Organisers of an award-winning international street art festival have formed a creative partnership with a college and university in Aberdeen to give students the opportunity to brush up their art skills.
The team behind Nuart Aberdeen have joined forces with North East Scotland College (NESCOL) and Robert Gordon University (RGU) to offer students the chance to work alongside artists from this year’s festival while they are in the Granite City.
The festival, which is delivered by business organisation Aberdeen Inspired in partnership with Nuart Festival and Aberdeen City Council, will take place from Thursday, April 12 to Sunday, April 15 and is set to attract thousands of visitors into the city centre.
Now in its second year, the festival will once again see a team of international, national and local artists develop their latest works on walls around the city centre.
During the festival, Scottish artists Ciaran Glöbel and Elki will host creative workshops with art and design students from NESCOL and Robert Gordon University’s Gray’s School of Art.
Ciaran will host a sign painting workshop for students at NESCOL’s main studio in the city centre on Saturday, April 14 from 11am to 5pm. The Glasgow-based artist will introduce participants to the basic techniques and materials used in the long and venerable tradition of this hand-painted craft.
Students can also attend a stencil workshop with street artist Elki at NESCOL on Sunday, April 15 from 11am to 5pm.
Working from photographs as his source material, Elki can spend up to two hundred hours hand cutting a single image. Participants may not have to undergo such a feat of endurance in this five-hour workshop, but they will learn the techniques used to create and cut their own stencils before taking to the streets of Aberdeen to add them to the cityscape.
Adrian Watson, chief executive of Aberdeen Inspired, said: “We are very happy to have formed a partnership with North East Scotland College and Robert Gordon University to deliver Nuart Aberdeen workshops for art and design students in the city.
“Exciting as it is to bring some of the best street artists in the world to Aberdeen, a key fundamental for us is to build a legacy where art and culture is open to all and people feel that.
“This represent a fantastic opportunity for students to work with our Nuart artists to learn more about two distinctive styles of street art which they can add to their skills portfolio.
“An important part of the Nuart Aberdeen programme is to give back to the local community and get people involved and the workshops will help to spark the imagination of some of the city’s most creative art and design students.
“We expect that tickets for the workshops will be snapped up quickly, so we advise interested students to sign up as soon as possible so they don’t miss out.”
Elaine Makein, Faculty Manager – Creative Industries at NESCOL, said: “The Nuart Aberdeen street art festival really caught everyone’s attention during its first outing last year and to be associated with the programme this year through our new partnership will be of huge benefit to our students.
“We are delighted to host two Nuart Aberdeen workshops which will give the student’s the chance to work with several established artists. It’s a fantastic opportunity which will be very popular across our art and design courses and we expect the workshops will fill up quickly.”
To take part, please email your name, the workshop you want to attend, contact number as well as your course and year of study to: workshops@aberdeeninspired.com
Places are limited for both workshops, so they will be drawn at random. The successful participants will be informed on Friday, March 30.
Last month, artists from Argentina, Lithuania, Norway, Portugal and the UK were announced to complete the line-up for the UK’s leading celebration of street art, which will be held in the Granite City this spring.
The theme for this year’s festival is ‘A Revolution of the Ordinary’ and it will investigate the parallel world of non-institutional art and culture through a program of talks and debates, film screenings, walking tours and workshops over four days.
Held in the Norwegian city of Stavanger since 2001 and widely regarded as the world’s leading celebration of street art, Nuart Aberdeen is the first and only overseas version of the festival, first hosted in Aberdeen in 2017 to widespread acclaim.
Martyn Reed, Director and Curator of Nuart, said: “Our education program covers the history and origins of street art as well as some of the practical skills related to street art practice with the aim to inspire the next generation of street artists.
“Only through embedding street art practice within our education system and making the tools of street art readily available and accessible to all can we ensure the culture’s sustainability.
“Recent times have seen a resurgence in ‘craft’, with interest in its many techniques and outcomes re-ignited in our cultural lexicon. Countless individuals from around the globe are favouring the brush and the scalpel over the keyboard to re-explore the more tactile aspects of their existence.
“At the very least, we hope these workshops will provide a fun and engaging introduction to street art practice. At best, we hope they will encourage the next generation of artists to consider their creative endeavours as a right as much as a privilege.”
The Nuart Aberdeen festival won four awards last year, including the UK Association of Town and City Management’s Innovation Award, the Visit Scotland Award for Tourism.
It also won the place management BID award at the 2017 National Business Improvement District (BID) Awards and was also the signature piece Aberdeen Inspired’s winning entry to secure the 2017 European BID of the Year win in July.
Nuart Aberdeen is supported by presenting partners Burness Paull and Aberdeen Standard Investments alongside a growing community of independent local partners and suppliers.
Aberdeen City Council recently committed to providing funding for Nuart Aberdeen which will see the local authority provide £300,000 over the next three years.
For more information about Nuart Aberdeen 2018, please visit: www.nuartaberdeen.co.uk