Sustainable Art Workshops for Summer and Autumn 2024
Botanical Paper Making Workshop with Clare Taylor from Bus and Bird Arts. 
Botanical Paper Making Workshop with Clare Taylor from Bus and Bird Arts. 
Botanical Ink Making workshop at Sherwood Forest 
Botanical paper making workshop at Shop Zero 
Little Creatives Early Years Workshops 
Tokens of Comfort Workshop at National Justice Museum 
Sustainable workshop offers
Paper Making Workshops
Saturday 27th April 2024, 1 – 3pm at Shop Zero, Nottingham. £30 pp
Saturday 18th May 2024, 10.30am – 12.30pm at Sherwood Forest, Nottinghamshire. £30pp
Join artist Clare Taylor to experiment with paper making. During the workshop you’ll learn the basics of papermaking, including pulping, sheet formation, pressing, and drying. Together we’ll create stunning handmade seed papers from natural materials such as kitchen waste and locally sourced plant matter.
Botanical Ink Making Workshop
Saturday 14th September 2024, 10.30am – 12.30pm at Sherwood Forest, Nottinghamshire. £30pp
Botanical Ink making. Create your own range of botanical inks derived from food waste and locally sourced plant matter. Discover nature’s colour palette on your doorstep and incorporate it into your art practice. This is an introduction to techniques for making your very own natural inks including preparation, modification (fun chemical colour changing reactions!) and preserving processes.
Participants will come away with at least 2x inks created on the workshop plus further recipes to explore at their leisure.
Tokens of Comfort – Make It Yours Workshop
Friday 26th April 2024, 10am – 12pm, at National Justice Museum, Nottingham. Free
Comfort and safety are core human needs. Juveniles in the justice system have little in the way of comfort in a stressful and anxiety provoking environment. In this workshop, Clare Taylor will lead you through the ages old process of creating tokens of comfort in the form of stitched fabric hearts.
National Justice Museum’s creative sessions are FREE and open to all. The sessions are led by artists, makers, and writers, all influenced by this unique museum.
Little Creatives Workshops
Clare has been chosen as one of the 5 new Little Creatives artists who are working creatively to help early years’ children learn new skills and have multi-sensory creative experiences. Little Creatives workshops will help your little one unleash their creative imagination and develop new skills as they splodge, splat, squidge and shine!
Various dates and library locations in 2024, AM sessions, at Inspire: Culture, Learning and Libraries. Free
Workshop Expertise
Clare Taylor has over twenty years practice in designing & delivering in person creative sessions & multi-disciplinary workshops for a broad spectrum of participants from pre-schoolers and school children through to professional adults. In response to Covid-19, Clare adapted to delivering online workshops for clients and pre-recording tutorials for workshops to be undertaken at your own pace.
Try out different journaling techniques to explore creativity, feelings and emotions. Part of Mansfield Museum’s Fitness, Food and Fun Festival. 
Printing onto Ceramics Workshop exploring monoprinting and impressing into clay. 
Explore the wonderful decorative properties of clay and create a slab built textured plate or bowl. 
Includes – Variety of botanical inks made from food waste, calligraphy and sketchbook making. 
Mills, Machines and Memories. Record local history with artists Clare Taylor and create stitched memories of Mansfield’s textiles’ industry. 
An exploration of heat transfer printing using low tech options 
Create a clay scroundrel and add to the National Justice Museum’s Rogues Gallery. In a relaxed setting you’ll work with artist, Clare Taylor, to concoct a villain worthy of imprisonment in Nottingham’s very own County Gaol. 
Join in with the Get Creative Festival at an artist led Craft Bomb workshop. Come along and make Space Junk Sculptures from lots of different recycled and craft materials and be prepared to boldly go where no craft bomb has gone before! Our Craft Bomb workshops are fun and you are guaranteed to brighten up the library with an explosion of your creativity and space inspired crafting! 
An online workshop in a box to complement National Justice Museum’s Power exhibition. Use Your Voice – In the spirit of Nottingham’s radicals, express yourself in a small yet meaningful provocation to create a protest mask on a theme of your choice. Collective voices equal power. Artist, Clare Taylor, will guide you through the process of collage and decorative techniques to create a protest mask. What will you shout about? 
Beat winter blues and join Clare Taylor from Bus and Bird Arts to create magical paper angels that will brighten up any tree or present! You will be led step by step through various decorative processes adding festive decorations to their clothing and wings. Suitable for all skill levels from beginners through to advanced crafters.
Pricing:
For individuals: Costs per workshop are individually priced but range upwards from £35 per participant. Some workshops listed are delivered on behalf of organisations and are free to participate in.
For schools and businesses: Our one off daily workshop rate ranges upwards from £225 depending on the type of work that is undertaken, for example ceramics sessions may cost more due to the firing and finishing. Our one off half day workshop rate is £135. Please feel free to ring Clare Taylor on +44 7738718930 to discuss your workshop ideas and budgetary requirements, we are happy to negotiate costs for longer term projects. At present, Bus and Bird Arts covers the counties of Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and Lincolnshire but will consider travelling further afield.
Workshops with Wellbeing outcomes: Case Studies
This is Me, This is Mansfield (project tender won by Clare Taylor for Bus and Bird Arts)
A grant from Museum Development East Midlands provided the opportunity to address the Mansfield Museum’s growing challenge of re-engaging local people and connecting with a wide range of people across the generations in Mansfield. This intergenerational art project created a real sense of pride for local people & successfully engaged 969 local residents with the Museum. It gave Mansfield Museum the opportunity to expand upon its work in the local community and engage with a cross section of groups including: preschool groups, schools, libraries, theatre group for adults with learning difficulties, over 60s group, families and local businesses. The workshops were pitched so all ages and audiences could be involved. The project gave the Museum the opportunity to try out new ways of working and developing partnerships. Feedback was very positive, with participants citing personal benefits from being part of the collective exhibition through to helping people to feel much more a part of their community.
Fun Palaces
Over six weeks, Clare worked with Sanctuary Supported Living Care Home residents with learning disabilities to create a vibrant window display from single use plastic bottles for display in Mansfield Museum’s window as part of their green Fun Palaces display. Residents attended sessions at the museum with carers and participated in activities ranging from weaving plastic to create ‘fabric’ through to plastic flower construction.
This craft based project enabled the residents to express themselves creatively through colour and form whilst questioning and connecting with the world around them, in this case considering environmental issues. Residents comments post project were as follows:
“I learnt about the plastic killing fish and whales , this is so sad , we need to think about what we use and how it effects our world” Participant C
“I had fun while learning things about my world” Participant S
“ I am proud of my work , it went in the window for all to see , I phoned my Mum to tell her” Participant M
BBC Children in Need
Clare worked at Artcore in Derby on two ‘Innocence and Expression’ BBC Children in Need projects. The core participants were home schooled young people, with the majority having additional and special educational needs. The projects provided different opportunities for the young people to explore their identity, skills and abilities through puppet theatre and performance through to a fabulous feast. Both projects culminated in a celebratory event where family and friends were invited. Children gained creative and life skills, independent decision making, team work, and working to a deadline. In particular, one autistic girl who struggled to socialise surprisingly decided to take part in the performance and her parents commented how happy they were with this improvement in her confidence.
Bus and Bird Arts 