The chairman of the Trustees of Rye Art Gallery Michael Miller (pictured above in the centre) recently received a grant from The Rye Community Shop and announces below a new competition for young people to win awards to support their development as artists. Michael writes below:
“The Rye Community Shop is now one of the town’s gems as far as charitable giving is concerned and complements well the Rye Fund and the Sussex Community Foundation, the other major sources of grant funding for local charitable organisations.
For many years I was the Chairman of the Prince’s Trust in Essex and one of our principles was to inspire young people by the award of small grants which could possibly transform their lives and enable them to do something that was beyond their expectations.
As the chairman of the trustees of Rye Art Gallery, I am very keen to continue this by reaching out to the talented young people in local schools and colleges by asking them to submit their art works to the gallery as part of an awards programme we are to undertake starting early next year. The works (in any art form) will then be judged and prizes awarded.
In this way we hope to be able to identify some of the rising stars of tomorrow and encourage them perhaps to consider a career in the arts.
The gallery has a very long tradition of holding exhibitions by up and coming, then unknown artists who have gone to become very well-known and in some cases Royal Academicians. I want this to continue.
The awards will be known as the Stormont prizes in recognition of the gallery’s founders and we hope to be able to present the first ones at the end of the academic year in 2017. We usually have an exhibition by Rye College students in August and this will fit in well with this event.
From what I have seen already, there is a great deal of artistic talent and creativity amongst our young people and I hope the award programme will encourage them to come forward with their works and to be inspired.”
Photo: Kenneth Bird