A collaboration with Hampshire Cultural Trust & CAMHS

A collaboration with Hampshire Cultural Trust & CAMHS

I was delighted to be commissioned to work on a community project with Hampshire Cultural Trust & CAMHS creating a collaborative installation to transform space in the Eastleigh clinic. The project began with a site visit, exploring the clinical space and area had to work with, from this, I began to see how the installation could work as a journey piece up the stairwell.

One evening at the clinic, I held a community engagement workshop for children who are under the CAMHS service and we explored creating abstract creations using paints, pens, oil pastels and inks. The session was all about embracing personal creativity, exploring ideas, experimenting with materials and encouraging the children to explore feelings and words with colour, texture and strokes. I took these creations back to the studio and began putting together a concept based on our discussions and creations…

When reflecting on the workshop I mindmapped some words about coming together and creativity when arrived at the idea of a bird murmurations.. another idea that also stood out was Diving and under the sea.

‘‘During the winter months, large numbers of starlings visit Britain from the continent, seeking out the relative warmth of our island climate. As dusk arrives, the starlings set off for their communal roost in one of the most staggering natural spectacles of all. Flocks arrive from all directions, gathering in the skies above their roost sites. As the numbers reach into the tens and hundreds of thousands, the ‘murmurations’ (the name for a flying flock of starlings) take on incredible shapes in the sky, contracting and expanding as one flock merges into another, and taking on a life of their own; swirling back and forth in ever more complex and beautiful patterns.’’ -Wildlife Trust

I then began to see the patterns and work created in the session as our own evening murmation and began developing the installation idea around this with under the sea theme working under the barrier.

The other key words from the workshop were calming, respectful, quiet and evolving which I took into consideration when working out the colour palette. I illustrated bird, coral, shell, fish and rock motifs and then used the artwork created in the session as the backgrounds with colour overlays to create the calming effect. These were then printed onto vinyls and installed by myself and Exhibit Printing to transform the clinical space into a creative, explorative and calming environment.