Art Groups London

LONDON SOCIAL CREATIVE EXCHANGE

# 🎨 SOCIAL CREATIVE EXCHANGE ## Meet. Create. Connect. ### 🎟️ TO ATTEND **Please join the waiting list.** As part of the registration, please share a **short bio about yourself and your creative work/activity**. **A social night for people who love ART, MUSIC & CREATIVITY.** Are you an artist, musician, photographer, filmmaker, designer, performer, writer, or simply someone who loves creative ideas? Come and meet people, discover new talent, share your work and find potential collaborators. ### 🎨 WHAT TO EXPECT **Creative Spotlight** Discover local artists, musicians and creators presenting their work. **🤝 Creative Networking** Meet people who share your interests and discover potential collaborators. **💡 Share Your Ideas** Bring your project, artwork, music, photography, business or creative idea and tell people about it. **🌍 Meet New People** Connect with creatives from different backgrounds, cultures and industrie **EVERYONE IS WELCOME** Artists • Musicians • DJs • Photographers • Filmmakers • Designers • Writers • Performers • Creators • Entrepreneurs • Students • Beginners • Creative enthusiasts **You don't need to be a professional. If you love creating, you're welcome.** ### 📍 LONDON 🗓️ **Date:** Saturday 26 Septembre ⏰ **7:00 PM – 10:00 PM** 📍 **Venue:** Aviary Montcalm Royal London ### 🎟️ LIMITED SPOTS AVAILABLE **Places are limited — register early to secure your spot.** **Everyone is welcome.**

Opportunity to visit St Paul's Cathedral with no admission charge

10 Tickets only! Light supper at 5.15 for those who wish to join, otherwise Cathedral at 6.20. This is a special ticket only open night at St Paul's. As a group, we will take the opportunity to look around the inside of St Paul’s Cathedral in the evening light and explore the Cathedral’s heritage. We will have the opportunity to hear little known stories from the rich history with Spotlight Talks from expert guides, and self-guided trails. We will also get the chance to see a range of heritage skills with displays from highly skilled craftspeople including stone masons and embroiderers and join handling sessions with the Collections team. Both at the same time and following the activities above, those who wish, may also take part, but separate from the group, in some of the more spiritual and religious activities going on at the same time, such as an opportunity to sample Christian mindfulness, music from the Cathedral Consort, and much more. Also, following our group visit, and again, only for those interested to stay (I won't be staying), the evening will close with a sung service of Compline under the Dome. The Crypt will be open for the evening as will as the Cafe. but please note the Dome Galleries won't be open. As a group, we will likely stay at in the Cathedral for 1 to 1.5 hours. After that, you are welcome to stay on individually as discussed above. As always, please only sign up if you are intending to attend. The event is free, except for this special event we are asking for a non refundable £3.00 meetup group maintenance fee, upon which meetup will also charge you a small amount on top. Before the visit, I intend to go for a light inexpensive supper at Pipel, which is just around the corner. For those who don't know Pipel, they serve fresh healthy falafel, and unlike other falafel, they do not add flour but instead use 100% chickpeas, fresh vegetables and spices, cooked to perfection and served with the best salads and pitas. Weather permitting, other choices may be available if it is warm and dry enough to eat in the square where a number of other cheap food outlets are located. It would be lovely if as many of you as possible join me, and we will likely meet there at 5 to 5.15. [https://www.pilpel.co.uk/our-food/](https://www.pilpel.co.uk/our-food/) As we have a limited number of places, we would appreciated it if you cancelled no later than 3 days before the event and to please avoid cancelling on the day as that may get you removed from the group.

Café sketching session (+ Movie hangout) ☕✏️🎬

Get ready to bring your sketchbook and art supplies for a chilled café sketching session! There'll also be a movie hangout afterwards! You're free to just attend the sketching session or the movie hangout. If you'd like to come to the movie hangout, scroll down for more info. No matter your skill level lets grab a coffee and unleash our creativity into our sketchbooks. There's no formal guidance, you'll be free to get on with your own drawings/personal art projects while being able to connect with other local artists. You're welcome to join in on the group conversations or quietly get on with your art studies whatever your preference. A few basic drawing supplies (pencils, colouring pencils, erasers etc) will be provided but please bring your own sketchbook / tablet / paper / something to draw on! We'll be on Level 2 inside the Royal Festival Hall (Level 2 entrance via Riverside Terrace or Mandela Walk). Message if you can't find us! After the sketching session (time TBC), we will make our way to the Vue in Leicester Square to see the video game based horror movie **Resident Evil (2026)**. Film times have yet to be scheduled! *The seat I will book and the link to the tickets will be updated here closer to the sketching event.* Hope to see you there 👋 (Also please feel free to join even if there's a waitlist / RSVPs are full!)

