For Herts Visual Arts, the health and welfare of our members, their families and the wider community is our highest priority. 

We continue to monitor the developing news and follow direction from the government, reviewing and assessing our operations for 2020. Although final decisions have not yet been made, we will update you as soon as we can.

Looking into the future, new exhibitions and workshops listings are live on our web site.

We are working hard to make sure Herts Visual Arts remains a great organisation for artists in Herts and more than anything else, we want to ensure your safety.

Events Update:

Big Art Showcase
After a fabulous launch, including sales before it even opened, the New Maynard Gallery was shut at 1 hours notice earlier in March. Our art remains safely locked inside the building (think of it as safe off-site storage that doesn’t take up studio or living room space).

LivingCraftsShowcase (Hatfield)
Living Crafts have now confirmed that the event is postponed until mid October 2020. We will be working with the organisers to see what this means for us.
 
Summer meeting/AGM
This will now be a virtual event – more details to follow.
 
BigArtFair (Hitchin) 2020
This amazing event is also caught in the middle of the storm – Hitchin Town Hall is now closed for the foreseeable future and July is too soon to make assumptions. BAF has grown to be such a fabulous event however, a real jewel in the calendar. The physical fair is therefore postponed to the same time next year. The hall is already reserved for July 2021 …
 
You may have spotted an updated Big Art Fair area in the For Artists area of the web site. The need to cancel arrived just as we were about to upload booking details for this year. At the moment, it therefore remains empty, but it will be filled with further information as soon as we get time to upload it.
 
In place of BAF, we will be announcing specific on-line opportunities based around new and updated web site features and galleries that will be launched soon. As always, we’ll have help videos in the web site members area to help get you started.

HertsOpenStudios 2020

Registration for Herts Open Studios 2020 is currently suspended and will re-open once we can announce details of our Virtual Open Studios. At that point, all the current registration guidelines will be updated.
We had just started distributing our Call for Artists leaflets alongside on-line promotions, when our flagship event come into the headlights too.  As with the Big Art Fair, we have decided that Open Studios cannot go ahead in the same format as previous year. We cannot be sure that studio visits will be welcomed by artists or visitors. All the resulting change and uncertainty means that we are deep in discussion to offer a virtual event a little later in the year. With no printed brochure, we also have a better margin/window for registration and some space to work on getting our Virtual Open Studios right for everyone.
 
We were able to stop the on-line promotion and will recycle spare leaflets. On-line registrations have been suspended. Those who have already booked will be able to receive either a partial refund (against the revised Open Studios we are currently putting together) or a full refund if you decide not to take part in the new event.
 
A virtual event does mean further changes to the web site, but rest assured we will be updating information and announcements just as soon as we can.  As always, we’ll have help videos in the web site members area to help get you started.