Humber Print 2
Feral and Ropewalk Print Studios
This is the second time that the Ropewalk Print Studio has had a Joint Exhibition of Printmaking with the Feral Art School Printmakers.
The Ropewalk Print Studio is celebrating its 25 year anniversary and during that time the studio has been a crucial place for people throughout our region to enjoy the indulgence of printmaking. For the last eight years Avenues print studio which evolved into the Feral Print studio has often shared Ropewalk print resources before Feral Printmaking became more established and better equipped. Now we have two thriving independent print facilities with Printmakers exploring a comprehensive range of print techniques. Members from each of these studios often exhibit together as the Hull Print Collective.
This exhibition showcases many varied approaches to printmaking.
These include…
Drypoint Etching, Hard Ground and Soft ground Etching, Aquatint, Sugar-Lift, Lino-Print, Wood-cut, Mezzotint, Carborundum Print, Collagraph, Monotype, Tetra-Pak, Lithograph, Photo Screen and Open Screen.
The following local Print Studios offer short Printmaking Courses for Beginners and for Advanced practitioners, check out their websites to see what is on offer.
www.feralartschool.org
https://ropewalkprintworkshop.org.uk
www.eastgatestudio.co.uk
https://www.juicehull.com
From Friday 21st February to Tuesday 22nd April 2025
Exhibition Gallery, open daily 10am-5pm.
Hull Poverty Truth Commission
Poverty Truth Commissions, set up to explore the question, ‘what if people who struggled against poverty were involved in making decisions about tackling poverty?’
The Poverty Truth Network began in 2009 in Glasgow and now has over 30 commissions around the country. In 2019 an advisory group developed in the city between Hull City Council, Public Health and the University of Hull, which included Dr Gill Hughes. After identifying other initiatives, the Poverty Truth Commission model was embraced because it foregrounds a community-led approach, which shifts the power dynamics when working with decision-makers who deliver services. It is a dynamic and emergent process because it emanates from needs, so it is not prescribed or pre-determined. It relies on people committing time to build relationships equitably and codesign solutions to the issues that emerge.
In 2021 North Bank Forum formed a consortium with 13 voluntary sector organisations to win the tender for convening the poverty truth commission in Hull [HPTC]. The first task was to recruit community commissioners, people who have experienced poverty. They need to be comfortable to share their stories to identify themes for the PTC to address, which then advocate for the rights of others in similar situations.
Four members of the voluntary sector consortium became the facilitators of the commission Pippa from Forum, Kate from Timebank, Karen from Groundworks and Andy from CAB. They met with the initial group of community commissioners to build trusted relationships then planned an event for October 2022 to share the stark realities of poverty in dynamic and compelling ways with people who ‘held power’ in services. Some then became the civic commissioners – people who had influence to be able to make changes.
The civic commissioners were drawn from areas such as the local authority, public health, mental health, advocacy and benefits. They stepped up to the challenge to have their perception of poverty and its effects on people changed.
The themes that the commission explored were: 1) Cost of living, including working poverty (food, fuel, transport, essentials) 2) Access to Healthcare and mental health and 3) Navigating systems and services including attitudes, cultures and behaviours.
Through the facilitation process the two sets of commissioners met as humans not as roles or lanyards – they built trusted relationships, which enabled some difficult conversations to be had where the civic commissioners realised that some of their well-intentioned services created more issues for people who were on the receiving end. Together they identified solutions and the civic commissioners responded by making changes in the provision of their Services and cultures of behaviour within teams. The first HPTC concluded in July 2024.
Dr Gill Hughes and Dr Juan Pablo Winters worked with the community and civic commissioners, facilitators, advisory group, consortium and PT network in an ongoing evaluation of the HPTC. As part of the evaluation community commissioners decided they wanted to develop an animated film, which was co-created with My Pockets, a film production company and arts organisation based in Yorkshire, and voiced by community and civic commissioners. The film was launched at the ending event The Awakening in July 2024, so called because the commissioners felt that this was far from the end it was just the beginning of what civic commissioner and council leader Mike Ross, described as ‘the new business as usual’. The major success of the HPTC was the recognition that systems and cultures can change to ensure the voices of those who experience the services and practices should be part of the decision-making process to coproduce how they are developed and delivered. In addition to the films the evaluation also contains a report, a UoH case study and The Truth About Poverty exhibition, which was first held as a public engagement opportunity over 2 weeks in a city centre pop-up space. It was designed and produced by Sarah Pennington – artist, Hull PTC Community Commissioner, and Director of Hull Artist Research Initiative – in collaboration with Gill and Juan and the core group of community commissioners; JD, TJ, Julie, Kirsti, Dena and John, and incorporates artefacts from the group’s meetings and events.
See the My Pockets short film on the screen by the Library Welcome Desk, to find out more about poverty today and what the group have achieved so far. The exhibition will run until April 2025; it can be found on the ground floor of the Library between Teaching Rooms 3 and 4, near the Café.
Immanuel Kant and Hull
Brynmor Jones Library, University of Hull
Ground floor, near the Art Gallery.
2024 was the tercentenary of the birth of Immanuel Kant, the most important German philosopher, and this small exhibition commemorates his somewhat surprising close link with Hull. One of the prize possessions of the East Prussian State Museum at Luneburg, Germany is a drinking glass recording a gathering at Kant’s home in the Prussian port-city of Königsberg (now Kaliningrad) on 30 August 1763. The glass is engraved with the names of those attending. In addition to Kant there were six others of whom four where from Hull: two Königsberg-based merchants, Joseph Green and Robert Motherby, and two sea captains, Green’s brother-in-law Charles Staniforth and John Chappell, whose daughter later married the explorer Matthew Flinders. The Hull men were all engaged in the lucrative export trade of linen yarn from the Baltic for the West Riding and Lancashire textile industry and linseed that was used in Hull’s oilseed crushing mills and emerging paint industry
Kant described Joseph Green as his ‘best friend’ and wrote that he had not written down a single sentence in his best-known work, the Critique of Pure Reason, unless he had presented it to Green and had his unprejudiced opinion. Robert Motherby also became a close friend of Kant. The firm of Green and Motherby managed Kant’s finances and the philosopher had a great influence on the education of Motherby’s children.
The exhibition illustrates the links between Kant and the Hull-born merchants, highlighting the buildings that still stand in the city associated with the Green and Staniforth families, whose ships were the first to enter the new dock (now Queen’s Garden) in 1778.
Exhibition devised by David Neave for the Georgian Society for East Yorkshire (website: gsey.org.uk) in conjunction with the Berlin-based Friends of Kant and Königsberg with financial support from the University of Hull Maritime History Trust.