We are pleased to announce that, following the April 2026 deadline, a grant of £1,500 was made to FiSH, the community organisation based in Barnes in support of their Picassos in the Park programme. 

This is a cause that we have supported before and the grant will go towards art sessions designed for those suffering from demetia and their carers. In June, some of the art produced during these sessions were on display at the FiSH headquarters next to Barnes Pond during the Open Studios week.

IMAGE: courtesy of FiSH

A grant of £1,400 has been awarded to Putney Arts Theatre to help fund the 2026 INGNITE programme for young people in the London Borough of Wandsworth.

Several years ago, The Arts Society broadened its reach so that it could cover music, dance and theatre as well as decorative and fine arts. In 2025, Putney Arts Theatre ran a pilot prgromme for young peoiple in the Borough to introduce them to acting and related roles in the theatre.

Click HERE to access the impact report from the 2025 event.

The 2026 programme will combine a work experience project for young people with an educational undertaking promoting peer-to-peer learning through the arts and will take place over two weeks.

It will give young people the opportunity to work alongside Group 64 Directors and theatre professionals to create and perform an original piece of theatre which for 2026 will be based on Mental Health.  They will gain active work experience through devised theatre making on the topic of mental health during the first week of the project and will then tour this work back into local secondary schools. 

The finished piece will be around 45 minutes long and complement secondary PSHE learning through a theatre medium.  

The grant will cover the cost of a Drama Therapist and a Design Intern during the 2 week course.

Image from Impact 2025 (courtesy of Putney Arts Theatre).

Conservation work on the Reredos in All Saints' Church.

In 2024, with the help of our former Chairman, Liz Hamilton, we made two visits to All Saints' Church, on Putney Common to mark its 150th anniversary. It is a Grade II listed building built in the Arts and Crafts style. Those on the visits will remember the beautiful reredos commissioned for the church from John Roddam Spencer Stanhope. It was completed in 1876.

Earlier this year, we were saddened to learn that the reredos was in urgent need of restoration. Having not received any applications (for the grant application deadline of 31 October 2024) that met the Society's criteria, the Trustees decided to award £3,000 to the church for conservation work. This represents the whole of the Grant Fund for year-end June 2025. 

The reredos is an important art work, belonging to our local area and we felt that it was important for us, as an Arts Society, to support the work.

We are delighted to report that, a generous donor made further funds available for the work and the restored reredos was reinstalled in the church early in September 2025. See latest image. 

In 2024, we made two visits to All Saints Church on Putney Common. If you were unable to attend one of the visits, you may be interested in the 2025 opening times for the church. 

See poster for details.

Silk-Screen Printing Equipment

Following the deadline of 30 April 2024, we made a final grant of £1,750 for our year-end of June 2024 to the Royal Hospital for Neuro-Diaability.

They have purchased some silk-screen printing equipment and hope to see the results of its use in due course. Currently it is on display in the Art Room. In the photo, it is on the long work top to the right of the sewing machine.

In the meantime, click HERE to vist their website to learn about the work done at the Hospital.

Image: The Art Room display at the 'EMERGE!' exhibition (June 2025)

Following, the 30th October deadline for grant applications, we are delighted to announce that an award of £1,000 has been made by TAS SW London to Linden Lodge School in Wimbledon. This is in addition to a Community Grant that we applied for, and were awarded, on behalf of the school, from the central Arts Society organisation.

Linden Lodge School is a day and residential special school providing expanded teaching and learning opportunities for pupils aged 2 to 19 years of age with visual and/or sensory impairments and those with profound physical and multiple learning difficulties, including sensory and communication difficulties. Pupils are drawn from a wide range of local authorities in London and the South East.

The school was originally founded to provide education for visually impaired young people, so much of the therapy offered focused on the use of sound. However, in 2023, the therapies on offer were expanded to include art psychotherapy and the TAS Community Grant (of £250) along with a further grant (of £1,000) from TAS SW London was given to them to buy equipment and materials for this new programme.

In mid-January, three of the Trustees (Felicity Irlam, Gwen Hewitt and Gill Grunwald) visited the school and met Co-Headteacher, Sarah Norris, and Annie Walker, the art psychotherapist. It was clear that the combined grant of £1,250 had been much appreciated. Since not all of the equipment had arrived by the time of the visit, we were shown pictures of other items on order and told how they would be used. We were very impressed by the calm and caring atmosphere in the school and by the resourcefulness of the staff who work there. We were delighted to hear that the arrival of the funds had been greeted with great excitement and to discover that the grant was being put to such good use.

