Aiden Saunders is a passionate itinerate printmaker, founder of the Print Wagon, and organizer of Printed Festival 2024 (June 8–9) in Cardiff, Wales. “I know it is a bit cheeky, but we are a festival with a difference, focusing on engaging directly with visitors and offering free have-a-go print activities, subsidized artist talks and, of course, giving artists and printmakers a platform to sell their work,” he says.
The first festival was funded by Laura Ashley Foundation, and as part of the activities, “We visited six different communities around Cardiff and gave free print workshops. [Now, we’ve] upped the workshops to 15 and are funded by the Arts Council Wales.”
I’ve spoken to Saunders before about his traveling shows, and here he is again for another year of ink and paper and print.
How has the public’s response been to your Printed Festival?
Fantastic! The whole weekend was swarming with visitors from all over! We designed the festival to be a festival of participation rather than just an arts market. Because of this there was a palpable creative buzz in the air, with seasoned printmakers to complete novices trying their hands at linocuts, screenprint, rubber stamping and risograph printing.
Is your audience mostly artists and designers, or civilians with a love for handcrafts?
A perfect mix; we don’t want to just preach to the converted and show print fanatics lovely artwork. Our main aim is to reach out to “civilians” and show how printmaking is accessible as a means to access their creativity.
How and where do you organize these fetes?
I teamed up with the Printhaus, an amazing print studio in the heart of Cardiff, and we started talking about the need of a print festival in Wales that can service the community. We get together and ask ourselves what in an ideal world we would like to see in a print festival, and we try our best to make it happen. Free activities, artist talks and lots of hand-printed swag. It’s a printed dream factory.
What kind of attendance do you get?
We were so swept up, and it being an open space we didn’t have a chance to count, but everyone who held a have-a-go print activity was swept off their feet with no respite for five hours straight. The venue inside serving food ran out of forks.
What happens to the work?
People take it home and hopefully cherish it! More importantly, hopefully people can take the prints home, realize their creative potential and hopefully get bitten by the printing bug.
