What’s new with Creative People in Florence, you ask? Well lots! Anna and I have many new ideas up our sleeves!
To start with we can’t help but mention the growing number of our members! Our Facebook group has officially passed the 1000 member mark and continues to grow each day. Our cup runneth over! Thank you everyone!
As some of you may already know, our group has recently been mentioned in several publications including our local English newspaper, The Florentine, as well as Culture Fix blog, and ……get ready…… NEW YORK MAGAZINE! Wow! That was certainly big news for us! Four years ago when this group began, we never imagined that we would get a mention in such a well-known publication.
Next on the list is the revival of the Studio Visits Series that we all know and love. The Series was started last Fall by Anna Rose and was an instant hit! We are very excited to announce that the series will take on a new focus in the coming months. We will be inviting smaller groups to attend with a new, clearer objective in mind. The project aims to provide a space where we can enter into a focused discussion with the artist, hear about his or her studio practice, and delve into the content of the work. The purpose is to look at the work objectively and use our various backgrounds to formulate a constructive conversation around the work. As creative people we all know the importance of the artist critique, and this new approach has been designed to allow for this type of conversation. We will be posting the events to the Facebook page just as before but spaces will be limited so be sure to send us an email quickly to confirm you spot. We will no longer to accepting confirmation though the Facebook ‘join’ button. We will also try to choose a few members of the group who we believe would benefit from the conversation based on the work that they create and any commonalities we believe they share with the artist we will be visiting. This is our way of trying to help each other improve and grow in our own creative practice.
We would also like to visit as many museum and gallery openings as possible and hope that you will join us! We will announcing them on the facebook page. We can discuss the work together over a glass of wine after the show. Keep your eyes open for these announcements and be sure to let us know if you would like to join us. We will organize a meeting point ahead of time and go over together. Last Sunday was our first visit to Biagiotti Arte for the opening of their new show.
Another piece of big news for us is that Anna and I recently had the opportunity to present and speak about Creative People in Florence at the Ontario Collage of Art and Design’s Florence program. It was very exciting for us to be able to share our group with the students and participate in a Q&A with them afterwards. It definitely added a sense of authenticity to what we have been building and made us feel very ‘official’ in our roles as the group’s founders, organizers, and administrators. It was an exciting day for CPiF, one that we hope will be the first of many.
Instagram! Yes! Cool, right? Creative People in Florence now has an Instagram account, and what’s even more exciting than that is that you are all welcome to participate. Another fabulous idea from the lovely Anna. The idea is that each week a different member of the group will take over the account and post photos from their week as a creative person in the city we all know and love. At the end of the week that person can choose to nominate the next person, or they can hand it back to us and we will choose. Sounds like fun doesn’t it? Check out which members have already taken the lead here and then follow us @creativepeopleinflorence.
Our blog directory is also getting a makeover! A big job indeed with our 1000+ members! Thank goodness we have help from our lovely intern Alexis. She has been painstakingly going through the list one member at a time to gather information about you and your work. You will soon be receiving a message asking for all your updated information, and inviting those of you who are currently living in Florence to become part of the Member Directory (if you aren’t already). It would help us greatly if you can make sure to respond to this with all your details so we can get you in the right place in the directory so that you can be easily found!
And along with all of this excitement comes some personal excitement in our own creative practices. Both Anna and I have been working not only on CPiF, but also on our own art careers which will be taking us away from Florence for a short time this Fall and Winter. Anna will be heading up to Iceland for the month of November for an artist residency (if anyone has some nice warm sweaters they would like to loan her, I’m sure it would be appreciated 😉 haha, just kidding, but really it’s going to be COLD up there! Stay warm Anna! Yikes!
Me, on the other hand, well I’m heading off to Los Angeles, I may need to fish out my costume da bagno ;). I will be away from mid-November and returning to Firenze mid-January with stops in San Francisco and Chicago for some shows that I will be participating in.
But don’t worry, Anna and I will still be working remotely and continue to make plans for the group, including the next Creative Apertivo and Studio Visit.
In the meantime, since CPiF is all about community and collaboration we have selected some members to write guest posts for us focusing on what Contemporary Florence means to them. Blogger Georgette Jupe kicked off the series for us, you can read what she had to say here! Stay tuned for more in the coming weeks.
Thank you all for your continued support and enthusiasm!
Sara Amrhein and Anna Rose
creativepeopleinflorence.com 