Incubation Arts Winter Exhibition
Incubation Arts is a creative group of Macclesfield-based makers who are still on a journey of development.
We originated many years ago as a group of ceramicists called Moving Clay, and then expanded to include other creative disciplines under the banner of artsXstra. Our current name of Incubation Arts was inaugurated well over a decade ago when we decided to become a charity and open an Arts Centre, firstly in Dukes Court, and then in Charles Roe House, fittingly the original home of entrepreneur Charles Roe who is credited with bringing the silk industry to Macclesfield.
From this exceptional property on the corner of Chestergate and Churchill Way, we organised many exhibitions of local artists’ work, concerts, historical exhibitions based around the influences that makes Macclesfield the unique place it is today, school’s exhibitions, Joy Division exhibitions, discussion groups, and arts and craft workshops designed to incubate local peoples’ latent creative skills.
Our aim and vision was to make everyone feel ‘welcome’ and ‘included’, a true ‘community project’ for which the promise of funding for the future had been acquired. Unfortunately, our ‘partners’ in this exciting enterprise withdrew their support at the last moment and the property was sold from ‘beneath us’. We then had to then operate from a variety of empty premises in order to continue, undaunted and undefeated, but on a smaller scale.
The last of these was from a former charity shop on Mill Street. Then Covid struck and life as we had all known it collapsed and we, as a group like everyone else, withdrew into our various homes, studios and workshops but, fortunately many of us still possessed the ‘drive’ that creativity generates. It’s what makes us ‘human’.
What you see in this exhibition is the work of those members who continued to create through strange times, and often not knowing what future, if any, the outcome of the pandemic would hold for us all. So, as has been said from the stages of many concerts etc. since those dark and dreadful abnormal days … “It’s great to be back”…
Exhibition runs Sunday 12th November to Sunday 10th December 2023. The Gallery is open 2-4pm on Sundays and during other events listed on our events page.
www.incubationarts.org
