The Mulberry Tree Press
Artist-educators Kate Self and Kelly Large were invited to facilitate the first participatory learning project at SE8, during which young people are invited to work with contemporary artists and writers to explore and interpret the exhibition ‘The Mulberry Tree Press’.
This one-day workshop, focused on connecting with local audiences to explore the relationship between the gallery and its immediate surroundings – the bustling Deptford High Street.
Students studying English as a Second Language at Lewisham College visited the gallery and considered various strategies of a number of exhibiting artists, in particular the ways in which they collect, translate, represent and distribute everyday information. Jamie Shovlin’s pin-board based artworks, and the video documentation from two performances by Emma Hart were looked at in-depth for inspiration. The group investigated two physical environments; the gallery space – a new and unfamiliar space and Deptford High Street – a habitual space, encountered daily.
Each young person experimented with methods for collecting data on each location in order to creatively map their individual experience of the sites. This included recording encounters with passers-by, drawing shop signage and collecting snippets of overheard conversations. The information collected by the students was then used as a framework through which to explore the gallery. Students were encouraged to overlay information collected from the High Street onto the internal spaces of the gallery, in order to find points of correspondence and divergence between the two environments.
The visual maps and data fragments produced by the young people during the workshop have been collated into a publication for informal distribution amongst the participants’ peer groups and held in the gallery archive.
Workshop facilitators: Kate Self and Kelly Large
Workshop Assistant: Jessica White
With thanks to the participating students and Michelle Butcher, Enrichment Co-ordinator and ESOL1 Art tutor, Lewisham college.
