THE FIRST dedicated visual art centre in Moray is emerging! For the past fourteen years, art classes have been given in a small shed in the Park, Findhorn, near Forres. Students travel to weekly, ongoing classes from a radius of over 50 miles.
Demand grew so great that it was time to realise our vision: to create an inspiring art centre in which people of all levels could learn and create. Now, a diverse and wide-ranging group of artists, teachers, arts and governmental organisations in Moray have come together to create a new regional and international art centre for the advancement of art and art appreciation.
Our project is endorsed and supported, in part, by HIE Moray Enterprise, The Moray Council, Highland 2007/Scottish Arts Council, Highlands & Islands Enterprise, The Big Lottery, and many other trusts, and by an ever-growing number of generous individuals.
Our vision is to create an inspired environment within a centre for visual art education and appreciation that attracts and uses the high-level development of national and international artists from many art forms in order to immerse artists, teachers, and students in an intense, up-lifting atmosphere of pioneering thought and creativity.
We aim to provide an environment that encourages artists to fulfil their highest potential, regardless of technical ability, disabilities, or other restrictions. We plan to offer diverse arts activities in a dynamic and vital venue for artists to share inspiration and learning, with regular fine arts and crafts courses, talks, films, performance, and training.
Our aim is to create an encouraging environment in which artists and students can evolve and flourish at their own pace away from market trends, fashion, and critical intimidation, where people can question, explore, and find, for themselves, the highest beauty of our time.
We will encourage students to express their uninhibited reactions to art while developing personal taste, where originality and innovation will be a natural result of study and work, not a self-conscious intention or an aim in itself
Our centre will be the first, flexible venue for visual arts classes and exhibition in Moray. The facilities will include two teaching studios (can be joined into a single large studio), a dedicated studio for children and special needs, a community gallery, a Museum-quality Exhibition Space, four individual artists' studios (flexible usage), and a resource library and study area.
Our building design will be a model of energy self-sufficiency achieved through solar photovoltaics, geothermal sources, and passive solar, and high-level insulation.
The centre is now under construction with an expected opening date of April 2007. Today, the framing of the first floor of Phase 1 of the Art Centre is underway! The site is surrounded by a common green and deer-filled fields, with a view over Findhorn Bay and rolling moors.
Our short-term funding goal for building costs for Phase One is £110,671.50 (only 19.1% left to raise!) of a total phase one build cost of £579,438, or 80.9%
We see our centre as a bee-hive of inspiration. Within a rich cross-disciplinary, cross-pollinating environment we will teach by inspiration and osmosis, as well as by technical means. Revered artists from Milan, New York, Glasgow, London, Lisbon, and even South India have, somehow, already heard of our project and want to be a part of it; a retreat from big-city pressures and an incubator for debate and exploration.
Do we want beauty? What is it? Can we, individually and communally, find commonality; a new criteria for beauty in our own time?
For more information or to help us meet our funding objectives, please contact Randy Klinger, The Park, Forres IV36 3TZ, Moray (01309 690712; randyklinger@hotmail.com )
Randy Klinger will provide regular updates on progress. Moray Art Centre is a charitable company limited by guarantee. Company registered in Scotland No:187739 Recognised by the Inland Revenue as a Scottish Charity No: SC028270
© Randy Klinger, 2006
