this is where it's ART: June 2012

This is where it's Art happened on the 8th, 9th and 10th of June in the Spennymoor Town Hall and Spennymoor Leisure Centre. We encourage all visitors and exhibitors to get in touch with their own write-ups, reports, photos and thoughts on the event, so that we can share them (with your permission).

You can email us at thisiswhereitsart@gmail.com or message us on Facebook or Twitter with your stories. Please do tag us in your Facebook photos if you took any during the event, we'd love to see.

This is a little run down of my personal (Brittany's) highlights for the festival, accompanied by photos.

Friday

It was great to meet everybody on Friday, the variety and quality of work was excellent. I spent a good part of the day getting to know the other exhibitors and learning my way around the Town Hall in preparation for the busier day that would be Saturday. There was a wonderful atmosphere as the exhibitors greeted one another, shared stories and swapped knowledge. The atmosphere generated in those first few hours lasted throughout the entire festival.

Saturday

We had a bit of bad weather but the folk of Spennymoor were not put off and the Town Hall was full of curious visitors. Curious in a good way, everybody was genuinely interested, both in the art and the people behind it. At noon there was a flash-mob in the market square, a street dance performance by Kdanz, which unfortunately I missed, though the kids involved enjoy it, commenting that dancing in the rain made it all the more dramatic. Paul picked up some honey from the bee man (South Durham Honey), who had an observation hive set up in the Town Hall bar, they were fascinating to watch, I took far too many photos of the bees and learned a great deal about them while doing it.

Sunday

The weather cleared up a bit on Sunday and the Town Hall was filled with visitors, some of which had come along on the previous day and returned, this time with their entire family. There were plenty of activities for all ages, including a comic book workshop over in the leisure centre, stained glass fusing workshops in the Town Hall and weaving, which happened in the exhibition space. I mention the weaving specifically as it managed to keep several children occupied all weekend, each going away determined to continue this new hobby.

I'm looking forward to the next one already, it was such an enjoyable festival, full of lovely, friendly people. I even found a new favourite food place in Spennymoor, Bistro Fifty3, which kept Paul and I very well fed during the weekend.

Thank you to everybody who came, everybody who helped spread the word and the people of Spennymoor for being so lovely.

Brittany Coxon.

You can view all of Brittany's photos from the event on her Flickr page.