W4AC - Everything you wanted to know..

This page is for everything you wanted to know and can't find on the website...and yes it is and always will, probably still be under construction!!

Contact details/venues

Email - w4artclub@gmail.com is always best

Mobile 0778 959 9931 but STILL email if no response!

Venues 58 Harvard Road, LONDON W4 4ED [ unless o/w advised].

[Some activities are inside or if the meteorological forces are with us - outside under canvas or just in the amazing garden ]

Not every one finds us so please click for details, maps, directions and info about parking and public transport.

if you are not sure - please check ! Click w4artclub@gmail.com

Who are you and why is W4AC different?

I am Liz and I definitely will always be a work in progress..

I am a qualified teacher [ PGCE], Central /St.. Martin's trained and previously university educated and professionally qualified . My practice has always been concerned with chance, evolution, recycled materials. I subsequently became a less than perfect parent with 3 lovely children + a not wholly uncritical experience of private, state and home education.

3+ years ago, I started W4AC with the idea of extending the family workshops I had run for a local authority to Chiswick. I gradually succumbed to the pressure of parents and children to work with younger and younger children and given them structured opportunities to find their own paths of learning.

The Artabugs' activities and W4AC Kids and Adults' drawing classes are an absorbing and continuing journey which has has greatly benefitted from observing the youngest of children, their fascinatingly interaction and experimental approach to materials. They are fearless artists without any on the hang ups of many of their parents'.

This journey made me appreciate the role of the artist as a facilitator in the Reggio Emilia classroom and The Arts Council's reflections on The importance of the arts and Creativity in early Years which for me applies to anyone of any age/maturity.

When I am my high horse I like to think that W4AC has always tried to be what Philip Pullman calls 'moonshine' - and gives adults as well as kids 'access to the stuff the world is made of: with sounds, and with shapes and colours, and with clay and paper and wood and metal, and with language. Fooling about, playing with it, pushing it this way and that, turning it sideways, painting it different colours, looking at it from the back, putting one thing on top of another, asking silly questions, mixing things up, making absurd comparisons, discovering unexpected similarities, making pretty patterns, and all the time saying "Supposing ... I wonder ... What if ..."'

Art for me is not about learning rules. It is about thinking laterally ,creatively, exploratively and above all outside the box.

Why are you so obsessive about the importance of Observational Drawing ?

Actually I am probably simply passionately inarticulate about it! OK it isn't quite a criminal offence not to teach it to children but it does go to the root of what learning should be about.

Maybe it is the ultimate intellectual and creative experience . It challenges people to really look and question their perceptions and relationships, to use their intellect, reassess, re-evaluate and not simply trust their misguided 'experiences' about what they think they perceive and understand as the 'obvious'. It is the ultimate 'what if?' of creativity.

OK - Come on one of my drawing courses and I will try and show you! Also it is quite fun....

Why private groups?

W4AC aims to be flexible. Not everyone can commit to a regular class class but why not put together your own private one-off workshop or weekly/fortnightly/monthly private group for friends or family?

I think that for many people doing something creative,with your hands/brain rather than just relentlessly fine tuning computer codes is not just very relaxing it's essential. It's the new yoga.

More questions???

Come to a workshop or Email me. w4artclub@gmail.com