Somerset Art Works

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Somerset Art Works

Somerset Art Works (SAW) is an ambitious charity dedicated to connecting people with creativity and developing visual arts across Somerset.

We initiate a wide range of projects in a variety of settings, working in partnership with other arts and non-arts organisations, supporting the artists who enrich our lives and always integrating artists’ professional development. We work to increase public engagement, weaving together communities and raising the profile of the vibrant contemporary visual, digital and applied arts scene in Somerset.

08/09/2026

Use It or Lose It! 🧠🎨👏
What role can creativity and lifelong learning play as we get older?

Population aging is one of the defining demographic changes of the 21st century. We are living longer, and today’s older generations are, in many ways, healthier and better educated than those who came before them. However, increased longevity also brings challenges, including the growing prevalence of cognitive decline and dementia.

So, what can we do — as individuals, communities and organisations — to support healthy cognitive ageing?

At the Arts + Culture Diversity Forum in October, Maggie Turner will share insights from her recent research exploring the potential benefits of lifelong learning and engagement with the arts. Maggie graduated with a BSc in Psychology at the age of 74 and has a particular interest in the psychology of ageing.

“Research suggests that continuing to learn in later life and engaging with the arts can contribute to cognitive wellbeing and may help reduce the risk of cognitive decline. Whether through music, visual art, performance or simply learning something new, staying mentally and socially engaged may have an important role to play as we age. The message is simple: it’s never too late to learn!”

What does this mean for the arts and cultural sector in Somerset? How can we create more opportunities for older people to learn, participate and stay creatively and socially connected? And what can we learn from the experiences of older people themselves?

Join us for a morning of ideas, discussion and shared experience:
📅 Friday 9 October 2026 | 10am–1pm
📍 Westlands Entertainment Venue, Yeovil
🎟️ Free event — booking required
Come along and be part of the conversation. Book your free place:
somersetfilm.com/whats-on/event-somerset-arts-culture-diversity-forum-2026

A collaboration between Somerset Art Works, Take Art and Somerset Film at The Engine Room
With thanks to Westlands for hosting the event Westlands Yeovil

📷Image: Watch Group workshop with Jenny Mellings

07/09/2026

Her Ground: Young voices shaping Lyngford Park 🌿

What happens when young women are given the space to imagine what their park could be?

Her Ground brought young women, artists and community partners together in Lyngford Park, Taunton, using creativity to explore how public spaces can feel more welcoming, inclusive and safe for women and girls.

🎥 Watch the full film on YouTube: https://youtu.be/8RZ7zzGZmQc

Created by Hannah Earl, the film platforms young women's voices, capturing their experiences, ideas for the future, and the creative process that helped turn those ideas into something lasting.

As Lucy Oates says in the film: “The best public spaces are the ones that are shaped by the people who use them.”

Working with Lucy and poet Liv Torc, Year 9 students from Pyrland School explored their ideas through conversation, collaborative poetry and printmaking. Their artwork and words were then developed into a series of permanent signs, now installed in Lyngford Park — turning their creative ideas into a visible part of the place they know and use.

Her Ground is a celebration of what can happen when young women are listened to, given space to create, and supported to help shape the places where they live, meet and spend time.

“Our park is a fresh start, All our futures matter here, A lively society walks without fear.”

With thanks to students at Pyrland School, and funding support from Taunton Town Council, Taunton Round Table and Arts Council England.
Pyrland School Taunton Town Council Arts Council England
📸 Hannah Earl Film

06/09/2026

Meet Project Development Bursary artist Luan MacDonald

This Somerset Art Weeks, Luan MacDonald will be presenting new work at Ilminster Arts Centre. Luan’s practice uses a variety of printmaking and textile techniques to explore themes of identity, migration, multiculturalism and feminism. Her new work considers personal cultural identity, the feminine voice and belonging, drawing on her own family history and experiences of migration and cultural exchange.

As Luan explains:
“We are the sum of many parts. The intermingling of influences from the past, subconsciously defining ourselves from subjective and unreliable creation myths informed by snippets of stories shared and personal memories; mirages that inform our present selves. I come from a family that generationally migrated and interconnected across borders, cultures and communities.”

For this new body of work, Luan has focused on her own personal journey and the memories and mementos of her Malaysian grandmother, who was from the Peranakan community.

She has created cyanotype prints of her grandmother’s clothing, interwoven with needle felted and appliquéd totems of fragmented memories, creating what she describes as an unreliable narrative of family lore that continues to affect and influence.

Alongside this, Luan has reappropriated a coir door mat, bearing the word ‘welcome’. The familiar object becomes a starting point for thinking about hospitality, migration and cultural exchange, while the origins of coir in South East Asia connect the work to the movement of goods and ideas through colonial trade.

The Project Development Bursary has given Luan the opportunity to develop her practice and present her work for Somerset Art Weeks Festival 2026. She has been supported through mentoring from artist Sue Green as part of the Somerset Art Works Artist Development Programme.

