An elegant ‘living gallery’ combining contemporary art, food and drink set in beautiful gardens in central York. Now taking booking for private events and open for lunch each Saturday in August.

Thanks to emergency funding from Arts Council England we have been curating ‘Ideas of Home‘, an online project that enables us to continue our programme of significant cultural engagement.

IDEAS OF HOME

This is a project that assesses how ideas of ‘home’ have shifted in 2020 during the global pandemic, national lockdowns and the ‘new normal’ rules of social interaction. 

We are inviting creative responses to people’s lived experience this year, asking how the threat of the pandemic and the realities of life under lockdown and beyond have affected people’s notions of what constitutes ‘home’. We want people to experiment and be creative as a means of better making sense of their world, and are offering opportunities to share and express this creativity. Inputs can be in any form, from formal artworks across the disciplines, to photographs of objects or artefacts, to written reflections and poetry, animations and gifs, audio and video diaries.

Our online gallery of contributions is here.

HOME

The Old Norse word ‘heimr’ meant ‘world, land, abode’, but in English we recognise home as ‘the place of one’s dwelling or nurturing’ (OED) as well as ‘a place where one properly belongs… where one finds refuge, rest or satisfaction’. What happens, though, when you are forced to ‘stay home’? Does home become a prison, a place of dread, or does it remain a sanctuary? How does one’s perception change, and is this new perception comforting or unsettling? Is home a physical state or, as Witold Rybczynski put it, ‘an idea’? (Home, 2001).

HOW TO TAKE PART

You can take part via social media – tag us on Instagram @schoolhousegallery or on Twitter @schoolhousegall and use the hashtag #ideasofhome. Our Facebook page is here.

You can email us directly or text us on +44 7766656030

Or you can post the old fashioned way to:
The School House Gallery, Peasholme Green, York, YO1 7PW.