Through the month of February, Tayport Harbour Café is hosting an exhibition of tapestry created by local artist Sue Doyle. The exhibition, of both framed prints and original tapestries, is being held to raise funds to pay for the training of local township facilitators who will deliver workshops to the young unemployed in Khaylitsha and Langa. £900 raised so far!
In 2006 Sue Boyle was working as a Careers Adviser in Arbroath Academy when she volunteered to work for a month in a South African township school. Over the next few years she returned, and her experience, along with the research she carried out with a South African colleague, led her to conclude that there was very little provision of careers information and guidance to help school leavers avoid joining the huge numbers of unemployed young people already in the township.
Sue is working with Friends of Eyethu Careers Point, a small charity registered with OSCR, whose purpose is to support Eyethu Careers Point. Eyethu Careers Point (ECP) intends to work peripatetically, using township community centres and schools to hold workshops for young people in Cape Town’s townships. The organisation has recently been granted a licence to deliver WorkNet International’s workshops. These programmes have been specifically designed to help young people to make career decisions that not only suit them, but are also appropriate for the local, provincial and national labour market. They also help the ‘candidates understand the ‘business culture’ and develop the ‘employability’ skills that are required by employers and tertiary institutions.
Sue loves her weaving which she feels is very therapeutic. Whilst she does weave on larger looms, she also has a small loom which she was given following her first weaving course, a week at the Edinburgh College of Art, and which she takes with her wherever she goes.
The exhibition features colourful township schemes, and also local Scottish scenes as well other subjects. One of Sue’s tapestries, of a butterfly chrysalis, was selected to hang in the Cordis Showcase and is currently on show in the restaurant of the National Gallery of Scotland.