Public and community engagement has been an integral part of my work for over a decade. Most of my public works include community outreach and recent projects have increasingly become community focused. I now work with communities in all aspects of my work, on public commissions, grants-funded work and as stand-alone projects.
Below are a few examples of recent and past projects working with different communities.
Kaleidoscope, Edinburgh, 2024
Kaleidoscope workshops in West Pilton as part of ideas development and wider community engagement for public artwork
Pattern generation workshops with Granton P4 children, creating prints to incorporate into finished artwork design
landmark court, southwark, 2023
Bracelet and dinosaur making workshops for Liberty of Southwark development near London Bridge. The idea was to use materials found on the site to help put the development into context - and to allow people to make something tangible from the site to take away with them. In this case in the form of bracelets.
The beads weremade in advance of the workshops out of 50 million years old London clay found at the site. The funny shapes are based on microfossils found in the clay.
My absolute favourite moment of the day was a mother and grownup son making bracelets together. He had just moved to London from abroad and she was visiting for the first time and making the bracelets together gave them a tangible memento of the trip. Or as she put it - the best souvenir she could have possibly got from her trip.
This is rubbish, Edinburgh 2015
Created on Earth Day, This is Rubbish! was the culmination of three workshops with Victoria Primary school P5 pupils. The workshops explored the children's area and issues of sustainability, local geography and art making from re-appropriated materials. The materials were gathered from donations from the local area over a 2-month period and the construction event itself took place over an hour of self-directed construction by the children, exploring their creativity. The resulting 10 meter x 9 meter giant image was based on themes from maps of a future 2065 Newhaven as imagined by the children. The project was a collaboration with Hans Clausen, Edinburgh Sculpture Workshops’s Schools Programme, a very enthusiastic and talented group of Primary five children and lots of generous volunteers and donors.
Musselburgh Archer, Musselburgh, 2018
Arrow-making workshops as part of community engagement and design input on public artwork
