New Year 2022

The uncertainties, frustrations and threats of the ongoing Covid-19 crisis may have somewhat dampened the enthusiasm of many people’s new year plans, but our project continues to be buoyed up by the energy, excitement and commitment of our participants, partners and supporters.

We are pushing ahead with our plans to deliver our skills courses and our after-school club sessions; we are working to support the business development of new entrepreneurs and more established businesses in Liskeard’s arts & crafts community; and we are of course continuing with the development of our studio facility, due to be opened as part of the regeneration of Liskeard’s old Cattle Market site later this year.

The appearance of our new website represents a major boon, and a major milestone, for the progress of our project. It’s so exciting to be able to publish the detailed delivery structures and goals of our initial skills courses, and it’s wonderful that so many of our local makers have already contributed their profiles to our growing network and have put themselves forward to support the development of our local community of artists, craftspeople and arts & crafts businesses.

Meanwhile, in the last couple of months, we’ve featured twice on BBC Radio Cornwall, and three times in The Cornish Times, as well as getting a blog onto the 20/20 Visions urban regeneration website, and we’re hugely grateful for the vital attention and interest our project is gleaning.

Liskeard enjoys a brilliant and vibrant arts scene, and we are here to support, promote and celebrate that, to do our best to give it all the attention is deserves. 

We are also here, of course, to help all interested local people to develop their own creative aspirations, and to take part – and to make their own mark – as members of the town’s growing arts & crafts community. 

We are therefore very happy to welcome onto our courses absolute beginners, as well as interim learners and returners to learning. Our free courses are designed for residents of Liskeard not currently in work who are looking to build their wellbeing, confidence, skills, experience, opportunities and prospects.

It’s our ambition to support and help you develop your own ambitions. We will help the participants in our courses develop their ambitions in work or in continuing training and education. We will also offer advice and support to participants who successfully complete any one of our skills courses and who decide they’d like to take their interests in arts & crafts to the next level – and to transform their skills and hobbies into sustainable businesses. We will help you develop and grow your business. And it’s our hope that some of those who successfully complete our skills courses, and who go on to develop businesses with our support as part of our local arts & crafts network, will eventually have the opportunity to take tenancies in the Cattle Market studio facility we’ll be opening later this year.

In that sense, we might be forgiven for suggesting that the journey experienced by our participants might be comparable to that of contestants on a reality TV show. The difference here, though, is that in our creative community everyone is here to support everyone else, and to make sure that everybody wins.