Seymour Art Collective is an artist collective a further education course a network a support structure a collection of voices a group of like-minded creatives who work together on projects from the street up   Seymour Art Collective, the further education course, is designed to engage people who are either street homeless or who have experienced homelessness at some point in their past through weekly art workshops with a focus on collective working and a rolling programme of visits, talks, public events and commissions all centerd around the artist's own interests and needs. Employed by City of Westminster College, I co-designed, developed and ran the course with the artists at the West London Day Centre from 2009-2013. In 2013, due to cuts in adult education funding, the homeless provision was cut by the college and shortly afterwards Westminster Adult Education Service took up the funding and now continue the weekly workshops with artist and tutor Mark Stuart-Smith working with the collective. Over the years I have been involved, Seymour Art Collective has evolved through it's members pushing for change and through my own desires to twist and manipulate the conventions of further education to allow a long-term project to develop. As artists we have worked with a range of partners and collaborators such as The Showroom, Tate, The Centre For Possible Studies and Gasworks to produce events and exhibitions. We have also produced our own commercial exhibitions at Patrick Heide Contemporary Art and Subway Gallery. I have written a short article on my relationship to the collective and to the educational institution that has been published in a book called 'It all started when the days seemed quite plain' by Sarah Carne. You can view the text here.   _____________________________________________________________________________________________

Selected projects and events _____________________________________________________________________________________________ re-projecting (london), The Showroom, 2013 re-projecting (london): Seymour Art Collective - Walk from Video in Common on Vimeo. Documentation of a walk by Seymour Art Collective as part of 're-projecting (london)', a project at The Showroom by Brazilian artist Ricardo Basbaum. Point 4 of the 're-projecting (london)' diagram fell near the West London Day Centre on Seymour Place, which provides essential services for homeless people in Westminster. In 2011, The Showroom met with a group of artists who meet weekly at the Centre, and have since continued a dialogue and working relationship. For the project members of the Collective met regularly over the period of several months, they researched and walked the 're-projecting (london)' diagram as a way to develop work around ideas of collectivity, public space, recorded and personal histories in relation to place and the potentials of the concept of dérive. More information on re-projecting (london) Photos: Daniela Mattos. © Ricardo Basbaum. Courtesy the artist.

Seymour Art Collective, Performance excursion, IKEA Wembley, 2012 We spent a day with artist and performer Frog Morris finding out about his practice and exploring the potenial of IKEA and a creative studio for developing performances.

Seymour Art Collective in residence at The Showroom, 2011 In 2011 Louise Shelley invited the collective to become artists in residence in The Showroom for a couple of weeks over the summer. This provided us with an opportunity to set-up a studio and showing space where we could continue with our projects and works as well as open up to the public for specific talks and screenings. For artists whose studio provision is normally limited to 2 hours once a week, the opportunity to use a collective studio space all day for 2 weeks had a huge impact on the way we worked as individual artists and as a collective. Artist and Communities curator at Tate Modern Liz Ellis running a workshop with Seymour Art Collective and members of the public to co-produce a manifesto for the collective       Collaboration with Centre For Possible Studies for Rehoused, our ongoing project throughout 2013, Riso-print poster. In 2013 we began a collaboration with the Serpentine Galleries Centre for Possible Studies. We started with discussions and produced a question from which we developed work from 'If we're all in this together, who are we and what is this?'   Please visit http://seymourart.tumblr.com for more info