HISTORY

Many Friends will remember the Quaker Fellowship of the Arts, which was laid down in the 1990a. It published a regular magazine, Reynard, and arranged events for Friends to create and share arts together. Today, the importance of the arts to many Friends is clearer, but we believe there is much more potential to be explored, whether for spiritual growth and nourishment, for outreach or witness.

The Quaker Arts Network was established in 2011 and became a Listed Informal Group of Britain Yearly Meeting soon after,  in 2012.  Since then we have held at least one day-long or weekend participative event each year, except during Covid 19 periods, and more recently a range of online activities, including helping Friends make connections through social media and the Events page on this website, where Friends can publicise arts events with Quaker connetions.

We are now a Quaker Recognised Body within Britain Yearly Meeting, and in 2023 our registration with the Charity Commission was competed; our charity number is  1202268. QAN has acted as umbrella to support a wide variety of arts projects within the scope of our aims , including visual art exhibitions at Friends House and Swarthmoor Hall, creative workshops, online presentations from Quaker artists, musicians and writers, discussions, gallery visits, group creative projects etc. Current projects are listed at https://quakerarts.net/projects/  Each project is run by a separate project group, with one of the QAN Trustees responsible. We have also published a number of books and art calendars.  More information about how we work is at https://quakerarts.net/contact/how-we-work/ 

Annual Reports, newsletters  and other documents are available at our documents page.