WORKSHOPS

My workshops are underpinned by the core value of holding space for one another and providing care and respect. I work with a variety of groups from vulnerable adults, to children, on ward mental health patients, refugees, newly arrived communities, groups with learning difficulties, arts audiences and everyone in between.
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Often when working with social prescribing or vulnerable groups this means that simply showing up is an achievement. We share space together, and have busy hands, but embrace slowness and having as much or as little involvement in the workshop as is possible on the day. Using first hand experience caring for a parent with mental ill health (Schizoaffective Disorder) and training to Level 3 Diploma in Counselling Skills, and Mental Health First Aid, I am able to bring specific knowledge and skills to each workshop and person.

I also work as a mentor supporting younger or emerging artists, many of who are neurodivergent like myself. Access considerations are a key part of this relationship making sure sessions are as accessible and tailored to each persons needs as possible. 

Pathways, Routes, Slowing Down
West Midlands Combined Authority / Transport for West Midlands

A series of six gentle walking and making workshops aimed at supporting mental health and wellbeing. Workshops included a walking therapist. One workshop was exclusively for families. 

What can we learn from the pathways we choose, the routes we walk, and the way we travel. If we slow down and notice the world around us, what can it open up for us. Do we hear more, see more, feel more. 

Over the workshops we slowly made our own maps, handheld objects, zines, clay impressions of the environment around us. We acted like magpies seeking the treasures in the walks and routes that we chose. We listened for the birds and made poems from their chatter, watched out for cyclists and captured the tread of the wheels, made leaf impressions with clay, inhaled as we past local cafes and rest points, and journaled how this made us feel.

Spike Island, Engagement Fellowship
Spike Island

For 23/2024 I was the Engagement Fellow at Spike Island, mentoring a group of younger artists who had responded to my proposition ‘Searching for a space that cares’. I hosted monthly workshops exploring our personal connections to care and spaces that have the potential to care. We mapped our bodies, explored access and how we need access support, created spaces that had care items within them, found the ‘things’ we needed to feel cared for, took walks, bathed in nature, hosted reading circles in the woods, created safe space and experienced the care we offered one another. Through the process I guided the group towards creating a digital commission for the Spike Island website that resulted in a chaptered webpage exploring care through each artist's practice. 

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​Nature and Healing 
MAC, Midlands Arts Centre 
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A weekly social prescribing project supporting a group of women facing mental health difficulties at MAC, Midlands Arts Centre. The project and workshop series responded directly to the groups interests, adapting on a weekly basis. Workshops have included foraging for teas, creating a soundwalk, making sculptures for public space, creating natural dyes, creating 'messages for others' with block/lino printing and much more. The workshops  led towards an exhibition at MAC as part of Bedlam Festival (2023). A mini project within the workshop series developed new work by responding to sounds we had recorded together, inspired by the sounds we made paper and clay models, the models turned to wood, were painted, became sculptures and then returned to the natural setting of Cannon Hill Park.

The initial project has grown in success and been taken on by MAC as a part of their core programme, now called Making It Together, meeting weekly, making responsive. 

Body Blocks
The Barber Institute of Fine Art & St Andrews

I worked with patients on the secure ward and within the wider facilities at St Andrews, a mental health hospital in Birmingham. We used a series of print techniques to develop body blocks to print onto fabric with. Initially we created monoprints and cyanotype prints looking at mark making through shape, pattern, movement and sound. The marks made within the patient's works was turned into blocks that could be worn on elbows, feet, hands, finger tips. We printed marks informed by the gestures we wanted to make and experiences we wanted to feel, paint between toes, patterns from repetition, movement from sound.

​The printed fabric will be turned into cushions, aprons and soft furnishings for the wards.

Listen and Make
A workshop series bringing together family members to jointly create an object as a way of holding space for one another. Each pair take the time to really listen to one another sharing stories, feelings, memories whilst making.
​Supported by Creative Black Country and Bear Book Shop

Wear Your Politics
A series of workshops with a class at Hersleb School, exploring personal politics and how to represent this in costume and clothing. Resulting in a costume 'fashion show' in the class room. 
Part of a commission at Tenthaus

Wearing My Voice
A workshop series for members of These Wall Must Fall (TWMF) campaign group in Yorkshire. The group have personal experience of detection and campaigns to end detention and for refugee rights. The workshops explored slogan and protest as the group worked towards making campaign t-shirts to fundraise for TWMF.