A great night at the art exhibition!

On Thursday 3rd November I went down to Edinburgh with my colleague Lisa Mead to attend the Opening Night of the special charity art exhibition that Trevor Jones, a Canadian-born artist who has been based in Edinburgh for 8 years, has organised to raise funds for us. Inspired by the declaration of 2011 as the International Year of Forests by the United Nations, Trevor sent out a request for donations of artworks on social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter. Over 150 artists from around the world responded, donating 191 works, each to be sold for £45, with all the proceeds going to support our work to restore the Caledonian Forest.

Trevor has brought a huge amount of energy to this project, with all the artworks available to view and purchase online, as well as being on display physically in the exhibition itself from 1- 13 November.  Many of the pieces are of a very high quality indeed, and a number of people commented that some of them are worth considerably more than the £45 price. Contributing artists include people from Indonesia, India, Trinidad, Qatar and Sweden, as well as many from Scotland. One artwork was donated by an 11 year old boy from France, who was inspired to contribute after learning about the project from his sister!

I was very touched to see the beautiful, artistic and skilled work of so many people from around the world (some of whom attended the Opening Night), and I’m deeply grateful to all the artists who have contributed to the exhibition. It was also very inspiring to talk to so many people on the night itself, including some who have taken part in our volunteer programmes before, others who plan to do so in the near future and several of our long-term highly-committed supporters.

To date, 107 of the artworks have been sold, raising over £5,000 for our project, which is a tremendous achievement. There are still another 80 or so pieces available, and some of those will undoubtedly sell during the remaining days when the exhibition is open. However, all of the artworks are available to purchase online, so we hope that they will all sell there, if not directly at the gallery itself. If you’re reading this blog, and haven’t looked at the exhibition website, I encourage you to do so – there are some real gems of creativity there.

I’d like to offer my sincere and heartfelt thanks to everyone who made this fantastic exhibition possible – all the artists, the Out of the Blue Gallery for hosting it, Leith Framing Studio for mounting the artworks, Vintage Roots and Moniack Winery for donating wine for the Opening Night, John Need for photography and most especially to Trevor himself for doing such a brilliant job in taking his inspiration and making it happen in such a wonderful and successful way. I hope that his example will help to inspire other people to similarly follow their dreams and visions and make a real difference that touches people, as Trevor has done with this project.