Highlights & Projects

Highlights from the Front Room Programme in 2015

Themed shows

2015 saw a number of groups collaborating to put on successful selling shows in The Front Room Gallery. These groups included potters, embroiderers and art college graduates. Individual artists have also joined our popular themed shows including: Space, Animal Magic, Man Made and Winter. You can find more details on our current artists opportunities here.

Exhibiting artists work, Winter, 2015

My experience of exhibiting in the Beaney Front Room, Canterbury has been wonderful! I have been successful in selling two paintings and am exhibiting presently for the third time. I have spent a day in the Front Room, sitting with my work, selling cards etc, on all three occasions and have found the gallery to be exceptionally busy. The museum is a very welcoming place which enables people from all walks of life and all ages to access the Arts. In fact I have found the Front Room Gallery particularly wonderful for children to access Art.
While I was sitting with my work, several families with children came in to look at the paintings and talk about them. It is a very special, happy place!
Clare Danstead, past exhibitor in The Front Room

Christmas Craft Fair

From 2012 The Beaney has organised an annual selling Christmas Craft Fair featuring high quality art and craft made in Kent. The Craft Fair returned for another year in 2015, with stalls located throughout The Beaney’s beautiful and eclectic galleries. Details for this year’s Craft Fair will be available here later in 2016.

The Beaney Broadsheet

The Beaney Broadsheet project was a newspaper collaboration between Sara Wicks and the local community. In January and February 2015 The Front Room was transformed into a newsroom and The Beaney Broadsheet featuring original writing, and artwork contributed by local people, and inspired by The Beaney’s museum and library collections, was created. This project was funded by Kent County Council Libraries, Registration and Archives.

The Beaney Broadsheet, 2015

Our Great Charter

The Skillnet Group’s Our Great Charter exhibition: people with and without learning difficulties working together to achieve equality channelled the national interest in the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta to create an audio and visual exhibition. Visitors to the Beaney joined them on their journey towards the achievement of equality via a modern Great Charter.

Kent Association for the Blind

A partnership with the Kent Association for the Blind, which included including a stunning photographic exhibition challenging preconceptions of life with sight loss, as well as opportunities for hands-on simulations.

Cardboard Canterbury

Cardboard Canterbury: the city through the eyes of those experiencing homelessness, a collaboration between artist Sara Wicks and clients of Catching Lives, Porchlight, and the Salvation Army. The artworks created reflected a portrait of Canterbury as seen by those who have experience of homelessness in the city, and the exhibition included film screenings from The Homeless Film Festival. You can read more on the project on Sara’s blog here.