Workers' Playtime
Staff teaching on Bradford School & Arts & Media's Fine Art programmes step away from their day jobs to reveal their true artistic colours!
This show in the Bradford Gallery demonstrates the diverse artistic talents of eight current lecturers: Helen Birch, Amanda Blake, 
Clare Booker, Heather Boxall, Manya Doñaque, Simon Ford, Robert Galeta and Martin Hearne; plus one recently retired but much loved lecturer, Howard Eaglestone.
At the opening, held on the evening of 13th January, Martin Hearne recalled how on his first day at Bradford College many years ago, he had been heartened by the introduction given by the then Head of HE, Mary Wilson, who had told him 'Our greatest resource is our staff.' Martin remarked that despite many changes since then, “what has remained constant is our commitment that teachers are practitioners.” He suggested that while staff had sometimes been reticent about promoting this aspect, "the diversity and challenging work on display is testimony to their academic contribution and levels of creativity. This creates a wonderful academic environment where students can see staff engaged in learning and being curious about the world themselves."
Martin explained that Workers Playtime is the second exhibition in a series stemming from the College’s connection with Universidad del Pais Vasco and will later be shown in Bilbao. He argued that “the exhibition is timely given the current political climate and attacks on arts and humanities, and this has added urgency to this work." Martin continued that this scholarly activity supported the College's ambitions for gaining taught degree awarding powers and suggested that “all courses in College, FE and HE, can draw strength from seeing this commitment.”
College Principal and Chief Executive, Michele Sutton OBE responded by agreeing that “staff are exemplary and the work of practitioners has helped inspectors to understand that we have the maturity to gain our own degree awarding status.” Michele expressed her great pleasure in attending the launch of Workers’ Playtime and Beryl Beryl (featuring the talents of another staff member, Ian Taylor, alongside our former student Brendan Croker) before cutting the ribbon to formally declare both exhibitions open.
You can see exhibition highlights here
Exhibition runs from Friday 14th Jan until Thursday 17th February 2011
Gallery open Monday to Friday, 10.30am until 4pm