Passionate about children & young people’s work being seen and used to engage audiences, some of my projects have involved curating exhibitions of their work in gallery, museum and library settings. This selection are highlights of some of those exhibitions or installations. For a more extensive selection of curated exhibitions (featuring community participants) please visit The Art Of Taking Part or Jo Löki
4600 Gifts — EXhibition, Library of Birmingham, Birmingham, West Midlands. Co-curated with Deirdre Figueiredo at Craftspace.
4600 Gifts was an ambitious project to make gifts as a token of friendship for every athlete competing in the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games. In excess of 3500 people took part in over 100 citywide making sessions turning outwards in a shared, symbolic act of crafting alongside strangers, friends, family members, neighbours, colleagues and fellow pupils.
Birmingham was known as ‘the workshop of the world’ because of the many different trades, making skills and manufacturing that thrived here. Products, particularly metal goods, were exported worldwide. Since then people from around the world, including Commonwealth countries, have come to Birmingham. We benefit from and celebrate the diaspora and the shared ‘common’ ‘wealth’ of culture, skills and knowledge it brings. No matter who we are, everyone has gifts to give.
Craftspace collaborated with artists Pottinger + Cole, Laura Nyahuye, Mahawa Keita and Kalandra McFarquhar to develop a concept for the gifts with ideas of upcycling, resourcefulness and the power of ‘do-it- together’ in mind. The blank gift comprises two metal washers which are hand decorated by wrapping, knotting, sewing, plaiting and crocheting with fabric, yarns, threads and beads. The two washers are then joined together to symbolise friendship and connection between people and cultures. Like charms or talismans the gifts carry an investment of time, spirit, love and energy. They are a meaningful exchange from one human to another.
For ten days leading up to the Commonwealth Games, 30,000 visitors to the exhibition at the Library of Birmingham, could see 460 selected gifts made by established crafters, children and young people and community people from across the city, from all corners of Birmingham. Made by many hands, 4600 Gifts celebrates still thriving craft skills in our communities today. Seen together the gifts are a show of unity and a portrait of our diverse city of many talents at this historic moment in time.
The project was developed and realised with a variety of community partners and organisations. More details and images of the process can be found here
Children Of The Forest – Staffordshire Wildlife Trust (2019)
Children Of The Forest was an arts commission featured of the Wildchild Festival in the summer of 2019, celebrating Staffordshire Wildlife Trust’s fifty-year anniversary. The installation celebrates nature as a source for inspiring imagination, curiosity and creativity in children. Children from a local school made nature inspired artworks that took many forms: A forest of hands—made by the tiniest of children; sculptural objects to grace the woodland floor and majestic trees; photographs to remind us of the changing seasons; delicate drawings printed onto bark; poems to declare our connection to mother nature — and spirit-masks to invoke creature, flora and atmospheric elements that nourish and shape the land. In a specially dedicated space in the woodland area, the children’s work (over 300 individual pieces) was assembled to enchant audiences, particularly younger ones and to stage a performance of poem created by the children.
Echo Eternal – Library of Birmingham (2019)
An arts and heritage programme taking place over twelve months from January 2018, Echo Eternal engaged young people at twelve Birmingham schools to produce a range of artistic responses to the personal testimonies of Holocaust Survivors. Commissioned by Core Education to curate the artworks and bring those responses together, this unique exhibition featured over one hundred artworks, set across three floors at the Library of Birmingham.
Combined together, they reveal the depth to which the young people investigated, explored and responded creatively to this important and emotive subject. Considered and thoughtful responses, made by children and young people of all ages and abilities, creating a range of creative interpretations—to engage us, the audience—into sharing their creative observations, and in turn honouring the sharing of these testimonies by Holocaust Survivors.
Young people’s artwork (Drawings, Paintings, Textiles, Photography, Prints and Sculpture) featured in The Gallery. Selected artworks made by young people working alongside professional artists—during artists’ residencies at each school—demonstrate the broad range of creative endeavours the young people embarked on. They represent the final creative interpretations of the twelve Holocaust Survivors’ personal testimonies; some of which directly link to personal narratives, others influenced by the resilience and hope that so inspired the young people.
The Echo Eternal Reading Room supported the work in the The Gallery. In this space, visitors could read printed transcripts of the twelve Holocaust Survivors testimonies; alongside the young people’s thoughts, explorations, research and reflections—brought together in series of specially created books and printed text pieces.
Over the course of each project the young people’s responses captured on twelve multimedia films, were installed in the Foyer Space . Predominantly each film represents the young people’s residences with creative professionals, combined with Holocaust Survivors personal testimonies. At the centre of this video installation, an interactive installation The World We Dream Of — giving an opportunity for visitors to offer their own reflections of Echo Eternal.
Echo Eternal was an arts, media and civic engagement project inspired by the testimonies of Survivors of the Holocaust. The project was led by CORE Education Trust on behalf of the UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation.
Stories of Bentilee – Harold Clowes Hall (2017)
Stories of Bentilee was an intergenerational community and heritage photography project that took place in Bentilee, a suburb of Stoke-on-Trent during the summer of 2017. The project was funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund, and created with the collaboration of some driven young people from Bentliee’s ‘Streetwise’ Youth Group. For more details of the project please see Stories of Bentilee
Little Angels – Haden Hill House Museum (2016)
Little Angels was a community arts and heritage project involving Haden Hill House Museum and a local primary school in Cradley Heath. Over one hundred children participated, for a children’s exhibition for the summer of 2016. With an initial research visit to the museum and inspired by the Heritage Lottery Fund project Best’s Angels, the children immersed themselves in the 1880s: imagining themselves meeting the twelve year old Alice and Emily; Mr Best’s adopted daughters. The children have created a variety of responses through many different artworks including drawings, photographs, sculptures, written stories, books and silent films. Their work featured in the exhibition— artworks by children, for children—where work was displayed at children’s eye-level. Consequently, children visiting Haden Hill House throughout the summer holidays, found an exhibition created specifically just for them.
Oomph! Festival – Wolverhampton Art Gallery (2011)
Exhibition of four exceptional photography projects made with young people involved in Black Country Creative Partnerships projects across the West Midlands between 2008-2011. The artists featured were Debi Keyte-Hartland, Becky Matthews, Jo Löki and Lisa Gunn. The work celebrated a broad range of photography work made collaborating with young people and was part of the Oomph! Festival at various venues across the West Midlands.
Forging Links – Haden Hill House Museum, Birmingham (2011)
A community arts and heritage project with Multistory, The Home of Metal festival & Sandwell Museums Services, Forging Links connected the ideas and experiences of different groups of young people living in Sandwell, who actively participated in a series of creative heritage workshops and activities over twelve months. The exhibition reflected the fascinating heritage and archives of Sandwell, and demonstrated the broad number of new activities and experiences, that participants engaged with throughout the project, including visits to heritage settings: blacksmiths’ workshops, Sandwell’s Community History & Archives Service and Wednesbury Museum and Art Gallery.The exhibition included audio interview recordings, abstract soundscapes, drawings, printmaking, oil paintings, photographs and films: all developed by participants in response to the archives and the interesting things they uncovered throughout the process. It revealed a side of Sandwell that young people rarely have the opportunity to explore and the exhibition is their experience co-curated by them for a public audience.
the younger artist 