Shorn Keighley
Keighley Arts Factory will be driving a flock of sheep into the town centre and launching Shorn Keighley, an exciting new arts event. Keighley town will be filled with a flock of life sized sheep sculptures, each painted in the style of a famous artist. The sheep will be decorated by a school or a community group with the assistance of an artist. Shorn Keighley will link into the summer festivals and will be a fun art project completed by local residents. Shorn Keighley is supported by the Local Heritage Fund and Bradford Council.
We would like to welcome Cloud Free IT of Keighley to our project, proud sponsors of a sheep. CloudFree IT has sponsored us to paint a sheep in the style of surreal artist Rene Magritte. Their sheep will be entitled "Ceci n’est pas un mouton, c’est un nuage".
A little bit about Cloud Free IT. "We’re the local Microsoft Gold Certified Partner IT support specialists working with local businesses and home users to ensure they get the best out of their IT.We invest in local people to deliver our great services – all our staff live in Keighley and the Worth Valley. We’re members of the Keighley Town Centre Association and support the ‘Love Keighley’ campaign. We support the local community too through projects such as ‘Shorn the Sheep’, and we enjoy working with community groups, such as Stockbridge Unified Neighbourhood (we designed & printed a full colour flyer at very short notice, advertising their FUN day in October) and Keighley Table Tennis Club (currently working with them to launch their new and much improved website soon)."
To find out how Cloud Free It can help your business contact michelle.thompson@cloudfreeit.com
Going on Holiday? Why not choose one of our sheep to go with you?
As part of our Shorn Keighley project we are sending our toy sheep to different parts of the globe. From Bognor Regis to Bahrain, Nantwich to New York you can take a sheep to accompany you.
What’s the catch? We would love to receive a postcard from your sheep and a few images of your sheep on its vacation. Your sheep will be featured on the blog and you may keep your sheep in return.
Just contact us at the gallery and we will arrange for you to choose and take a sheep. (If you are not local please email us for postage costs first)!
We are asking businesses local to Keighely to sponsor each of our ten gigantic resin sheep and we anticipate that this project will be a great promotional tool for your business.
Over the next year our sheep sculptures will visit local events and landmarks in an effort to become known and loved by residents and visitors. There will be competitions to name the sheep and lots of different events and spin-offs. Here is a brief summary of how the project will work.Every sheep purchased by a local business will become the property of the sponsor at the end of the project. The sponsor can choose the name of a famous artist from a list supplied by KAF and then we will match the artist and school/community group to decorate your sheep. Your sheep will be weatherproof and durable. We will not allow advertising or logos on the actual sheep but you are welcome to provide a plaque to be displayed with the sheep bearing your company name. KAF will decide, in consultation with yourself, where to display your sheep during the project and there will be an exhibition of the project in the gallery too. Sponsors details will be uploaded on the website blog.
If you would like to find out more about sponsoring one of our fabulous sheep sculptures please contact Rifat Bashir on 01535685060 or email Rifat.bashir@ leedscitycollege.ac.uk
Friday 2 October was a big day in the life of Shorn as he made the trip from southern England to Bradford and He became a She (I know, I looked).
Sculptor Tom Cousins (shown with Shorn's backside in the first image) created the original Shorn from plaster bandage and chicken wire with a final coating of plaster. We all gathered in the yard of A M Mouldings of Bradford to greet Shorn where the sculpture has now settled into his/her temporary home. As you can see from the second image, Shorn is a big lad/lass and it took Tom and Richard time to manouver the sheep into the workshop. I think we were all a bit gob smacked at the size of Shorn. Image 5 is a group photo with Richard, Tom, Tom's boys, John and his wife Lyn posing with the fabulous Shorn. Image 6 is a head shot - can you see what's missing? Yes, Shorn has detachable ears. (Apparently this makes them easier to cast).Over the next few weeks John of A M Mouldings will be casting 10 resin sheep which will then be herded out of his Bradford workshop and transported to Keighley.Visit Shorn's Flickr Group for more pictures of the sculpture.
Our favourite sheep project has finally hit the local press with an excellent write up by The Keighley News. May be we should start a competition for the best sheep pun - having read this I think David Knights is winning....
"Shorn the Sheep is coming to Keighley!This woolly newcomer certainly doesn't have a baa-d attitude when it comes to publicity. He won't be pulling the wool over people's eyes when it comes to promoting the town and he won't rely on shear good luck in the hopes of bringing a flock of visitors. Shorn will even bring a few of his pals along to support his publicity campaign over the next 12 months. Shorn is the figurehead of a new project by Keighley Arts Factory, the art gallery on the Keighley Campus of Leeds City College. The town will be filled with a flock of life sized sheep sculptures decorated in the styles of famous artists. Each sheep will be decorated by a school or community group with the help of a professional artist. The sheep will visit local events and landmarks in an effort to become known and loved by all Keighley people. Rifat Bashir, from the Arts Factory, said Shorn Keighley will be a fun art project which would involve local residents. There will be competitions to name the sheep and people will be updated via the website Sheep Cred. Businesses will be able to sponsor individual sheep and take ownership of them at the end of the project.Rifat said "Keighley is not a town associated with the arts yet it has a significant historical heritage including the wool industry and Bronte Country. A project like Shorn Keighley will help sustaion the cultural heritage of the town and also bring a flock of visitors to Keighley. Local businesses can provide a plaque to be displayed with the sheep, bearing their company name. We anticiapte this project will be a great promotional tool for local businesses."The project is supported by the Keighley Campus of Leeds City College, with match funding from the Keihgley Area Co-ordinators Office through the Keighley Future Heritage Initiative."David Knights - Keighley News.
