This annual event has been a feature of the Debenham calendar for 45 years. Sadly, we were not able to hold an exhibition in 2020 and this year’s was originally planned for early July until it became apparent that there may be problems with this date. We finally managed to open at 10.30 on 24th September and it soon became clear that people were keen to attend after a dearth of this sort of activity for over a year. We are not able to count visitors but we are sure that it was a bumper year. Our new re-useable roadside posters, funded with a grant from Kathy Guthrie’s Locality Budget, will also have helped to promote the event.
Our exhibitors were also keen to display their work. We had more artists than the current committee has ever received – 65 and, this year, we invited young people to exhibit a painting and 8 chose to enter. We hope to expand this aspect of the exhibition in 2022. We exhibited a total of 333 paintings plus some ceramics and numerous cards and unframed prints. The young artists were able to designate their work as ‘not for sale’ but of the 69 artists who had work for sale 55 sold something. We ended the exhibition with a profit of £3454, again a record for the current committee, and have been able to give £3000 to St Mary’s Restoration Fund.
Each year, we try to upgrade our display facilities. We have been increasing the number of lights to illuminate the display boards for the past 3 years and this year we replaced all of the bulbs with LEDs which are more eco-friendly and give better illumination. In 2022 we are planning to start replacing the display boards with more modern equipment. This will be quite a long-term project but necessary as some of the boards are becoming rather dilapidated.
The paragraphs above give the, rather dry, facts about the event: it is difficult to describe the delight of people’s faces as they looked round, the time that people spent talking to each other about the exhibits and the pleasure they got from meeting up with others they had not seen for a while. To add to this wonderful atmosphere, on Friday evening, the Open Mic Group from the Leisure Centre played in the church porch creating a party feeling that was assisted with cyder donated by Aspall Cyder. Altogether a great time was had by all!

There is a gallery of images from 2021 on a separate page