Our History
A brief history of ACOP
ACOP was formed in 1967 as "Arts and Crafts" and we've been holding our exhibitions (mostly in Mona Vale) ever since then. The name was changed to Artists and Craftsmen of Pittwater in 1974, and we became an incorporated association in 1993.
Our objects are to bring together local men and women who practice arts and crafts of a high standard, and to promote opportunities for the appreciation of members’ work by the public. Recognising the amalgamation of Pittwater Council, Warringah Shire and Manly Council to form Northern Beaches Council in 2016, our membership now covers the whole Northern Beaches area from Manly to Palm Beach, and westwards to Middle Harbour.
ACOP endeavours to maintain a high standard of craftsmanship, involving the submission of prospective members’ work to a selection committee.
What we do
Our main activity has always been our exhibitions, originally held three times a year, in Mona Vale Memorial Hall. According to its foundation stone, the hall was opened in November 1966, so we've been there for almost its entire history. We thank Northern Beaches Council for continuing to make their halls available to us, without which our exhibitions would not be possible.
Recent changes
In March 2019, we tried out Curl Curl Creative Space as a new venue for our exhibitions. Unfortunately, it turned out to be too small to be viable, with craft tables getting in the way of viewing the art mounted on the walls.
In 2021, after being unable to hold any exhibitions in 2020 due to the Covid lockdowns, our 3-day exhibitions (which had always been run from Thursday to Saturday) were changed to Friday to Sunday, as a result of increased demand from other groups for the hall. Although members were concerned that this would result in fewer visitors, we found that the more relaxed pace of Sunday shopping resulted in Sunday being just as successful as other days.
In 2022, again due to the hall becoming more in demand from local groups, we were only able to hold two exhibitions. To make up for that, since 2023, we have been searching for other venues that we can use to get back to four exhibitions per year. Our thanks to Northern Beaches Council for making the Narrabeen Tramshed halls available to us as an additional vemue.
In November 2025, we staged an art and sculpture exhibition at the Mona Vale Creative Space Gallery. Although it is a great venue for such an exhibition, we found that the visitor response was unfortunately poor. We are now looking at other local venues that can offer us similar facilities.
Our history in pictures
Unfortunately, most of our own history records have been lost over the years. We do have pictures of two earlier exhibitions, which were archived by the local studies librarians at Mona Vale Library. Our thanks go to them for saving our history, and for permission to reproduce the pictures here.
The 21 Spring Exhibition photos dating from 4th September 1972 (before we changed our name from Arts & Crafts to Artists & Craftsmen of Pittwater) and the 6 monochrome photos of our 25th Anniversary Exhibition dating from 4th September 1992 are archived in the Council's Library Services History Hub. The photos of our Christmas 2008 Exhibition held on December 11th to 13th at the Ted Blackwood Hall in Warriewood, and those of our 2009 Annual Exhibition held on November 5th to 7th at Mona Vale Memorial Hall, were stored on our old website.
Our website
We believe that our website was first set up some time between 2010 and 2012, by Internet Resident, and our thanks to Brett for the excellent job that he did. Unfortunately, although Brett designed it to be updated as members produced new work and as our membership changed, this never happened, because we had nobody sufficiently technical to do it. The current website dates from 2014, and is done on a volunteer basis by Dave M (you can click on that link to see how he updated the old site).
We now use a colour scheme that's based on the colours of Pittwater - our blue/green ocean, the different blue of Pittwater itself, our clear skies, and our clean sand. Our other website credits go to Giles Hodgers for the sand background texture, our website authoring software CMS Made Simple and our all-Australian web host VentraIP.