The National Trust at Stowe are considering employing a professional artist to support the creation of installations for their popular Advent Calendar event in 2019 and invite expressions of interest.

The Advent Calendar is a Christmas event which has been running at Stowe for the past few years and – as the name suggests – comprises 24 “doors” in the landscape created by our staff, volunteers and local community groups.

This year, for the first time, they employed a professional socially engaged artist to run workshops with volunteers to create some of the doors. Subject to a positive outcome from their evaluation process, they will be doing the same in 2019, extending this to workshops for our community groups.

If they decide to go ahead, they will be sending out a more formal and detailed brief to selected artists in order for them to work up a proposal. The appointed artist or artists will receive a fee to run the workshops; details of this will be available at the briefing stage.

They believe that a visit to this year’s event is essential for any future artist working on the project. All artists making an expression of interest can arrange free entry to gardens for the duration of the Advent Calendar (until 4th January 2019), for yourself and one other person.

Please send your expression of interest by emailing Anne French anne.french@nationaltrust.org.uk. No CVs are necessary at this stage.