Services:

• Enliven
• Family Works
• Real People
• Cranford Hospice

CREATIVE SPACE'S NEW MERGER MARKED AT EXHIBITION OPENING

The new year has only just begun but the team at arts workshop Creative Space have hit the ground running.

First off the block is next week’s launch of an exhibition of pieces by out of town artists hosted at the Cobden Street gallery.

The show, Art on Wheels, opens next Tuesday at 5:30pm. It is, says manager Angela Hill, “a wonderfully eclectic collection of work created by artists from the Mosaic Art Studio in Hawke’s Bay” The show is the culmination of a recent collaborative project with Creative Space and includes work in a variety of mediums, she added.

At the end of January a group of Creative Space artists will travel to Mosaic to launch a reciprocal exhibition (From Tairawhiti With Love) of their own work..

“Our artists have been working both together and individually for this exhibition,” Hill said. “It is grounded on the theme of ‘journeys’ and includes representations of night and day dreams, childhood, travel, the ocean, land and whanau.”

And next month the Space’s poetry group will have their moment, launching a special publication that has grown out of members’ weekly meetings.

Meanwhile, Hill says there are changes afoot at the workshop, which advocates access to the arts for all.

Creative Space Gisborne has now merged with Real People disability services (operated by Presbyterian Support East Coast) to become Real People@Cre8tive Space.

Real People provides services for under 65s with neurological disease.

“I am excited that PSEC has adopted Creative Space into our Tairawhiti family of services,: says PSEC area manager Leslynne Jackson. “Taking this step allows us to bring the wealth of knowledge and expertise of the Real People service to Gisborne.

“Here in Tairawhiti, Creative Space has provided an invaluable service for our community,” Jackson added. “By bringing these two services together we can better support the artists and students to continue their personal journeys of growth and development.”

The merger would allow Creative Space to retain and build upon its unique social service and arts facility by gaining more functional and funding support than it had as a standalone service, Hill said.

“That will guarantee the future sustainability of the work we do.”