Click HERE to see the newsletter from the week of the visit or look at their website to get a sense of the community at the school.

www.lindenlodge.wandsworth.sch.uk

FOOTNOTE: A surprise discovery when we arrived at the school was to find that it was housed in an Arts and Crafts house designed, in 1938, by Sir Edwin Lutyens, as a private home. It had originally been owned by a Mr Robert Wilson Black and subsequently gifted to the school by his family. Wikipedia notes that the house was extensively refurbished in 2006 and the Gertrude Jekyll garden restored at the same time!

FINALLY, do let us know if there are other organisations or groups in need of funding for an arts project in the area covered by TAS SW London. Our members come from a wide area stretching from Richmond to Battersea and from Fulham to Wimbledon and we would consider any arts related requests from within that area.

Photo courtesy of Linden Lodge School: (from left) Gill Grunwald, Chairman of the Arts Society SW London and Annie Walker, Art Psychotherapist, Linden Lodge School

Following our accounting year-end of 30 June 2023, we are proud to have been able to make grants totalling £2,750 to the following organisations:

1. FiSH Neighbourhood Care - £1,250

2. Wandsworth Prison Quaker Chaplain's Fund - £900

3. The Holly Lodge Centre - £600

You will find links to the websites of two of the organisations by clicking on their names in the list above.

FiSH.

We were inpressed, at the end of last year, when we learnt about the Picassos in the Park programme being run by FiSH in Barnes for dementia suffers and their carers. We were able to apply on their behalf to the central Arts Society for a Community Grant of £250 which was paid to FiSH in February. However, we wanted to show our support for an organisation that does so much good locally and for this reason we made a grant of £1,250 from our own funds to help towards the continuance of the Picassos in the Park programme.

Quaker Chaplain's Fund

We worked with Liz Bridge, the Quaker Chaplain at Wandsworth Prison, a year ago on a programme to create videos to help teach art techniques to those at HMP Wandsworth. We support the work of the Chaplain wholeheartedly and know how vital it is to give inmates something to do and something in which they can take pride. Even very basic art materials are expensive, so the grant this year was to help replenish stocks so that everyone entering the prison has access to materials that they can use to make there time there more tolerable.

Holly Lodge

For a number of years, we used to support the work of Holly Lodge, based in Richmond Park, but this ceased during Covid. We are delighted to be able to help them again. The centre is used to provide courses to children and adults with special needs and to teach the public about the park and the wildlife to be found there. Many of the classes that they run use art materials and our grant (as for the Chaplains Fund) it to help the Centre to purchase more supplies.

For the second year running, The Arts Society SW London has been awarded a TAS COMMUNITY GRANT of £250 to give to an organisation in our area that uses art for the benefit of others.

This year the grant has been given to FiSH, a community organisation based at the Barnes Green Centre, next to Barnes Pond, on Church Road, London SW13 9HE.

FiSH is a registered charity (No. 1147516). It was set up 60 years ago by a group of friends who recognised the need to support isolated members of the community. The acronym stands for Friendship, Independence, Support and Help and the organisation has remained true to its founding principles throughout the 60 years since its inception. Although there are some paid members of staff, the majority of work is done by volunteers and those living in the E Sheen and Barnes catchment area will be familiar with the FiSH minibuses that come around the side roads to collect attendees who are unable to get to the Barnes Centre unaided.

You can read more about the history of the organisation on their website by clicking on the Home section of the horizontal menu bar at the top of their site. It was written by Mary Lee Berners-Lee, an early computer scientist and co-founder of FiSH. (She is possibly more widely known for being the mother of Sir Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the World Wide Web, and of Mike Berners-Lee who is an authority on costing the planet. Both are interviewed regularly on BBC Radio 4.)

https://www.fishhelp.org.uk/

Amongst the many things that FiSH does is a programme called ‘Picassos in the Park’. This is held, each week, at the Barnes Green Centre by trained art therapists and is designed for dementia suffers and their carers. Although FiSH receives funding from a number of sources it still needs to provide materials for these classes and the Community Grant from TAS will be used to do this. The classes provide a welcome escape from the confines of home both for the dementia sufferers and their carers and the use of art often gives dementia sufferers a non-verbal way to communicate with others.

