If you have a question about the Shropshire Art Society, please read our most Frequently Asked Questions, before sending your enquiry, as your question may already be answered here:
The best way to get a feel for this is to have a good look around our website, including the Members area (accessed via our Members menu) and our News blog. You can read about the wide range of activities we offer and see photos from some of our recent events.
The current schedule can be found on our Workshops & Classes page. You can get an idea of the sort of themes covered, and whether this is what you are looking for. Some people ask us whether we offer ‘beginner classes’, ‘oil-painting classes’, ‘watercolour classes’ etc. – currently, we do not, as our classes tend to encourage exploration and development, rather than be skill or experience-level specific.
Our classes, Print Club, Sketch Club, painting demos and pre-Christmas lunch are held during the daytime on weekdays. Our Saturday Workshops run from 10-4 on Saturdays. Our Gallery Day Trips also usually run on Saturdays. Our Summer Social is usually an evening event. Our exhibitions usually have weekend hand-in and collection days. If you are specifically looking for ‘evening art classes’ we are probably not a good fit for you.
The majority of our activities are based in and around Shrewsbury. Our Wednesday Classes and Saturday Workshops are now held at Upton Magna Village Hall (SY4 4TZ) where there is good parking, level access and kitchen facilities. Our Print Club is held at Severn Hospice, Shrewsbury (SY3 8HS). Other regular venues are the Meole Brace Trinity Centre SY3 9HF (Lectures, Demos and Summer Social) and St. Mary's Church SY1 1DX (Summer Exhibition) and Bear Steps Art Gallery SY1 1UJ (Autumn Exhibition). Other venues may be used from time to time. The Sketch Club visits different Shropshire locations each summer. Our Gallery Trips and Paintaway Holidays take us to a wide range of places throughout the UK.
We allocate places for our activities and events, including or classes and workshops, on a 'first come first served' basis, by receipt of Booking Form, following announcement; once fully booked, we may operate a waiting list. Our activities are announced on a rolling basis, so no matter when you join, some activities may already be fully subscribed. Our activities and events are announced via our Focal Points Newsletter and any current Booking/Application Forms can be found in the Members Document Library on the website.
We do not offer classes specifically for children. You must be aged 16+ to apply for membership of the Shropshire Art Society and attend its classes and events.
Some of our events and activities (not our classes and workshops, nor exhibiting in our exhibitions) are open to members and their guests. You may attend on these occasions at the invitation of a member who must book your place and arrange to pay any relevant fee on your behalf.
Yes! We welcome applications for membership from both artists and lovers of the visual arts alike, as long as you are resident in Shropshire. You may especially enjoy our Gallery Trips, Lectures & Demos and Social Events.
You can visit our Exhibitions page to read about our annual programme and see details of any upcoming exhibitions of Members’ work. If you’d like to be added to our invitation list for our Exhibition Preview/Social events, please email us to hello@shropshireartsociety.org.uk and we will add you to our guest list. (Please see our Privacy Policy with respect to your personal data, thank you.)
Privacy laws mean that we cannot do this, as we are only able to mail our membership about Shropshire Art Society-related matters. We do, however, have two Facebook Groups: one is 'public' and one is for members. You could post your event in our public Facebook Group, though we politely ask you not to post about anything that directly competes (as far as you know) with Shropshire Art Society activities.
You must be a member of the Shropshire Art Society to submit an image of your work (and your website link if you have one) for inclusion on our Our Artists gallery page. Visit our Join us! page to find out how to join.
Please visit our Join us! page for all the details.
The voluntary nature of our organisation — we offer a wide range of activities run by a large team of volunteers — means that we are not currently able to operate a centralised ‘online subscription, bookings and payments system’. We therefore ask our members to download our forms (PDFs) from our website or via our Focal Points Newsletter, print, complete, sign and return them with payment or with indication (via a tick box on the form) that payment has been made online using PayPal. If you do not have the facility to print a form, you can request a paper copy from the relevant contact given on the form or on the website. You may pay either by cheque or by PayPal (with your PayPal account or the PayPal 'guest checkout' facility); if you wish to pay by PayPal in either of these ways, you can do it from our Payments page.
Once we receive your Membership Application Form and payment for membership, we will send you the most recent copy of our Focal Points Newsletter, by way of welcome. If you give us your email address, this ‘welcome’ communication will be by email from focalpoints@shropshireartsociety.org.uk and from then on you will receive Focal Points and all other communications by email. If you do not have an email address you may request to receive your Society communications by post, though you may miss out on some time-dependent or other aspects of Society membership as a ‘postal’ member. We update the website regularly, and any current documents can be found in the Members Document Library.
If you gave us your email address when you joined, and have not received a welcome email within two weeks, please check your Spam folder in your email client and on your email server (if you have both). Once you have made these checks, if you find nothing, please email us to hello@shropshireartsociety.org.uk and let us know. We send out our Focal Points Newsletter and other News around six times a year. If, at any point during the year, you think you have stopped receiving our Focal Points Newsletters, please carry out the Spam checks mentioned above. If you find nothing, please email us and let us know.
Please read the instructions at the foot of the Our Artists page here about how to send us your image for inclusion. We invite all members to change their image once each year (usually in February/March time), if they wish, using the same method.
The short answer, unfortunately, is no. New members are required to complete and sign a Membership Application Form which includes a consent statement regarding use of personal data; this is necessary for legal reasons. This signed Membership Application Form must be received by the Membership Secretary before membership can be confirmed and processed and the 'Welcome email' sent out to the new member. Therefore, only the new member themselves can apply to join the Society. Thank you for your understanding.
If you want to find our more about Society activities, do have a look in our Members area (accessed via our Members menu) and the News section (our blog) on this website. Otherwise, email us to hello@shropshireartsociety.org.uk with your query, and we will do our best to help you.