About
Founded in 1991 and registered in 1992, The Word Hoard is a not-for-profit co-operative of artists specialising in arts and community development activities through co-operation and collaboration. Our members have included writers, visual artists, designers, makers, filmmakers, musicians and animateurs, who work in the community and with public institutions; in venues, art galleries, museums and with other arts organisations; and in schools and other educational institutions. Our work has mostly taken the form of participatory workshops or series of workshops, often site-specific or issue-specific. We have worked with all ages, using language as a starting point for activities that involve at least 2 artforms. All our activities lead to some kind of product, which have included pamphlets, posters, postcards, original visual art works in a range of media, sculptures, textiles, exhibitions, installations, performances, recordings, films and web art. Usually our activities are free to participants, and most of our products are distributed without charge.
The co-op currently has 5 members, and the purpose of this blog is to disseminate our ideas and occasionally new work we have made. We’ll try and update it at least every 2 weeks, hopefully more often. Please get in touch and stay in touch if you want news, information or anything else to do with us and our work.
“I hesitate to use words like cutting edge, edgy, or even innovative, as they have become – in North America, in any case – part of that “Dare to be different” vocabulary that is really urging you to be just the same. At the same time, most ‘edgy’ art in any form is usually a rehash of the old with just enough hooks, as they say in advertising, to let you know you are a member of an exclusive group. And while The Word Hoard is both cutting edge and innovative, it is not exclusive. It is both of its time and of its place, conscious of social interaction and social exclusion, and that word we all try so hard to avoid – class. In both the work of its members and the workshops offered by them what distinguishes the Word Hoard from other groups called cutting edge is their dedication both to spontaneity and to discipline, to the crafting of the moment so that what comes from it is so formally strong that it must have influence in the form tomorrow will take. To work with The Word Hoard is to experience this. It is not to learn a formula for what was judged innovative last year, last month, or even last week, but to hone the tools of one’s mind and one’s craft until the process of innovation, of making new as well as making strange, is one with the process of insight.” Sarah Murphy