If you are not familiar with the organisation, please look at their website. FiSH offers a wide range of services for those in need of some assistance and organises a number of regular activities that allow those who are alone to socialise. All their services are free of charge. You might know of someone in the FiSH catchment area who would benefit from some of their activities and services. You may also feel that you could help in some way either as a volunteer or with a donation.

FINALLY, do let us know if there are other organisations or groups in need of funding for an arts project in the area covered by TAS SW London. Our members come from an area that stretches from Richmond to Battersea and from Fulham to Wimbledon and we would consider any arts related requests from within this area

 Photo by Gwen Hewitt: (from left) Gill Grunwald, Chairman of the Arts Society SW London and Arlene Coutts, Director of FiSH

A grant of £250 has been made by the Arts Society SW London (TASSWL) to the Castelnau Community Centre (CCC), a charity based in North Barnes which provides a range of activites including drop-in arts sessions.

 The grant was made through The Arts Society’s small grants programme which TASSWL applied for late last year. It was presented earlier this year.

 The Castelnau Community Centre, a registered charity (www.castelnaucentreproject.co.uk), is a community resource providing a range of activities for all age groups including a cafe, allotments, mother and toddler groups, classes for people without English as their first language and a drop in arts session, Arts 4 All.

 The grant was made primarily to provide materials for Arts 4 All, which is held on term time Monday mornings for people over 18. The group is supervised by a volunteer, Ann-Valancha Brown, a multidisciplinary artist and art and wellbeing practitioner who works with the mental health sector as a community based artist delivering art led projects to clients and residents in London boroughs.

Ann has previously worked with the charities St Mungo's (alcohol recovery), Provident Row (a project with the homeless), and Hestia (The Recovery cafe). She has personal experience of the role of carer which enables her to understand and empathise with those for whom a safe space in an environment other than the home provides a welcome break and a chance to explore their creativity.

 Ann is enthusiastic about creating an inclusive and safe place for anyone to create art.  Her aim is to guide participants and to be as open and flexible to their ideas as possible. Some sessions, particularly in recent times, have involved going on walks looking for inspiration from nature and natural materials. The sessions are informal and welcoming to new people. One of the participants describes it as both relaxing and stimulating.

 “I relax into the creative work and time just slips away taking my concerns with it. I am stimulated by the company of people I don't normally meet whose humour and ideas inspire me,” she says.

 This feeds into the overall ethos of CCC described by one of the paid members of staff, Laila Francis: “Many of the activities we offer have a specific focus such as art sessions or gardening but also have a secondary impact: giving the participants the opportunity to socialise, access purposeful activity, contribute to developing a routine and encourage interaction among people who might not otherwise mix.”

 Although the perception is that Barnes is a very affluent area a recent report commissioned by the Barnes Fund, a local charity, highlighted “pockets of relative disadvantage and groups which can have hidden need and be excluded” and “the perceived divide between the North of the area and rest of Barnes and this is a key barrier to community cohesion.” The report also refers to “Residents in need feeling that things are being done for them, not with them … North Barnes is often described as an area of need, which misses the strengths of the community and what they have to offer.” (Extracts from Barnes – an analysis of need 2021.”

 Photo by Caroline Silver Lewis: (from left) Gill Grunwald, Chairman of the Arts Society SW London, Simon Roach, Centre Director, Ann Valancha Brown and Jane Skerrett TASSWL committee member 

The Arts Society SW London celebrated its 50th anniversary with a special reception and lecture on July 4th at St Mary’s Church, Barnes.

The evening featured a lecture on Music in Venice by Patrick Craig (one of the accredited Arts Society lecturers): La Serenissima – The Golden Age of Music in Venice and a reception.

The Arts Society SW London was founded 50 years ago.  Originally called the South West London Decorative and Fine Arts Society (SWLDFAS), it has, since 2017, been known as The Arts Society SW London and in September 2021, it became a registered Charity.

The first meeting of SWLDFAS was held on 22 September 1971 at the recently constructed, Putney Leisure Centre; a building designed by Powell and Moya. Built in 1968, it went on to win an RIBA award in the following year and has listed status.  Remarkably, it continues to be our venue more than half a century later.

