The exhibition, which involved more than 100 participants from the creative industries within and outside the Island, used the arts to explore the three ‘big ideas’ at the heart of the project – sustainability, accessibility and identity. It transformed the Town Church into a space for contemporary art for more than a month, closing to the public last week.
Since 1 October there have also been around 16,000 interactions with content on social media. Individual exhibition content has been accessed almost 700,000 times thanks to the power of content-sharing over the duration of the exhibition. All tickets for the the Walking Gallery and the Sound of Colour events – the latter sponsored by Bedell Cristin and UBS – sold out ahead of their respective opening nights.
Carrie Cooper, ArtHouse Jersey’s head of communications, described the response to the project as ‘fantastic’, adding that it had been achieved under difficult conditions following its postponement from last year’s scheduled programme.
‘This exhibition was a huge undertaking, coming in at an overall cost of £175,000 with the production timeline spanning nearly two years. The response to it has been fantastic with 100% of the feedback overwhelmingly positive. This response clearly demonstrates to ArtHouse Jersey that local audiences are hungry for high-quality, ambitious productions and we will seek to continue to programme events and exhibitions that feed that desire in the months and years ahead,’ she said.
ArtHouse Jersey now plans to follow up the physical exhibition with a virtual reality version of the experience to go live before the end of the year. Created in partnership with Snap Design and Digital, the VR offering will allow people at home to take a full virtual exhibition tour of the Town Church, and explore the artworks through their screens at home.
Ms Cooper explained that the exhibition sought to bring down barriers to the arts by attracting audiences who wished to see something interesting and different, whether or not they considered themselves to be art-lovers. Considerable emphasis had been put on one of the project’s big ideas – accessibility – with lottery funding from the Jersey Community Foundation being applied to make the exhibition a free one for all those attending.
‘Part of ensuring that it was accessible was working closely with partner organisations on outreach opportunities – Enable, Mencap, Brighter Futures, Autism Jersey and Eyecan. We scheduled dedicated opportunities for their clients to attend to ensure that they were able to visit in a conducive environment with support staff on hand. These opportunities were embraced and enjoyed by many people and their carers,’ Ms Cooper said.
She added that ArtHouse Jersey was now planning a further project for next year with the principal sponsor Skipton which they hoped would add a further dimension to celebrating arts activity in the community.
‘As an arts organisation we’re passionate about delivering projects that make a positive difference to people’s lives,’ she said.
