2023 is the year for change at Ocean Studios and to kick off the year, we’ve been making some much-needed improvements and developments to our spaces through early January.

Over the past year, we’ve been listening to our Members, customers and staff to build a programme which speaks for the brilliant specialist facilities with have at Ocean Studios, including Printmaking and Ceramics.

Our most recent printmaking campaign culminated in 2022 with a city-wide Print in Action Festival,  an engine to highlight printmaking in the South West, pulling networks in from far and wide to create a fun and engaging moment to celebrate printmaking.

Building on the drive and hunger from Print in Action, we’re listening to local printmakers and artists to build better opportunities in the city, but to do this in a really meaningful collaborative way we needed to shake things up a little in our space for the community:

Through January we…

  • Worked closely with our Print Members Alan Qualtrough and Beth Munro to develop more areas for open access printmaking and workshops, including the re-design of a new workspace which was formally our ‘Event Space’, the space now named ‘Workspace 2’ houses a beautiful new Gunning A3 Etching press for workshop delivery and is a place for collaboration and skill sharing.
  • Acquired a set of 2 new printing presses to create a live printmaking area in our café, with support from our Print in Action collaborator Debby Mason.
  • Continued working with Emma from Slate Publishing, to curate a collection of library books for the community to share in our café, bringing inspiration to creative practice and thinking about a programme of events to compliment storytelling and literature through Print and Printmaking.
  • Shuffled our seating around in the café to bring a cosier and more creative feel, with a new exhibition hanging system landing in mid-January and a new programme of exhibitions in the pipeline.
  • Re-freshed our coworking space, with some new practical furniture which can also double up as a workshop and talk space to enable more activity in our upcoming programme.

This is phase 1 of a bunch of changes happening in our spaces, phase 2 will be moving swiftly forward in Feb launching our new programme, launching new studio spaces and creating more flexible studio options for emerging, residency and project-based work, nurturing collaboration and space to test new ideas.

If you’re itching to great creative and a new year’s resolution is do something a bit different, check out our current programme. the Real Ideas What’s On. Including our regular favorites like Junior Print Club, Print & Prosecco, plus introduction to Print sessions with Peter Ursem and Claire Armitage.