of these little tricks come together within our shared learning environment as members regularly share ideas and advice.

#seacourtprints #seacourtni #monotype #monotypelove #monoprintingideas #monoprinting #monotypelife #monoprintmaker #belfastart #belfastartist #bangorcountydown #ardspeninsula #fishprint #fishprints #birdprints #birdprint #printmakingprocess #printworkshop #printmakingworkshop

Ⓗⓞⓦ ⓘⓣ'ⓢ 🅖🅞🅘🅝🅖 ... We

Ⓗⓞⓦ ⓘⓣ 🅢🅣🅐🅡🅣🅔🅓...

🄔⒞⒪⒫⒭⒤⒩⒯⒤⒩⒢ I am always f

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Posted on July 28, 2021September 15, 2021 by admin

Creative Peninsula at Seacourt Print Workshop

We have a number of events planned for this year’s Creative Peninsula, including our 2 exhibitions, a market stall and daily artist demos and talks.

Congratulations to our very own Steph Harrison, who was chosen as this year’s Creative Peninsula artist, who’s work is featured in the promotional material for the festival circulating nationwide.

Now in its 20th year, this thriving annual event is back for 2021!

The 2021 programme sees a slightly reduced offering of in-person activity and the introduction of additional virtual opportunities.

You will find annual favourites including Creative Peninsula in the Square on Friday 30 July, Open Studios, Exhibitions, Workshops and Demonstrations all taking place throughout the beautiful and picturesque Ards and North Down Borough.

The region is well known for its abundance of artists and makers and during the Creative Peninsula event visitors have the opportunity to view work, purchase or commission a unique piece of art or try their hand in one of the many workshops.

Dates for your diary:

Friday 30th July: Seacourt will have a stall at Creative Peninsula in the Square. We will be selling a range of original prints, cyanotype kits and more. Come on down to Ards Square between 11am-3pm for a browse.

Saturday 31st July: For the first time this year, we are inviting you all down to Seacourt for 2 exhibition launches. Featuring work by Joanne Fitzpatrick and Nathalie Caleyron, the exhibition opening kicks off at 2pm and will offer refreshments, and an opportunity to meet Joanne and ask her any questions about her work.

Monday 2nd August: Joanne Fitzpatrick Artist Talk and Demo, 2pm at Seacourt Print Workshop.

Tuesday 3rd August: Rosy Ennis Artist Talk and Demo, 2pm at Seacourt Print Workshop.

Wednesday 4th August: Steph Harrison Artist Talk and Demo, 2pm at Seacourt Print Workshop.

Thursday 5th August: Clinton Kirkpatrick Artist Talk and Demo, 2pm at Seacourt Print Workshop.

Friday 6th August: Nathalie Caleyron Artist Talk and Demo, 2pm at Seacourt Print Workshop.

You can view the whole programme on the official Creative Peninsula website linked here.