After a hectic but exciting season at Les Soeurs Anglaises it’s time to turn our minds to the year ahead and tell you of our plans for 2020 and beyond - challenges and political uncertainty have both added to the delay. Over the last couple of years we’ve been gently moving away from all-textile based workshops, and towards providing a safe and welcoming venue to encourage creative confidence and the miraculous effect that the cross pollination of art and crafts has on unlocking hidden talents.

Our website has finally been updated with our calendar for 2020, and we are meanwhile working on a new logo, putting together our website “shop” (which we are certain you will enjoy) as well as plans afoot regarding a cook book; but more about these later. Here are our current thoughts for the upcoming 12 months or so:

April & September 2020

Spring and Autumn Cuisine with Come Cook in France

Spring and Autumn are such exciting and inspiring times of the year for food and food lovers, especially down here in south west France. We invite you to join established food writer and stylist, Louise Pickford , who will share her amazing kitchen skills and delicious seasonal recipes. There will also be an opportunity to visit a local market and producer and the evenings will be spent enjoying the food with a small group of like-minded enthusiasts.

May 2020

Laughter Lab III with Chris Grimes and Instant Wit

Another opportunity to take part in the spellbinding, hilarious look at the “Yes and…..” theory of life. Hard to explain exactly how enjoyable, and frankly miraculous, working alongside a superlative workshop leader and his professional, supportive, empathetic (and, yes, extremely funny) team can be but you’ll quickly discover that courage and lack of self-consciousness can feed directly into your creativity, wherever that may lie.

June / July 2020

By Hand - Plant to Fiber with Kerry Larkin & Edie Ure

We are delighted to be hosting our first workshop featuring the combined talents of Kerry Larkin, quilter extraordinaire and Edie Ure, designer and botanical dyer. At a time when few of us commit to only one art/craft this is a unique opportunity to learn from two “renaissance women” whose experience covers architecture, fashion, marketing, interior design - this is an opportunity to think outside the box and uncover your potential. BOOK BEFORE CHRISTMAS AND GET A 100€ DISCOUNT!

June 2020

Blues & Boogie Weekend artists TBA

Our Summer highlight of Blues and Jazz and Boogie Woogie. Get up close and personal with some of the very best musicians of their genre, over three days of great food prepared by a Masterchef, very special wines from our cellar and, of course, stampingly great music throughout. Unmissable!

September 2020

The Coaching Sessions with Chris Grimes

As our lives become increasingly complicated, it’s important to have a place to think, a place to be, and an environment to slow down. Chris Grimes, Artistic Director of the highly acclaimed company, Second Curve, will be returning to lead a 3-Day /4 Night Retreat exploring the underlying technique of a “yes and...” mindset, and it effect on decision making & creativity. Work with Chris and other participants in the heightened, positive atmosphere of Les Soeurs Anglaises and discover the art of spontaneity, team-working and trust.

Whilst you make up your mind which workshop best interests you, here are a few things we’ve picked up on lately that you might enjoy.

Like the look of lots of books around the place, but don’t have time to read them all? Take a gander at Art Made from Books which illustrates the work by artists from the around the world who regularly make sculptures, collages, installations, and other artworks with the pages of books. It is a compendium of extraordinary artworks , using the physical book as raw material for creative contemplation and cultural commentary. Sensual, rugged, breathtakingly intricate, ranging from “literary jewellery” to paperback chess sets to giant area rugs woven of discarded book spines, these cut and carved tomes remind us that art is not a thing but a way .

‘Skulduggery,’ James Allen, 2012. ‘Paper Typewriter,’ Jennifer Collier, 2011. Vintage typewriter manual pages, gray board, machine stitching; ‘Alice: A Mad Tea Party,’ Su Blackwell, 2007.

Following Robert Race’s workshop here a couple of years ago, we maintain a passion for the magic of automata. Kazuaki Harada is a prolific designer of mechanical designs fashioned from wood both large and small, from tiny single-crank pieces to giant labyrinthine playscapes. With the push of a button or the crank of a handle, he creates whimsical wooden automata bring to life figures that bounce and dance across a miniature stage like puppets, or mimic functioning printing presses . The delight in many of his automata is derived from their simplicity, but lately he’s explored increasingly elaborate devices like a dot matrix printer and longer sequences akin to a Rube Goldberg machine.

At this point the faint hearted and sensitive of soul should look away because some of the following images may well upset. But if you’ve ever been angry, mad, or sad, you’ll know the feeling of liberation of delivering a word of abuse. It’s a release of emotion, a glorious ‘push-off!’ to whatever or whoever is driving you crazy - politics in particular these days. But if it’s a great feeling to scream it out loud, it’s even more cathartic it seems to take your sweary release and turn it into something beautiful. That’s the idea behind the Profanity Embroidery Group, also known as PEG, and is one element adding a contemporary flavour to the discipline of embroidery. Started by Annie Taylor and Wendy Robinson back in 2014, who headed to social media and asked if anyone in Whitstable, UK fancied coming along to the pub, having a chat, and stitching swear words to help with their stress and rage. They quickly found a lot of fans.