Youth Art Exhibition launches at Age UK Plymouth Centre
On Tuesday 31st of May, The William and Patricia Venton Centre, home of Age UK Plymouth, will play host to an exhibition of work from young artists across the city celebrating the culmination of months of hard work.
Age UK Plymouth’s Community Gateway Project set out with the key objective of reducing loneliness and isolation in the older community through companionship, community engagement and campaigning. The team’s hugely popular Phone Friend service and IT Training for the over 50s have been a great success and the newest collaboration to come from the project, the exhibition “Interpretations of Isolation & Loneliness”, is in partnership with Plymouth City Council’s Community Connections Youth Team, specifically the LGBTQ+ youth group OutYouth. By holding an art competition asking for OutYouth members’ interpretations of isolation and loneliness the theme, Age UK Plymouth hope to find an artist to represent a future campaign designed to provoke further discussions, breaking down barriers and addressing misconceptions about isolation being unavoidable or inescapable.
Alison Feek, Youth Worker and Project Coordinator with Plymouth City Council said, “The exhibition offers young people and the older community an opportunity to connect and stimulate discussions whilst also celebrating and acknowledging the efforts and talents of our younger generation with family, friends and professionals. The members of OutYouth found Isolation and Loneliness a theme they identified as both contemporary and relevant to them. Their engagement and interest led to the project reaching out to more young people, opening the competition to the younger generation across the city and surrounding area. In reflection this enabled the project to grow and inadvertently stimulate discussions in regards to this matter into the wider community, engaging with voluntary sector, formal education and young people.”
Heather Stenning, Services Manager at Age UK Plymouth, said: “It is wonderful to see the work of a three year National Lottery programme culminate in an intergenerational project. The deliverables of this project have changed over its duration to focus on reducing isolation in the midst of a pandemic, and the outcomes and impact have been far greater than we could have imagined.”
“We are proud to support this local community-based art competition to raise awareness around a subject affecting young people and the older community at a difficult time,” said a spokesperson from The Art Side, who have partnered with Age UK Plymouth and Plymouth City Council on this project. “Well done to everyone that entered.”
The free exhibition takes place from 15:00-19:00 at The William and Patricia Venton Centre, Astor Drive, Mount Gould, PL4 9RD and is open to the public. This is not a ticketed event and there are no timed entries. Winners will be announced from 18:00. Please direct any queries to enquiries@ageukplymouth@org.uk.
Guests are requested where possible to wear a face mask whilst visiting the centre, facilities for hand sanitisation are available and visitors are discouraged from attending if they believe they may have (or have been in contact with anyone presenting) symptoms of Covid-19.