Resist, Coborn Centre for Adolescent Mental Health
In 2023 I initiated a new Art and Wellbeing partnership between Foundling and The Coborn Centre for Adolescent Mental Health, which I then delivered to young people from January to March 2024. Each week we creatively explored different ways of making marks and images using resist techniques, collage and mixed media. At the end of each session we stood around a new section of blank calico to collaboratively fill it before rolling it back up. The full length of fabric was unveiled at the end of the project as a record of the weeks we had spent together and will be on permanent display at The Coborn Centre later this year. A resource that includes some of the work made during the project as well as a new set of propositions was designed by Modern Activity and distributed throughout The Coborn Centre as an invitation for new service users to explore.
Workshop detail,
Coborn Centre for Adolescent Mental Health
Workshop detail,
Coborn Centre for Adolescent Mental Health
Filling Gaps, Mind in Camden
Over two months in 2024, I worked with Mind in Camden participants leading a series of Arts and Wellbeing workshops at the Foundling Museum. Together we explored embroidery and weaving techniques inspired by The Mother and the Weaver exhibition. Throughout the weekly sessions, the group contemplated concepts of the unseen mother, maternal love, positive and negative space, absence and presence through acts of writing, cutting, weaving and repairing. The final exhibition, Filling Gaps, displayed the textile works from the group at the museum from 13 March- 14 April 2024. At the end of the project, a poster was designed by Modern Activity and then distributed to Mind Centres across London as well as the group participants as a legacy of the project.
Workshop detail,
Foundling Museum
Filling Gaps 2024
Exhibition view at the Foundling Museum
In The Folds, Coram
In The Folds was a collaborative project between Coram and The Foundling Museum, as part of the Voices Through Time Programme. Working alongside young people with care experience, inspired by the foundlings’ dormitories and their own bedrooms, the group created a collaborative multi-layered bedspread for the Foundling Hospital bed. Including Aaron Cross, Robyn Hughes, Jake Hartley, Paige Michel and Oliver Jordan, the participants responded to the billet books and the token hidden within its folds, the idea of ‘folding’ dreams and reality as well as bedsheets became key to the group. Exploring textile processes through pattern, drawing and creative writing, each member produced their own sample book. The final bedspread invites interaction, to be opened-up and unfolded to reveal the textile pages from each participant.
In The Folds (detail) 2022
On permanent display at Coram
In The Folds (detail) 2022
On permanent display at Coram