Creativity

Folklore Inspired Creative Session

**Do you ever feel the pull to be creative, but don’t know how to start, or even what you want to make?** **Do you ever get a flash of inspiration, but never have the time or energy to follow it through?** **Do you worry that you need to learn creative skills before you have the 'right' to make art?** **If you answered yes to any of the above, then this event is for you!** As children, we create all the time. We sing, draw and write as part of our normal lessons. We make sandcastles, secret dens, friendship bracelets, invent ball games and make up elaborate storylines for dolls and action figures. We don’t fear failure because the point isn’t to succeed, but to express ourselves and have fun. In fact there’s a whole branch of folklore called childlore! But as adults, it can become hard to connect with that creative instinct, whether that’s due to time, energy, cost or self-doubt. So for this event, we’ll be taking time and space to connect with what inspires us and flex our creativity just for the fun of it. Skill and experience levels don’t matter (although those who are skilled or experienced are welcome!)-what matters is remembering what creative inspiration feels like to you personally, and pursuing it to create something authentic to you. To do this, we’ll be emulating artists across millennia in using folklore as inspiration. A collection of folklore genres will be supplied, each containing a collection of prompts, and you will be picking a piece of folklore that speaks to you on that day and creating a piece of art based on your own interpretation of your prompt. This art can be anything, from poetry to sketching, sewing to architecture, make up, set design, tattoo art, songwriting, fashion, game design or event planning-whatever your prompt inspires you to create! You can choose to do several pieces or spend the whole session on one. Paper and pencils will be provided, but please feel free to bring other materials so long as they are not disruptive to the people or environment around us (eg no liquid paints, musical instruments, etc). Please note: this is not a technical lesson! No specific creative skills will be taught, as the aim is connecting with your own personal creative process. But you are welcome to take your pieces home with you to hone your skills. If there are specific areas of folklore that you would like to see prompts for, we would love to include them! Please feel free to message Kathy up to a week ahead with your ideas :) (This is a free event, so we ask that you please keep RSVPs updated to ensure that as many people as possible who want to come are able to. Cancellations with less than three days’ notice may be removed from the group to prevent wasted spaces in future. Many thanks for your understanding!)

The Alchymical Garden of Michael Foy -Sean Jefferson

A visionary cycle of paintings and texts by British Symbolist artist Sean Jefferson: a work of pastoral sorcery, alchemical imagination, and charged image-making in which the ancient Royal Art of Alchemy is transmuted into the language of contemporary painting. Inspired by the twenty-two emblematic images of Splendor Solis, Jefferson’s Garden unfolds as a living theatre of fairies, poisonous plants, spirit presences, chthonic animals, Qabalistic pathways, Celtic survivals, and dream-born apparitions. At its centre stands Michael Foy: ancestral guide, contrarian familiar, and hidden intelligence of the work, whose presence is invoked as both catalyst and companion in the artist’s Great Work. Here, painting becomes neither mere illustration nor aesthetic ornament, but an operative vessel. Pigment, symbol, automatism, folklore, and visionary perception are brought together in a process of solve et coagula, through which the invisible is given body and the body is returned to mystery. The result is a distinctly British alchemical landscape: lush, dangerous, humorous, haunted, and spiritually alive. Across its three cycles of imagery, The Alchymical Garden of Michael Foy draws upon over fifty years of Jefferson’s research into Symbolist art, Spiritualism, fairy faith, Golden Dawn colour symbolism, Jungian transformation, Surrealist automatism, and the occult current that has always moved beneath the surface of visionary art. It is a book for those who understand that images may be portals, landscapes may be grimoires, and strange beauty—when properly ensouled—may become a mode of initiation. The Alchymical Garden of Michael Foy is published in two highly limited editions – and will not be reprinted!

