Leondardo de Vinci and Martin Parr

Who'd have thought of seeing these two exhibitions on the same trip!

That is one of the amazing things about visiting the Manchester City Art Gallery that you really can see the greats of the past alongside contemporary art.

It was very special to be in the presence of Leonardo de Vinci's drawings. There is something in the spirit of a person in the marks that we make and these drawings looked as fresh as if they had been drawn yesterday. Just beautiful and very inspiring to a few members of our group. Different people picked up on different things. For one person it was the materials that he used, for another it was finding out about his other talents, for another person it was the realisation that they were looking at a drawing that was 500 years old. The darkened room, the deep red painted walls and the spot lights on the work all added to the sense of occasion and even sacredness of the exhibition. This automatically served to focus people, many of whom fell silent as they took the work in and others spoke in hushed voices. (keep scrolling down - the blog continues...)

The Martin Parr Photography exhibition was a lively experience and for many of us served to bring back memories and started many conversations about the past and reflections on our way of life today. It was a fantastic opportunity to think about photography, composition, subject and how we might think about taking photographs differently in our upcoming walks and workshops.

And finally, we did exit via the Mindfulness Gallery - which was a good opportunity to introduce this space to people and talk about the links between our project and the concept of Mindfulness, and the idea of sitting longer with a piece of artwork and how we relate differently when we look in this way.