Screenprint on wooden circle, based on YMCA tower
the drawing shed ran fourteen art and printmaking sessions in the lively ground floor café at the YMCA between June and October 2010, offering these in blocks of weeks and adapting timings of sessions to enable us to make contact with as many residents as possible as they came for either their evening or lunchtime meal. Over the five month period twenty-five residents aged sixteen upwards participated in sessions. They came from countries as diverse as the UK, Ireland, Portugal, Eritrea, The Democratic Republic of the Congo, St Lucia, Jamaica, Somalia, Sierre Leone, Algeria and Kenya.
Through our regular presence and provision of materials, residents made connections with ourselves and one another, slowly built levels of trust and worked through ideas visually and through text. The project lead to the installation of five permanent wooden circular images for the new residents’ veranda garden in November 2010, supported by Imogen Sherwood of Groundwork.
