Press Release: Creative Elephant - 16th - 24th September 2023
Creative Elephant;
an exhibition and events program for London Design Festival and Urban Elephant Festival
16th - 24th September 2023
Various times, please see the event listing below.
Hotel Elephant, 5 Spare Street, London, SE17 3EP
@hotelelephant
For immediate release:
Hotel Elephant is pleased to present Creative Elephant, a program of events and workshops celebrating the creative and design talents of our studio members for the London Design Festival and Urban Elephant Festival. The program will include a group exhibition of artwork and objects from our members, including textiles, fashion, fine art and jewellery. The exhibition is free to attend and will run for the duration of the festival. Our events program will include participatory workshops and demonstrations from different craftspeople, alongside an evening talk about Chinese Filigree for the Southwark Design District lates program. Booking will be required for the events, please see our website for more details.
Enamel Jewellery making workshop with Zoey & Ray
Date: 16th September
Time: 1 pm - 4 pm.
Price: £69 + booking fee. Use code “ELEPHANT” to get £15 off
Read the full event listing and book HERE
On Saturday 16th September join us for an afternoon of Enamel Jewellery making. Led by expert craftspeople, Zoey and Ray, you will be introduced to the history and significance of enamel jewellery and be taught the techniques and processes to make your own piece of jewellery to take home. We are pleased to have this workshop featured as part of the Urban Elephant Festival, a free community arts festival in the Elephant & Castle.
Talk: “The Secret Craft: Chinese Filigree Inlay''
Date: 21st September
Time: 7 pm - 8:30 pm
Price: £5 + booking fee
Read the full event listing and book HERE
On the evening of the 21st of September we will be hosting a talk; “The Secret Craft: Chinese Filigree Inlay '' which will introduce the audience to the traditional craft of filigree jewellery and its cultural significance in Chinese heritage. The evening will include an interactive demonstration where visitors can try their hand at the wire stretching technique.
Yarn Sale and Weaving Demonstration with Mairi Gillies
Date: 23rd September
Time: 10 am - 2 pm
Price: Free, please RSVP
Read the full event listing and RSVP HERE
On Saturday 23rd September our program will conclude with a free interactive weaving demonstration and yarn sale. Come and join textile specialist and hand weaver, Mairi Gillies to experience the mindful benefits of yarm windings and learn different techniques of off-loom weaving. Visitors will also get to purchase yarn to take home from the event's yarn sale.
Creative Elephant Exhibition
Dates: 18th - 22nd September
Times: Mon. - Fri. 8 am - 5 pm
Price: Free
Special event opening times:
Enamel Jewellery making workshop: Sat. 16th, 1 pm - 4 pm (booking required)
Late night opening: Thurs. 21st 6:30 pm - 9 pm (booking required)
Yarn Sale & weaving demonstration: Sat. 24th 10 am - 2 pm. Free, please RSVP
A group exhibition of artwork and objects from our studio members, spanning textiles, fashion, fine art and jewellery. Exhibiting artists include;
Sara Chyan
@sarachyanjewellery
Sara Chyan is a jewellery artist who explores the unique properties of bismuth to create one-of-a-kind pieces. Sara Chyan founded her brand in 2018 based on the bismuth project she began while studying for her Masters in Jewellery & Metal at the Royal College of Art. The project has already won numerous international awards and has been featured in several high-profile magazines.
Bismuth is a rare metal with a very low melting point and a high boiling point, and as a result, it can be used to create a wide variety of shapes and colours. Sara combines bismuth with other materials in her work. By manipulating the metal's temperature, she can produce a wide range of colours, from deep blues to vibrant greens. One colour reflects the different temperatures the metal has burned at. In addition, the geometric shapes that she creates are unlike anything that has ever been seen before. As a result, her work is truly mesmerising and one-of-a-kind.
Thiara Smith
@tiharasmith
Tihara Smith is the founder of a fashion, accessories, and lifestyle brand inspired by the vibrant Caribbean and the Windrush Generation. She is a proud graduate of the University for the Creative Arts Epsom, where she honed her design skills and showcased her Windrush-inspired graduate collection at Graduate Fashion Week 2018. One of the outfits from this collection was acquired by the Museum of London in 2021. As the winner of Start-Up with Seven Dials, she had the incredible opportunity to host a pop-up shop on Neal Street in the same year. Her products are now stocked in independent shops across the UK, in Bermuda, and the British Virgin Islands, including the National Theatre and Museum of London Docklands. As a creative entrepreneur, she is passionate about design, the Caribbean and sharing the Windrush story. She strives to create distinctive pieces that allow people to have a little piece of the Caribbean. She is dedicated to creating high-quality products that not only look great but also tell a story, and that are as sustainable as she can make possible. Thiara will be exhibiting one of her beautiful denim and embroidery jackets as part of the Creative Elephant exhibition.
