Art student invites local people to take part in her communal hope project
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A Highland art student is hoping to give some hope with her latest project during the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.
Julie Williams, who managed to get back to the Highland capital from New York just before it became the epicentre of the coronavirus in the USA, is studying for an HND in Contemporary Art Practice at Inverness College UHI.
Her latest project – Overcoming the ruination and decay of trauma, hope versus despair – involves people sending in photos depicting the word "hope" using household items.
So far more than 70 Highlanders have taken part.
She said: "Concerned about family, my loved ones and our region's failing mental health I decided to distract myself from my obsession with the news by turning to art.
"I am studying Contemporary Art Practice as a mature student at UHI, Inverness Campus and Covid-19 has destroyed my planned outcomes. My only choice was to allow it to infect my proposals.
"One of my classes is a Visual Arts Workshop. This module required us to artistically engage in a meaningful, socially interactive way. My personal representation is created out of ruination and decay, my Mother’s Day flowers I dragged out of the bin."
She said that, after creating the word "hope" with the flowers outside her home, she decided to involve others in a community visual arts workshop and added: "I asked locals on a community Facebook page to send me their artistic representations of the word 'hope' out of items they found in their homes or on their daily walks.
"I hope to effect, through encouraging a focus on hope, a way for people to see a light at the end of a dark tunnel of despair. My hope is that each participant has created – through their own artistic representation – a historical record of their hope during Covid 19.
"Participants and those who viewed the submissions have exclaimed a collaborative feeling of hope in the community. The response grew as I displayed the local submissions on my Facebook page. The receipt of over 70 submissions surpassed expectations of the target of three to seven participants."
There are three steps for those wishing to take part to follow:
Step one: Use items found around your home, garden, workplace or surroundings, to create the word HOPE;
Step two: Take a photo of your HOPE art piece and;
Step three: Send your photo to theartfulj@outlook.com
For further information visit here.
