Call for Artists, Growers, Makers and Doers!

CALL FOR ARTISTS, GROWERS, MAKERS AND DOERS! Allotment Soup 2011: Sunday 23/10/11


ALLOTMENT SOUP is an annual creative and artistic harvest celebration that takes place at a different Sheffield allotment site each year. The aim of the event is to celebrate food growing and allotment culture. Allotment Soup is a Grow Sheffield event.

This year’s Allotment Soup event will be held at the LEAF community allotment in Norwood on Sunday 23rd October. Allotment holders are invited to open up their plot to host an installation, artwork, workshop or event as part of Allotment Soup. Artists, performers, poets etc are encouraged to respond to the particular allotment in which they are working by creating new, original work in response to the site, theme and the season.

We will be holding two open days at the allotments for artists, growers and other interested parties to come along and visit and explore the site, meet the local growers and think about potential ideas and sites for work. These days are: Saturday 10th and Wednesday 14th September 12pm-4pm. Please see contact details at the bottom of this email to attend an open day.

Further information:

Allotment Soup is a family event which aims to :

• Encourage greater interest in allotments and food growing
• raise awareness of local food and growing
• get people in the outdoors
• encourage community cohesion and interaction
• nurture greater understanding and awareness of the natural world
• demonstrate the links between culture and agri-culture - the role of creativity and the arts in engaging with our environment in particular growing food and the seasonal cycles.

Theme: Seasoning!

This year the theme reflects the change in seasons and we will look at the Allotments transition from Autumn to Winter as we celebrate and gather the harvest of this year’s fruits, draw together as we move into the next part of the cycle and prepare the soil for the coming seasons.

This year we are especially interested in creating collaborations between allotment holders and artists and as such we invite you down to the site to look at the various potential sites for artwork and activities and to meet the allotment holders. There will then be further opportunities to visit, draw inspiration from and create work at the site. We hope to see site specific work created for the event or current work developed in response to the site. We will also welcome artworks to be displayed in certain areas of the allotment. We will be turning a number of the greenhouses and sheds into gallery spaces to showcase local talent.

We welcome applications from every discipline: painting, drawing, print, crafts, photography, poetry, writing, installation, sculpture, performance, participatory work and anything and everything in between! We are very excited about working with artists local to the site and exploring the wealth of creative people in S5. Similarly we are looking forward to working with artists from across Sheffield and showcasing the diversity of artistic talent in our city.

If you are interested in attending, exhibiting or collaborating please email Ruthie (ruthie_ford@hotmail.com) or Diane (diane@leafsheffield.org.uk) with your contact details. Please also email if you have any questions or cannot make the open days but would still like to visit the site.

For more information about previous Allotment Soup events please see:

www.growsheffield.com/pages/groshefallothm.html

And to read about the amazing LEAF allotments please see:

www.leafsheffield.org.uk/