We’re looking forward to seeing Luan’s finished work on display, Visit:

📍 Venue 33 – Ilminster Arts Centre | 9.30 - 3, closed Sundays/Mondays
📅 Somerset Art Weeks Festival | 19 September–3 October 2026

Ilminster Arts Centre

04/09/2026

Are you a home educator looking for ways to enrich your students’ creative learning? Or maybe you’re an art teacher on the hunt for ways to expand your classes' engagement with arts and crafts in the real world?

This year's Art Weeks Festival is the perfect opportunity for students at all stages to explore the arts and crafts communities on their doorsteps. Many of our festival venues all across the county welcome education group visits, and are keen to inspire the next generation of artistic movers and shakers.

To support your visits, we have developed a range of education resources, from guidance on how visits to the festival might enrich your learning programmes to practical checklists for organising a trip.

Head to the Somerset Art Works website to check out the resources available as well as the full list of our school-friendly venues. Featured above are only 6 of our school-friendly highlights:

East Quay, Watchet (image credit: Sarah Ward)
GoCreate Taunton at The Orchard Gallery
CLOSE Art Gallery (image credit: Myrna Quiñonez)
Somerset Rural Life Museum (image credit: Helen Cammock)
Shoemakers Museum (image credit: Kirsten Maderia-Revell)
Huntstile Farm Artists (image credit: Charron Pugsley Hill)

If you are an education group or a festival venue thinking of organising a visit as part of Somerset Art Weeks Festival 2026, we would love to hear from you: [email protected]

02/09/2026

*** last few places remaining ***

Are you a SAW member looking to meet other Somerset artists and makers and explore new ways of supporting your practice? Or are you a Somerset Art Weeks Festival artist wanting to connect with others involved in this year’s festival?

Join us next week for an evening of conversation and connection as part of SAW’s Artist Development Programme.

📅 Tuesday 8 September, 6.30 to 8pm
📍 Red Brick Building, Glastonbury

The evening combines an Art Weeks Festival social and a panel discussion and Q&A on how to support your practice in both commercial and cultural contexts, with a focus on how to make the festival work for your practices and aims. Come along to hear from our wonderful panelists Kirsten Madeira-Revell, Emily Lewin and Sally Wetherall on how they have developed success across commercial and cultural contexts, and their guidance on how to navigate these different spheres with your practice

Open to all SAW members and festival participants, the event is an opportunity to meet other artists and discuss how to make the most of the festival for your practice.

To register your interest in attending, email Victoria on [email protected].

We look forward to seeing you there!

31/08/2026

The Online Art Group enters a new chapter

August marked the end of our brilliant zine-inspired creative series with artist Gemma Dunnell over in the Online Art Group!

Together, we’ve made walking journals, landscape tunnels, keepsake zines, Victorian puzzle purses and, finally, our very own handmade zine wallets – bringing together everything we’d created along the way.

The series has been such a wonderful reflection of what the Online Art Group is all about: joyful, playful and experimental creativity, with the focus on process and wellbeing, over perfection and outcome.

After four amazing years of monthly creative sessions, we’ve made the decision to pause the creation of new workshop content while we take some time to explore how the Online Art Group might develop in the future.

But this is a pause, not an ending. The Online Art Group will remain open as a creative resource and community space, with our library of sessions from the past four years still available to explore, revisit and enjoy.

So whether you’re discovering the group for the first time or have been creating alongside us since the beginning, there’s plenty to get stuck into!
At this point, we’d also like to thank the kind and capable Emily Lewin, who has held this group so beautifully, and Gemma Dunnell for bringing our latest creative series to life.

A huge thank you to everyone who has been part of the Online Art Group in any shape or form. You’ve helped make it a very special creative corner of the internet, and we’re so grateful.

We’ll keep you updated as things develop, and in the meantime, happy making!

Read our latest blog, Wrapping Up Our Zines and Looking Ahead, to find out more about the final zine sessions and what’s next for the Online Art Group.

🔗 https://quietplacesathome.online/2026/08/19/wrapping-up-our-zines-and-looking-ahead/

If you’d like to join the Online Art Group and access our library of creative sessions, email [email protected].

30/08/2026

**Why make South Somerset part of your Somerset Art Weeks journey? 🌿**

From rural landscapes and ancient stories to community spaces and artists’ studios, South Somerset offers plenty of ways to discover creativity, Cultural Connections – and to see the places around us through a different lens.

We’ve been out visiting artists and venues ahead of the festival, discovering how deeply their work is connected to Somerset, its landscapes and the people who live here.

At ARK at Egwood, creativity, nature and community come together through a project inspired by this year’s Cultural Connections theme. Over recent months, people of all ages have been making birds from willow, wire, clay, paper and recycled materials. The making has been as important as the finished birds: people have been learning from one another, sharing skills, mentoring and encouraging others to have a go.

The project creates opportunities for creativity and wellbeing, while bringing people together through the simple act of making. The individual birds are now coming together to form a growing murmuration – a collaborative installation representing the many people who visit, volunteer and take part at ARK.

