Aiming to take the ‘art out of the gallery and into the community’, the Not(t) Art Collective is a new project that hopes to provoke interest from people who wouldn’t necessarily ‘do’ art. Taking place at The Barley Twist pub on Carrington Street, the collective looks to engage people in a range of social creative activities; from portrait drawing socials, to bring your own arts-and-crafts evenings, to the bare essentials - life drawing! We spoke to Matt Smith, founder of the Collective about his motivations for starting the group.
For anyone who has yet to hear about Not(t) Art please could you describe the collective and tell them about your wonderful events they could get involved with?
The catalyst for starting Not(t) Art Collective was from wanting to start an art group whilst I was at university. Personally, I had never done arts and crafts growing up as it can be very high brow and exclusionary in certain places and we want to be the complete opposite. One Sunday I discovered there was a life drawing group in the local community centre. I was curious, so decided to go along to give it a go. I came out of the first session, and it was like floating on a cloud! You just focus on creating something really nice. I was hooked and started going once or twice a week after that. That was about fifteen years ago.
What we want to do is to take it to the people who wouldn’t normally do arts and crafts and persuade them to come to a session, whether it’s an evening of life drawing, or a portrait drawing social. Another session (that we are currently negotiating with the pub - they just need to check on the risk assessment) is bring your own craft. We're going to encourage people to bring their own craft in, to either share it, teach it, or just sit and do it, but within a supportive group. We’re hoping to do two bi-weekly bring your own art and craft sessions. Life drawing and portrait drawing are bi-monthly, usually at the end of the month.
What motivated you to start this community art group?
When I first started Sheffield Hallam University as a mature student back in 2020, we were under lockdown and another university with a very active arts society was letting us join in their online life drawing sessions. That kind of created a level plain field as everyone could join in and it created a real sense of community in a very difficult time. I saw not only the enjoyment but the value of arts and crafts, the mindfulness, and just how good it is to get involved.
The main thing that motivated me was seeing the good that it could do. These little communities that sprung up in lockdown were such an escape really. I was talking with a friend who is an illustrator, and he was frustrated that he wasn’t getting the chance to do his art, and my community art sessions that I was running in Sheffield had run its course. Then we came up with this idea of taking art into places where you wouldn’t normally expect to find it, which sparked the idea of Not(t) Art!
I think a lot of people think that art’s not for them. For one thing it can be quite expensive, and some might feel like that it’s not ‘your place to do art’
What’s your connection to Barley Twist? What makes this lovely Notts pub suitable to host a community drawing space?
I did my dissertation on the importance of community spaces. The original plan was to get my former life drawing group to be a university society - obviously at university you’ve got instant access to their resources but if you’re not at university, you don’t have that, so these spaces are so important. They're a form of community for so many people and basically, without pubs and clubs, our art group wouldn’t have existed. It was a social club first, and then we had the two pubs give us free function room hire.
The Barley Twist is a lovely little pub based in a very historic building near the train station. They host an extraordinary array of community events ranging from pub quizzes, vinyl record nights and books clubs. It's a mutually beneficial thing to support a community venue. The brewery tends to be very supportive of community and charity as well, which is another thing we want to support. So, it's a win win!
Your ‘bring and share a craft’ social is in aid of Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust, the county’s leading conservation charity – why do you want to use Not(t) Art as a platform to support this charity?
During my university degree. I studied social sciences, and my number one interest was community spaces, community engagement, and lifelong learning. But a secondary interest was conservation volunteering. Some of the stuff that’s going on with the Wildlife Trusts and catchment trusts is absolutely amazing - the rewilding and the Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust runs a place called Idle Valley, which is basically a coalmine they’ve turned into a wildlife haven. To get the support for something like that is brilliant and very valuable for future generations.
Finally, what do you hope for the future of Not(t) Art Collective?
We're launching our life-drawing from the end of May. We are currently having a rethink of what we are going to offer... This project is partially with students in mind, but we are also looking at doing two bi-weekly bring your own art and craft sessions.
But I hope we’ll attract more people who have never done art before! Perhaps they’ll try some portrait drawing or life drawing, or any arts and crafts we’ve got going on that particular session, and that they will enjoy it and they’ll hopefully keep doing it! Just like I did when I first went into that community centre fifteen years ago. And I have been doing art ever since.
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