Let’s take a Trip to London to see the Wallace Collection

The Wallace Collection is a national museum housing unsurpassed masterpieces of painting, sculpture, furniture, arms and armour, and porcelain. It displays the art collections brought together by the first four marquesses of Hertford and Sir Richard Wallace, the likely illegitimate son of the 4th Marquess. It was bequeathed to the British nation by Lady Wallace, Sir Richard’s widow, in 1897. Among the Collection’s treasures are an outstanding array of 18th-century French art, many important 17th and 19th-century paintings, medieval and Renaissance works of art and one of the finest collections of princely arms and armour in Britain. The Wallace Collection is displayed at Hertford House, formerly the principal London residence of the marquesses of Hertford and Sir Richard Wallace. It was opened to the public as a museum in 1900. To learn more visit - https://www.wallacecollection.org/explore/collection/history-collection/ If we catch the train about 10.30 there is a free talk at 1.00 pm and a guided tour 2.30pm. From there we can decide what watering hole we might like to frequent!! Travel arrangements nearer the time.

In what ways can we benefit from “the Arts”?

\*\*\* Our first meeting in a second venue to allow more people to take part in our group \*\*\* NOTE: the pub does not charge for our space on the understanding that we all purchase something from the bar. Please support them. **Please arrive in time for a prompt start at 7:30.** We’ll inevitably spend some time exploring what distinguishes “art” from anything else. But most of our discussion will focus on the ways in which art can be beneficial to both the consumer and the creator. We’ll take a fairly broad interpretation of "the arts", including music, literature and other forms of creativity, in addition to the sorts of things you see in art galleries. (Hence my use of “consumer” instead of “viewer”/”listener”/”reader”). Some questions we might consider… * To what extent does “art” need to be pleasing to the consumer? * If not “pleasing”, what else draws people to experience it? * To what extent should art challenge us to think, or see the world differently? How does this vary across different art forms? * In what ways is being creative for its own sake, beneficial? * In what ways is expressing feelings through art a form of therapy? * What distinguishes works produced primarily to benefit the creator from works produced primarily to benefit the consumer? Who judges? On what basis? * “Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist” is a quote attributed to Picasso. What did he mean? Was he right? Is “art” a licence to break rules? How healthy is that – for creators and consumers? * Marc Chagall, an early 20C painter said “If I create from the heart, nearly everything works; if from the head, almost nothing.” To what extent does successful creation and consumption of art rely on an emotional component / a rational component? * To what extent does a consumer need to understand the creator's intent in order to benefit from a work of art? * What effort does the consumer have to make to fully benefit from the art they consume? How does this vary across different art forms? * To what extent is the act of physically going to a gallery/concert/theatre… more beneficial than seeing photos of pictures in a book / listening to music at home / watching a play on TV etc.? * In what ways do the benefits of creating differ from the benefits of consuming? Relevant articles you may want to look at: [https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/oct/28/picture-of-health-going-to-art-galleries-can-improve-wellbeing-study-reveals](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/oct/28/picture-of-health-going-to-art-galleries-can-improve-wellbeing-study-reveals) [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2yr0d3m1no](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2yr0d3m1no) [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/may/20/art-cure-by-daisy-fancourt-review-is-culture-the-best-medicine](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/may/20/art-cure-by-daisy-fancourt-review-is-culture-the-best-medicine) Hope to see you there.

IAL - Group Exhibition Discussion

# Independent Artists of London — Exhibition Planning Meetup For this meetup, we’ll come together to discuss and shape our plans for a future **Independent Artists of London exhibition**. We’ll use the session to: * Share ideas and creative proposals * Decide on a theme or direction for the exhibition * Identify artists who would like to participate * Discuss the practical logistics and requirements * Start thinking about how we want to present and promote the exhibition This is an open discussion, so **bring your ideas, work, and enthusiasm**. Whether you already have a clear vision or simply want to contribute, everyone is welcome. 📍 **POSK Gallery** 📅 **Saturday 19 September 2026** 🕓 **4:00 pm** Let’s build something together. See you there!

