Explore how artist publications can be conceived, designed and produced with awareness of sensory sensitivity and visual impairment, expanding on ideas of access, care and readability.

This two-hour workshop will focus on how visual, tactile and material choices in print affect perception and experience.

Participants will consider how factors such as printing method, language, colour, paper choice, binding and sequencing, can either exclude or invite different ways of seeing and reading. Rather than treating access as an afterthought, this workshop encourages participants to integrate sensory awareness as an essential part of their publishing practice.

Through discussion and examining a variety of artist publications, this workshop will address both practical and ethical questions around accessibility in print, including working with visual impairment, neurodiversity and sensory overwhelm. Participants will explore how thoughtful design and print decisions can deepen intimacy, encourage slow reading, and create alternative modes of engagement without compromising artistic intention.

This new experimental and interactive workshop invites participants to think about a printed project, not as a fixed visual outcome, but as a multisensory, relational object-turned-space, shaped by care, attention and visibility.

Originally conceptualised as an optional add-on module to Creatives in Publishing: Binding a Path to Being Published and Self-Publishing, this workshop with artist Johanna Tagada Hoffbeck, is suitable for artists and writers at all stages who want to make more intentional, informed and playful decisions when preparing work for publication.

Participants are encouraged to bring questions, works-in-progress or ideas they are developing.

An organic herbal tea break will be provided.

The Artist Images

The Artist

Johanna Tagada Hoffbeck (b. 1990, France) is a transdisciplinary artist based in rural Oxfordshire. Her practice, rooted in ecological awareness, spans painting, sculpture, photography, publishing, horticulture, and participatory projects.

Johanna founded the independent, artist-led imprint Poetic Pastel Press in 2015, perhaps best known for its printed publication series Journal du Thé: Contemporary Tea Culture, which she co-founded in 2018. The deep ecology movement influences the imprint, with works printed in England using vegetable-based inks and distributed in over thirty countries. Poetic Pastel Press has participated in notable international book fairs, including Offprint in London and the Tokyo Art Book Fair. Johanna has also led and participated in talks on artists in publishing at venues such as BOAN Books in Seoul.

International imprints, including InOtherWords (UK), Chose Commune (FR), Nieves (CH), Hat Press (UK), Jane & Jeremy (UK), Editions Ulmer (FR), Ao-hata (JP), and Tombolo Presses (FR), have released publications on her practice. Her latest photography book, Please Take Your Shoes Off and Come In, has been edited and published by Pon Ding (TW).

Johanna’s work expresses care and tenderness, reflecting on the fragility and beauty of life. Recent solo exhibitions include Dreaming About Tomorrow at Nidi Gallery, Tokyo (2022). Group exhibitions include Soil at Somerset House, London (2025), The Equal Right to Live and Blossom at Kate MacGarry, London (2024), One Foot in the Sky at Contemporary Sculpture Fulmer, UK (2023), and Edge Effects at Whitechapel Gallery, London (2024).

In addition, Johanna founded the collaborative initiative The Gardening Drawing Club. She has organised and facilitated workshops and learning programs for adults and children at multiple British art institutions, including Camden Art Centre.