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Sorry to have been lax in writing my blog.

Ridiculously busy with 5 part time jobs.

1. Mum to 2 (hardest work)

2. Activity Plan Manager (my paid day job)

3. Lecturer (filling in on some sessions on my old degree course, loving it!)

4. Director at Arena Studios (voluntary but hands on!)

5. Project Manager- Comma Project

not to mention trying to fit my own artwork in there somewhere.

You can see why I’m busy lately!!!!

Anyway – to update, have signed the contract on our shop..yay. That was today, handed over a thousand pound over to the agent today, eek, that was a bit scary and thats just the deposit and a months rent.

Planning permission forms go in tomorrow along with over £300 fees. another eek.

We pick up the keys this Friday, I am beyond excited. The landlords have been amazing so far and have agreed to leave us the fridge, microwave, a desk, some chairs, a stereo and a little sofa along with a load of shelves, it’s a Godsend!

I managed to get a free A3 black + white laser printer off some kindly freecycler and spent £20 on card/leaflet racks on ebay. One of the volunteers sons found 4 display stands in a skip yesterday that will come in useful and will go with the full unopened reams of coloured paper found in a skip a few weeks ago, amazes me what people throw out!

Now have to organise electricty, insurance,taxes, broadband and so on and so forth.

Our first artist Gerald arrives in Wirral 31st and starts in the shop on Monday 2nd. I HOPE we’ll be ready for him but it’ll be a learning curve for us all if not, we’ll muddle on.

One of out artists, my friend Julie has just been featured in Inhabitat, I love that website so much and am thrilled to bits for her and it’s great timing for us, bit of publicity for Julie prior to her residency starting 27th April for a month. http://inhabitat.com/julie-dodd-sculpts-delicate-nature-inspired-artwork-from-layers-of-recycled-paper/

Its all good on New Ferry at the moment, the local regeneration action group have just applied to be part of the new Mary Portas initiative, would be fantastic for the area if they get through. I am crossing everything at the moment.


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After me saying I wasn’t going to reveal the artists I am now – the person in question has sent me an email accepting so I thought I would reveal all.

I’ll blog about each proposal over the coming weeks too.

First in w/c 2nd April is Gerald Curtis

www.geraldcurtis.blogspot.com

End of April through May is Julie Dodd

www.juliedodd.co.uk

End of May through June is Andrea Bassil

www.annanilsen.com

and

www.artisstics.co.uk

End of June through July Iain Broadley

http://www.iainbroadley.co.uk/

End of July through August Pamela Sullivan

no website available yet.

End of August through September a collaboration with Sarah-Jane Richards and Anna Ketskemety

http://annaketskemety.com/

and

www.sarahjanerichards.com


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So things are finally happening and happening fast!

We have a shop, all agreed anyway, nothing actually signed yet but I have a cheque for admin fees to send off to the agent and then its all go.

The owners of the shop are actually selling and have a buyer for the freehold but it will take a while so they are happy to have us in paying rent for 6 months while all the paperwork etc gets sorted. Its great news but they want us in as soon as possible so I have had to shufty all the dates forward two weeks so panic is now setting in.

We had a committee meeting and I took all the proposals along, very hard to choose just 6 artists from all the applications as there were so many great ideas but we did…finally and all 6 have now been informed.

I won’t give names out yet as I’m still waiting to hear from one person to see if they can make it with the shifting dates.

So now its freecycle and ebay to get furniture for the shop and I need to speak with the landlords to see if they are leaving anything, like the fridge :) It’d be good to have some bits left behind.

Its also all ‘slat wall’ stuff and I’m not sure if thats suitable for all the artists so need to figure out whether I cover some of it temporarily…we’ll see.

However, its big, its clean, its secure and its in the EXACT right location so I couldn’t be happier in that respect.

Very exciting 6 months ahead I think.


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