Two weeks have passed since the wonderful night of The Georgie Project at The Griffin Gallery, Winsor and Newton HQ in Notting Hill. I am still making up for the weeks of stress leading up to the event but it was certainly worth it. The night was a great success. Over 250 people came, every work has now been sold, and we have raised over £23,000 profit for the Creative Therapies Fund for Mind. Hoon Young Kim set the tone of the evening with his soulful guitar tunes and powerful voice. La Piccola Deli and Lea and Sandeman ensured everyone was well fed and watered. Richard Dyer, poet, artist, critic, harmonica player, successfully hushed the entire room with his dramatic recital of the text written by all 27 artists to accompany their works. Scott Roworth of Sotheby's did a truly admirable job of keeping the tempo high and auctioning the art for significantly higher sums than predicted for most pieces. And then it was Rusty Egan's turn to lighten the tone and blast us all with music that took me right back to the golden period of the 90s when we were (relatively) footloose and fancy free.
It would have been my sister's 36th birthday yesterday. A sad day because I will never stop missing her but also an uplifting one because the project in her honour has finally happened. It will help many others who find themselves in the same boat as she was but with a bit of hope, luck, and opportunities created by organizations such as the Creative Therapies fund, they will navigate their way through their challenges and improve the quality of their lives enough to keep the fire burning in their souls.
I will look into running the project again over the next couple of years so keep checking the blog for updates.
Thanks so much to the great number of you that helped to get the project off the ground, keeping my spirits raised and blessing the purse of Mind with so much money!
MERRY CHRISTMAS TO YOU ALL AND HAPPY NEW YEAR