Even more remarkable is the fact that the first Chairman of our society and its founder, Anne, Lady White, has remained a member throughout those 50 years. Perhaps less well known is the fact that Lady White was one of the founders of the parent body in 1967 - The National Association of Decorative and Fine Arts. We are honoured to have her as our President. Though she has suffered ill health in recent times, she was able to join the celebration at St Mary' Church in Barnes on Monday 4 July.

Also present was Dr Florian Schweizer, CEO of The Arts Society, Alison Watson, Vice-Chair of the Board of Trustees of The Arts Society and Liz Bridge the Quaker Chaplain at Wandsworth Prison where our Art in Prison Project was launched this year.

The event was a celebration of what the Society has to offer and an occasion on which to show our appreciation to Lady White, for the foresight and energy that she and the co-founders showed, in creating a Society that has stood the test of time for over half a century.

The Arts Society South West London is setting up a project at Wandsworth Prison to teach and enable prisoners to produce their own art works and to learn about art. We have made a grant of £1,500 to fund it. It will finish with an exhibition of prisoners’ work.

The project is starting in January 2022 and a public exhibition will be mounted in September 2022

First of all we need donations of magazines, take away boxes and other materials – see below for details.

We also badly need some volunteers to help as follows:

·        Research available programmes on art that can then be shown in prison;

·        Help with sourcing materials;

·        Driving to collect magazines and take away boxes that have been donated;

·        Assistance to organise the exhibition at the end of project.

Can you help with any of these tasks? All offers of assistance will be very gratefully received. 

For more information please contact Jane Seaborn or Jenny Edwards, Heritage and Young Arts Volunteer Representatives. Their contact details are on your membership card, or you can email via our website email facility on the top right

 Magazines

We need all kinds of magazines, for example featuring sea and landscapes, fashion, sport and sailing, colour supplements from newspapers, Country Life, National Geographic etc.

 Plastic boxes and other materials

We also need small plastic boxes such as take-away boxes, watercolour paper, cartridge paper, india rubbers (erasers), 3B pencils, paint brushes - small, medium and large size, pencil sharpeners and watercolours (not tubes).

 If anyone has any of these items which are surplus to their own requirements we would love to have them. They can be delivered to Jane Seaborn, whose address is on the membership card.

Photo: Wandsworth Prison gates by Caroline Walker

The Arts Society South West London has a new Chairman – Gill Grunwald, who was formerly the Treasurer for five years. She succeeds Co-Chairs Kate McMahon and Gwen Hewitt, who have stepped down.

For the last year, until the AGM on November 8, Gill was the Secretary, a role she took on after stepping down as Treasurer. On becoming the new Chairman she praised the work of Gwen and Kate over the last four years during a difficult period for the society, and particularly thanked them for staying on as Co-Chairs for an extra year to provide continuity during the pandemic.

In their last report to the society, Kate McMahon and Gwen Hewitt said that it was embarking on a new future as a Charity (registered charity no: 1195700), following approval by members at a Special General Meeting in July. “

“This will improve our ability to support the arts locally and in particular to give support to young people through school and college activities. This year we have donated money for arts equipment to Wandsworth Prison for their excellent programme of art projects for the prisoners.”

Kate McMahon has now left the committee after serving on it for 12 years in various roles, including as Treasurer, and also as joint Visits Secretary with Gwen Hewitt. Gwen meanwhile has become the SW London society’s Vice-Chair.

Other new committee members are Felicity Irlam who has become the Secretary; Winefride Bolton who has taken over as Membership Secretary from Caroline Delius, who has stepped down after three years; Jane Crang, who has become Visits Secretary in place of Dinah Shoults, who kindly returned to the committee to fill a vacancy last year; Jenny Edwards who has joined Jane Seaborn to cover Heritage Volunteers and Young Arts; and Jane Skerrett.

The Arts Society South West London has new co-Chairs – Gwen Hewitt and Kate McMahon. They have succeeded Dinah Shoults, who has stepped down after three years.

Until the AGM on November 13, Gwen and Kate were the branch’s Visits Secretaries, and prior to that they both fulfilled other committee roles, Gwen having been Heritage Volunteers secretary, and Kate having been the Treasurer.

Speaking at the AGM, Gwen praised Dinah’s hard work and commitment during her three-year stint as Chairman, saying she would be a hard act to follow.

Gwen and Kate are succeeded as Visits Secretaries by Ann Buckley and Vickie Neill who joined the committee in November.

