BLOG | Warm-hearts Winter Challenge artist talks to us about his art

Michael Nash has been attending Venture Arts workshops for nearly two years. He has taken part in the Arts Award, the Cultural Enrichment Programme and he recently created the artwork used to promote our current Warm-hearts Winter Challenge.

  Michael is a true Venture Arts talent and we were thrilled he agreed to get involved in created the branding for our Warm-hearts Winter Challenge, which you can see here. Michael's talents were also shown off this year when we held a lockdown Food Photography Competition back in September and Michael won first prize!   We asked new marketing volunteer Steph to get to know Michael so she could share more about this skills and passions...  

  Age: 21 Attending Venture Arts since: January 2019 Interests: TV, Xbox, Travelling, Coding Goals: Carrying on with his digital artwork, learning Photoshop with Martin.  

What do you do with Venture Arts?

Arts Award

"I’ve done lots of things at Venture Arts. To start, I did my Bronze Arts Award with Laura. I used to go to Venture Arts on Saturday mornings to work with Laura. Now because of Covid-19, I do the sessions on Zoom. I’ve done a garden painting, I did Adobe Fresco and Adobe Photoshop and Laura taught me about my Arts Award session.   I like photography and digital painting with Adobe Fresco because it’s my favourite thing to do. I made a video to show other people how to paint with Adobe Fresco. I used PowerPoint to record me painting 2 cups using Adobe Fresco. Then, I used Movie Studio to make an instructional video."  

 

Cultural Enrichment Programme

"I did the Royal Exchange Theatre and People’s History Museum Cultural Enrichment Programme. Jacenta helped me and I met Ron, Janet and Carys at the Royal Exchange Theatre and Paula, Sam and Mark at the People’s History Museum. They were very helpful, I liked ushering with Carys at the Royal Exchange Theatre and Exhibitions. Before lockdown I showed people how to get to their seats using the seat number and row at the Royal Exchange Theatre and I had to make sure that it was the right number for the people to sit. We made a video to show all the artwork and the things we did at the Royal Exchange Theatre."  

Warm-hearts Winter Challenge

"For the Winter Challenge, I used Adobe Fresco to create two indoor pictures and three outdoor pictures and I sent these to Katherine. I did them very carefully. The Winter Challenge is a fundraising project for Venture Arts and my artwork was used to help with the publicity."  

 

What do you do outside of Venture Arts? 

College

"I go to Loreto College in Hulme, since September 2018. I am going to college 4 days a week. I do Maths, IT, English and Daily Living Skills at College and lots of work experience. I worked at Christie Fields Beefeater, MMU Speech and Language department and Didsbury Library and now I am doing Supported Internship. This is different to a normal year because of Covid-19 so I have done work at Ellis and Kennedy Library which is Loreto College’s library. I am going to do as much work as I can before the end of the year."  

AMP Music Workshops

"I started AMP music workshop in August 2019, I played the drums in the band at the HOME theatre. Then during the lockdown, I did DJing with Abigail, Poetry with Louise, Percussion with Rome and Sampling sounds with Merida. Christina helped me and my favourite activity is sampling sounds with Merida because she is a very kind lady recording sounds."     Thanks for sharing your busy schedule with us Michael! As you can tell Michael is a very productive artist. He's also been working on creating his own website, where you can view more of his work. Check it out here.   

To support our work with Michael and his fellow Venture Arts artists please get involved in the Warm-hearts Winter Challenge. Could you be a warm-hearts champion?