Tag: stories

I have been thinking a lot about Walter Benjamin’s notion of ‘constellations’ and its application to art as having multiple points of connection. In the same way that we look at stars and find patterns even when there is seemingly no ‘real’ or tangible relationship between them, we look at fragments and objects, events, acts…and create relationships between them.

Last week Steve Pool came in to talk about his projects Never-land and No place for the future and the ways in which he has worked with people and communities; making connections with audiences. This week I started working with a group at the Women’s Centre in Derby. It was difficult to find the right label for this workshop. The Women’s Centre called it ‘celebrating your successes’. It isn’t quite that. The idea is to gather together and in the process of making, share things we have done – small but valuable things that we do for our families.

It is less about the clay than talking. Clay is so therapeutic –it’s like a stress ball as much as a creative malleable material. It’s relaxing to mold things. I’d love to meet women who might donate stories to the project and perhaps even show their small clay figures but it will be on their terms. I’d love it if they had a sense of value through sharing their work at Artcore but it will be whatever they decide.

Thinking of art as