In recent years, public engagement has become an increasingly important aspect to my work and I have enjoyed exploring different ways to involve the community in my creative practice. As participants, it has been a joy to enable the public to create elements of an art installation, seeing them work with unusual materials, as was the case of weaving a shoal of fish beneath the hull of the iconic Cutty Sark from materials gathered on the British coastline.
I have found that elements of my creative process can become a powerful way to explore sensory aspects of history, as seen in the creation of clay tiles for a new war memorial for Mud & Memorials, a Heritage Lottery Funded project. The similarity between the mud of the First World War trenches and clay became an accessible means for schoolchildren to imagine what conditions may have been like for soldiers a hundred years ago.
Here follow some examples of recent projects which have involved the public in some way, be they school children, members of a university community or simply interested members of the public, keen to learn more about what the job of an artist actually entails.
Recent public engagement activity
Jo Atherton 