Two other committee members stepped down at the AGM – Maya Kemp who was the acting Heritage Volunteer secretary and Young Arts Representative, and Mariangela Renshaw.

An extra visit was arranged by the South West London Decorative and Fine Arts Society (SWLDFAS) in July to take advantage of an arrangement between the Globe Theatre and the Tate Modern for groups to visit both the theatre and gallery.

It began with a guided tour of the Globe Theatre and a tour of the exhibition on the theatre’s history. This was followed by a demonstration of dressing in Elizabethan costume. A SWLDFAS member gallantly stepped in as the model (see picture).

Later in the day the SWLDFAS group was given a tour of the new extension to the Tate Modern. “It was a most successful and enjoyable day,” said Kate McMahon, one of the Visits Secretaries who helped to organise the tour.

A mosaic sponsored by the South West London Decorative and Fine Arts Society (SWLDFAS) has been unveiled at St Mary’s Primary School in Putney. It was created by local artist Karen Perry with the help of the children at the school.

According to SWLDFAS Young Arts Secretary Maya Kemp who organised the project, the school was so pleased with it that instead of it just being in the playground, the mosaic hangs at the top of the assembly hall for all to see and ponder on.

 Each child in the school participated, she says “The smaller ones could stick the big pieces on, while the older ones were taught how to actually cut the mosaic.”

 The title chosen for the mosaic by one of the children was “The Law of Love” and a competition was organised to best reflect the phrase in a picture.

 The final mosaic depicts the earth, sun and sea and four children holding hands. It was unveiled by the school’s vicar, Canon Ailsa Newby, at a school assembly which was attended by Maya Kemp, SWLDFAS chairman Dinah Shoults and other members of the committee.

 The school’s Head Teacher Cheryl Payne, in thanking SWLDFAS for funding “our beautiful mosaic”, said she hoped that they were able to see how delighted the children were to have worked with artist Karen Perry on the mosaic, and how pleased everyone in the school was with the final result.

As part of its Young Arts project the South West London Decorative and Fine Arts Society (SWLDFAS) is sponsoring art materials for The Holly Lodge Centre’s special needs classes.

In early July, SWLDFAS chairman, Dinah Shoults presented a cheque for £500 to Anna King, Holly Lodge Centre’s Manager.  “Having heard that the organisation was currently short of money for materials, it was wonderful to be able to help such a worthwhile cause,” she said.

The Holly Lodge Centre is a small charity in the heart of Richmond Park. Its exceptional educational programmes explore science, nature and history, and specialise in activities for people with special needs. It has 6,000 visitors a year from school groups, young people and adults.

The Centre is run by two part-time staff and over 100 volunteers. Its income comes from donations from individuals, community groups and trusts and fund-raising events.

SWLDFAS Young Arts Secretary, Maya Kemp, said that the staff and volunteers were delighted to receive the grant for art materials. “I learned that sometime they are not able to raise the full funding, particularly now that the numbers of children have increased. This is a way we can help young people enjoy and explore their artistic talents, drawing from nature in the beautiful surroundings of Holly Lodge.”

The picture shows SWLDFAS chairman Dinah Shoults presenting the cheque to Anna King of The Holly Lodge Centre. Also in the picture are (from left) SWLDFAS President, Lady White, Treasurer Kate McMahon, Young Arts Secretary Maya Kemp and June Beedham, a Trustee of Holly Lodge. (Photo: Sue Hume)

The Revd Richard Sewell of St Mary’s Church, Barnes, chose an informal family service last November to launch the Children’s Church Trail devised by four members of South West London Decorative and Fine Arts Society (SWLDFAS), under the guidance of NADFAS delegate Frances Fenton Moule.

It was the perfect occasion as the church building and its history became the focus of the address to the children. The Trail Pack was formally presented by the Chairman of SWLDFAS and the fun began. Younger members were delighted with the challenge of finding the objects and drawing, older children were thoughtful and enquiring in their quest, whilst the parents “loved the answer sheet”. A particular point of interest was the fact that the font is made from a column that was badly damaged in the church fire 30 years ago.

Following the service, coffee and cakes encouraged keen conversation between members of the congregation and SWLDFAS.

Richard Sewell commented enthusiastically: “It has been a real thrill to work on this together and the outcome is superb: a real asset to the mission of our church.”

Picture: The Revd Richard Sewell with some of the children who tested out the new church trail.