Make Sense
The Tree House, Elephant Park
Within the newly renovated Elephant Park, Arts for Dementia commissioned us to deliver five print-making workshops, culminating in an exhibition at the Urban Elephant Festival on September 15th and 16th.
While most of our workshops take place in Camden, Hackney, and Tower Hamlets, this was a welcome opportunity to engage with participants from south of the river, in Lambeth and Southwark. Given the recent contentious development in Elephant and Castle, utilizing the Tree House for community engagement offered a valuable chance to foster social cohesion. Our five print-making workshops explored diverse techniques: nature printing, cyanotype printing, screen printing, foam printing, and gyotaku (the Japanese art of fish printing).
Each workshop engaged 6-7 individuals living with dementia, along with 6-7 carers or volunteers. The park adjacent to the workshop space proved invaluable, allowing us to incorporate natural materials into our nature prints and cyanotypes. The resulting nature prints were particularly striking and offered a beautiful reflection of the Elephant and Castle area during the Urban Elephant Festival.
The Urban Elephant Festival showcased a vibrant array of international music, including Peruvian dance, traditional Somalian music, and Colombian folk songs. This energetic atmosphere provided an exciting backdrop for our artwork, especially our foam prints, which were created in response to sound and offered a visual dynamic that complemented the live music.
The festival also generated a strong interest in the gyotaku prints created by our participants, with many attendees inquiring about purchasing them. Gyotaku, a highly sensory process using real fish, was traditionally employed by Japanese fishing communities to document their catch. The success of these prints has inspired us to explore ways to help artists in our future workshops profit from their work, should they wish to do so.
