Your Monthly Roundup: May
Each month we share a roundup of the latest news and events, exhibitions and blogs to keep you up to date with all of the latest ‘goings on’.
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MayFeatures
St Ives September Festival
Join us in St Ives this September for a two-week celebration of music and the arts, taking place from 12–26 September.
We are hosting 3-hour sessions each morning and afternoon, Monday to Friday, during the Festival – led by ten of our professional artist tutors.
This year we have some wonderful new workshops including an Introduction to Acrylic Painting and a new drawing workshop with artist Emily Roberts.
Create Room is Expanding
Our youth wellbeing programme, Create Room, is expanding into two more Cornish schools, thanks to new funding from Duchy Health Charity.
Delivered in partnership with The CHAOS Group and social prescriber Sonia Bradley, the programme will support 24 young people from Penair and Richard Lander Schools, offering a dedicated creative space within the school day.
Through artist-led sessions, young people are given time to explore art-making as a way to build confidence, support wellbeing and express themselves – at a time when access to the arts is declining, and the need for youth mental health support continues to grow.
Find out more about the project below, and how you can support local young people and future artists.
Coming Soon: Painting Clouds
For Tom, the sky is never separate from the land beneath it; his work explores the relationship between landscape and atmosphere, and how each shapes the other.
In his upcoming online course, you’ll learn to observe, sketch and paint clouds, light and changing weather, using mixed media to simplify a scene and capture mood.
Keep an eye out for the release coming soon – in the meantime, explore Tom’s other courses.
Exhibitions
Patterns of Reflection
Kerry Harding | Candida Stevens Gallery
10 May – 12 June
Discover eleven new works from artist tutor Kerry Harding, partly inspired by the same stretch of coast she has lived beside for twenty years.
Writer Isabella Joughin describes the body of work as “dividing scenes along the vertical, rather than horizontal, trees and headlands mirror each other to create a new, distinct sense of distortion.”
This Month’s Watch
Discover our how-to series for creative inspiration.
As part of of Alice Mumford’s full online series: Colour, Light + Depth In Painting, Alice explores the of small-scale studies to help develop larger compositions in the first of two tutorials – available to watch now on our YouTube channel.
This Month’s Read
Between teaching, painting and taking on new creative projects, artist Iona Sanders is rarely still for long.
However, we were lucky enough to get some time with her to hear about her latest adventure: creating artwork for Steven Soderbergh’s new film, The Christophers – ahead of the UK premiere earlier this month.
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25/5/2026
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