The two makers pictured here are among those helping to pass on these skills, showing how knowledge and creativity can move between people and generations. 🕊️

At Jordon’s Yard, Kate Hetherington paints and draws from walks with her dog through the Somerset landscape. Her paintings of trees, land and wildlife begin with what she sees and feels in a particular moment. Kate is interested in capturing a sense of place and allowing her emotional response to come through.

With a background in zoology, animals have long been part of Kate’s way of seeing the world, alongside her growing focus on trees and landscapes. Art Weeks gives her a reason to make new work – but also an opportunity to open up conversations with visitors, hear their responses and share the experience of looking at Somerset landscapes.

At Venue 35, Caroline Lewis is exhibiting alongside Stephanie Mogg and Wendy Hermelin, bringing together textiles, glass, mixed media and handmade silver jewellery in an exploration of how nature and the land can hold our stories and what those stories mean to them.

For Caroline, the ancient landscape of the Somerset Levels has opened up a rich trail of research into lost islands, sacred waters, ritual offerings and prehistoric trackways and the *Sweet Track*. Her work reflects a deep fascination with a time when people’s connection to the land, sky, waters and other living things was more instinctive and embedded in part of everyday life, and a longing for something of that connection today.

This exploration of Somerset’s ancient landscape also connects with a more personal heritage of making. Caroline, Stephanie and Wendy bring two generations of a creative family together, continuing a tradition of creativity and making that has been passed down generations.

Across these very different practices, connections emerge between people and nature, place and memory, making and sharing, history and family.

So when you visit South Somerset this September, take the scenic route. Explore a studio, discover a rural creative space, meet an artist and spend some time looking at the landscape differently.

Come for the art – and discover the stories, places and connections behind it.

📍 South Somerset Venues 29, 35, 42 (Featured) – check venues for opening times
📅 Somerset Art Weeks Festival | 19 September–4 October 2026

28/08/2026

What does it mean to be human?

Join New York Times best-selling author Charles Foster to explore this ever-relevant question.

For most of our history we have been wandering hunter-gatherers. The way we live now is very recent, and not at all good for us. Foster has tried to inhabit three pivotal phases in our journey to post-modernity: the Upper Palaeolithic, the Neolithic, and the Enlightenment. He describes what it feels like to live in each, and asks if we can learn anything from such adventures about how to live well now.

📅 1 October 2026, 2.30pm - 5pm
📍 Somerset Rural Life Museum, Glastonbury - venue 67
Booking essential: swheritage.org.uk/

Charles Foster is a traveller and author of acclaimed works including Being a Beast and Being a Human.

Timings:
2.30 pm – Visit the Cultural Connections displays
3.00 pm – 3.40 pm How to be a Human Talk
3.40 pm – 4.00 pm Audience Q&A
4.00 pm – 5.00 pm Tea, coffee and conversation

This Talk and Tea event is part of the Cultural Connections programme developed by Somerset Art Works and the South West Heritage Trust.The programme explores the rich cultural heritage that has shaped Somerset across millennia through exhibitions, events and creative participation.

26/08/2026

🎉 Good news: planning your Somerset Art Weeks Festival visits just got easier: the festival App 2026 is now live!

Search for Somerset Art Weeks in your app store and start exploring:

🔎 Discover over 90 venues
🌟 Save your must-have favourites to visit
🗺️ Use the interactive map to plan your trips

Available for both Android and IOS users, use the Somerset Art Weeks App alongside our printed guide and online resources to make the most of your festival this year.

24/08/2026

A lasting legacy for Lyngford Park 🌿

We’re delighted to see vibrant new Her Ground signs installed in Lyngford Park, celebrating the creativity, ideas and vision of young people in North Taunton.

Workshops with teenage girls at Pyrland School were led by artist Lucy Oates and poet Liv Torc, together exploring how public spaces can become more welcoming, inclusive and safe were led by artist Lucy Oates and poet Liv Torc, together exploring how public spaces can become more welcoming, inclusive and safe for women and girls.

Our park is a fresh start
All our futures matter here
A lively society walks without fear

“Through conversation, collaborative poetry and printmaking, the girls developed images, messages and ideas for a new permanent artwork that feels welcoming and positive, while expressing confidence, ownership and a sense of belonging. They imagined what a future version of the park might feel like, sharing their hopes and visions. It’s wonderful to see those ideas transformed into permanent artwork that is now part of the park itself.”
Beccy Swaine, Engagement Director, Somerset Art Works

Taunton Town Council supported the project through a Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) grant, funded by Avon and Somerset Police: “By giving women and girls a voice in the design and use of public spaces, the project supports wider efforts to improve safety, confidence and belonging in our communities.”

Her Ground is a Somerset Art Works project exploring how we can make outdoor spaces feel safer, more inclusive and more welcoming. By bringing young women’s voices into conversations about public spaces, the project aims to create positive change that lasts — both in the artwork itself and in how people experience and use Lyngford Park.

Look out for a short film about the project - coming soon!

With thanks to funding support from Taunton Town Council and Arts Council England.
Taunton Town Council Arts Council England
Photography: Jon Barrett

Address

Langport Town Hall
Langport
TA109PR

Telephone

+44 1458 253800

Website

http://somersetartworks.org.uk/

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