Mairi Gilllies
@wovenmairi
Mairi Gillies is a textile specialist and hand weaver based in London. Originally getting into textiles at a young age, it was during her BA Hons degree in woven textile design at Central Saint Martins where she found her love for weaving.
Mairi has worked as a freelance designer across both sectors of interior and fashion textiles, including exhibiting her woven textiles during London Fashion Week and having her textiles featured in ELLE UK. Her achievements have been recognised by The Heritage Craft Association, shortlisting her to the top 3 for the Young Weaver of the Year Award.
Keeping sustainable practices at the heart of everything she does, Mairi utilises repurposed materials within her weaving. Working with the ethos of ‘not needing to buy new to create new’, Mairi produces textiles of bold colour and texture which convey experimental play and communicative storytelling through woven material.
Rushda Shah
@Rushdapotts
Rushda works with oil, acrylic and decoupage. She is currently working on paintings and objects charting her family’s journey from India to Africa and then to the UK. The sort of journey taken by so many working for the British Empire and now residing here. For Creative Elephant she will be exhibiting a collection of decoupage vases from this collection of works.
Matilda Laird
@matilda.laird
Matilda Laird is a multidisciplinary visual artist. Her practice includes sculpture, installation, performance, drawing, video and digital drawing. Her generally large-scale architectural works address broad themes of consumerism and the manipulations of retail. With a focus on ideas of elevation and display, she appropriates a retail aesthetic as a means of critiquing retail aesthetics.
Myy Tran
@yymnart
About Hotel Elephant
@hotelelephant
Hotel Elephant is a not-for-profit workspace provider, based in Southwark with over 14 years of experience delivering workspace, exhibitions, events, and education spaces in the Elephant and Castle. Our goal is to provide and safeguard long-term space for arts, culture, and creative enterprise in London.
In 2016 Hotel Elephant launched Spare Street, a dedicated and permanent Creative Enterprise hub in the Elephant and Castle. In the Summer of 2022, Hotel Elephant opened a new site in a former school building, providing high-quality workspaces for artists, makers, and creative businesses which are secure for 5 years. Currently, Hotel Elephant has over 175 members across our studio locations who work within a broad range of different arts and creative industries.
About London Design Festival
https://www.londondesignfestival.com
16th - 24th September
Various times and locations across the city, please see their website more for details.
London Design Festival celebrates and promotes the city as a design capital on a global stage.
London Design Festival was launched by Sir John Sorrell CBE and Ben Evans CBE in 2003. Building on London’s existing design activity, their concept was to create an annual event that would promote the city’s creativity, drawing in the country’s greatest thinkers, practitioners, retailers and educators to deliver an unmissable celebration of design. The launch of the first Festival took place at Bloomberg on 25 March 2003, with a show of support from design, education, government and London organisations. 20 years later, this vision remains ever strong.
About Southwark Design District
@southwark.design
16th - 24th September
Various activities across Southwark, please see their website for more details.
A hyperlocal design destination showcasing one of the most vibrant and creative communities in London. The district sets out to formalise and create a new and fresh take on the London design scene around the meandering neighbourhoods of Old Kent Road, Camberwell, Peckham, Elephant and Castle and surrounding areas.
They celebrate the local designers, makers and creators who work, live and play in the area through diverse design happenings. Southwark has long been a home for those with an appreciation for design. They diversify the meaning of design and make it accessible to everyone. They connect our community, culture, education and enterprise to bring about a local and sustainable creative economy.
About Urban Elephant Festival
@urbanelefest
15th - 17th September
Various times and locations, please Urban Elephant Festival for more information.
An exciting and innovative free community arts festival in Elephant and Castle, South East London. Elephant and Castle’s biggest and most eagerly anticipated cross-cultural event, Urban Elephant 2023 festival makes a splash with an epic lineup of arts and culture, with the theme World Fusion.
Taking place across SE1’s Elephant Castle on 15 to 17 September, the Festival will begin at Castle Square, making its way to Elephant Park, Sayer Street, and Walworth Square throughout the weekend and will include a plethora of music, dance, arts, food and performances to celebrate London’s epicentre of cultural and artistic diversity.
Backed by Southwark Council, Get Living, Lendlease, Notting Hill Genesis and North Walworth Councillors, the lively weekend will create a meaningful opportunity for the local community of Elephant and Castle and Londoners to come together to share ideas, connect and culturally collaborate. Building on the success of last year, Urban Elephant 2023 will celebrate everything it means to be a melting pot of culture and the importance of coming together to share tradition through artistic performance.
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