Beginners' Watercolours: Late Summer Foliage

[Join Here](https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/beginners-watercolours-late-summer-foliage-tickets-1998219334821?aff=oddtdtcreator) Capture the lush colours and expressive shapes of late summer in this relaxed, beginner-friendly watercolour workshop in central London. Late summer is one of the most beautiful times to paint foliage: deep greens sit alongside sun-bleached grasses, delicate seed heads, fading flowers and the first touches of warm autumn colour. In this two-hour workshop, you’ll learn the essential techniques of watercolour while creating your own loose and expressive study of late-summer foliage. Perfect for complete beginners, the class will introduce you to watercolour step by step. We’ll explore how to control the balance of water and pigment, mix natural and varied greens, create soft wet-in-wet colour transitions and use different brush marks to suggest leaves, grasses, stems and seed heads. Rather than painstakingly painting every leaf, you’ll learn how to simplify what you see and use loose, confident marks to create the impression of abundant foliage. We’ll begin with a series of short demonstrations and exercises before bringing the techniques together in a finished late-summer botanical painting of your own. What you’ll learn * How to control water and pigment * Essential wet-on-wet and wet-on-dry techniques * How to mix beautiful, natural-looking greens * Simple brush techniques for leaves, stems and grasses * How to create delicate seed heads and botanical details * How to combine soft and sharp edges * How to simplify complicated foliage * How to arrange different plants into a balanced composition No previous drawing or painting experience is needed. The class is designed to be approachable for complete beginners, with plenty of demonstrations and individual guidance. All materials are provided, so you can simply arrive and paint. You’ll leave with your own late-summer watercolour painting, practice studies and techniques that you can continue using at home. About Your Tutor The workshop is taught by Ann Mackowski, a London-based artist and experienced art teacher specialising in drawing, watercolour and oil painting. Ann has been teaching art in central London for over ten years, working with everyone from complete beginners picking up a brush for the first time to more experienced artists looking to develop their technique. Ann is an award winning artist with extensive experience, having exhibited with the Royal Society of Painters in Watercolours, the New English Art Club, Society of Women Artists, and she was a featured contestant on Sky Landscape Artist of the Year. Ann runs Soho Life Drawing and Private Art Events London, teaching regular classes, private tuition and creative events in the heart of London. Come along for a relaxed afternoon of painting and discover just how expressive watercolour can be.

Workshop-The language of symbols: Nature, Art & the Pedagogy of Imagination

This is a paid event, tickets are available [here ](https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/workshop-the-language-of-symbols-nature-art-the-pedagogy-of-imagination-tickets-1998510048353)via Eventbrite. Symbols are a language we all recognise, but few of us can truly read. For thousands of years, symbols have been used to express the ineffable and to create a bridge between the invisible and visible dimensions. By learning to understand them better, we awaken and expand our imagination, which the philosopher, anthropologist and sociologist Gilbert Durand recognised as one of our most vital and transformative faculties. Ultimately, symbols have the power to re-connect us with a world full of meaning and re-enchant our lives. This is a philosophical workshop exploring the hidden meanings behind symbols in nature and art, as well as imagination according to Gilbert Durand. · **Part 1:** The symbolism of minerals, plants and animals, and how the natural world evokes inner images that can help us on our journey through life. · **Part 2:** How deeper psychological truths have been transmitted in works of art, and ways to rediscover these hidden layers through symbolic literacy and active viewing. · **Part 3:** The ‘pedagogy of imagination’ (Gilbert Durand) and how active engagement with symbols and myths is essential for both mental and cultural health. Admission: £40 (£25 concessions), light refreshments provided

EXPRESSIVE COLOUR – PAINTING PORTRAIT WITH LAURA SMITH: 3-4 SEPT 2026

**Create strong, expressive and lush coloured portrait in this fantastic 2 day intensive!** **We are really excited to announce a special new Summer School with artist Laura Smith- exploring drawing and painting through the lense of lush and intense colour.** We will work though portrait using expressive drawing techniques, exploring emotion through markmaking, working with dynamic poses and props to create simple narratives and imagery. We will consider colour and expressive brushwork to build character and emotional depth in your portraits. This workshop is packed full of practical tips to create strong, confident drawing and painting- with loads of tuition and demonstrations to show you how to get started. You will learn everything you need to know about working from the portrait model in oils and acrylics . Great for building confidence in your creative capability- whatever your ability **3-4 September 2024** **10-4.30pm** **£210 All materials included** **£160 Concessions – low income/ full time students – please email info@londondrawing.com to arrange payment** [TICKETS AND INFO HERE](https://londondrawing.com/product/expressive-colour-painting-portrait-with-laura-smith-3-4-sept-2026/) **Venue:** **Waterloo Action Centre** **14 Baylis Road** **SE1 7AA** **Behind Waterloo Station- Diagonally opposite the Old Vic**