A weekend-long installation exploring the relationship between place, play, community and communication.
Developing through a year-long collaboration between pupils at Gladstone Park Primary School and artist Francesca Telling, together the children have been exploring their relationships with their immediate environments – including the classroom, the playground, the park next to their school, and the local area of Brent.
Using mapping, printmaking, collage, bookbinding, language and role-play, the children have shared their experiences of familiar places with each other, translating emotions and memories into collaborative objects and stories. Discovering the connections between their hometown and places much further away, the resulting artworks capture the pupils’ ideas for how we can communicate with each other across languages and distance. From kites that send messages to loved ones far away, to a collection of zines asking what would happen if children decided their school rules, this display presents a series of prompts which celebrate children’s roles in shaping the communities they are part of.
Encouraged to reimagine their environments through new instructions, wishes, dreams and possibilities, a library of tools has been created by the children to support confidence, imagination, worldbuilding, inclusion and listening. These tools will be showcased in a weekend-long installation before returning to the school to be borrowed and activated by the pupils during their playtimes.