Process Makes Practice - Camden Art Centre

'Process Makes Practice' marks the culmination of a programme working with artists and young people based in our local area supported by The Mildred Fund.

Over the course of three years we ran long-term expansive programmes with seven artists, two schools and two community groups. Activities were based around embracing iterative creative processes without defined outcomes or expectations. The exhibition features installations, artworks and documentation alongside reflection on the projects from those involved.

Our partnership with Sidings Community Centre explored filmmaking, music and sculpture making in projects led by Shepherd Manyika. Lydia Paulett subsequently explored the groups sense of community and identity through film and print making.

Working with The Hive artist Sam Williams explored performance scores, temporary sculpture and physical and photographic interventions. Maymana Arefin led a series of workshops working with traditional weaving and tapestry processes to make individual and collective portraits. At Maria Fidelis Catholic School Sara Heywood worked with pupils to think differently about mark-making, Eva Jonas used photography, mapping and memory to build collective archives. We also collaborated with UCL Academy to using accessible and immediate approaches to making art, Nancy Allen worked with pupils at both schools to navigate the overlap of drawing and sculpture.

Process Makes Practice offers an insight into the work of artists at the forefront of engagement practice and the creativity of young people in Camden.

Partner Biographies Artist Biographies

Partner Biographies

Based on the Finchley Road The Hive is a free drop-in health and wellbeing service to support young people aged 16-24 who are connected to Camden.

Founded in 1983 Sidings Community Centre supports people in West Hampstead and Kilburn through a Food Hub, Youth Club, an Early Years Centre and more.

Artist Biographies

Maymana Arefin is a community organiser, artist and writer based in London. In 2020, Maymana founded @fungi.futures, a space to map radical alternative futures guided by her joy and passion for fungi. Through leading nature immersions, plant and fungi walks, her work focuses on deep rest and healing and restoring our communion with our non-human kin.

Nancy Allen was born in Cambridge in 1992. She graduated from Wimbledon College of Arts with a BA in Sculpture in 2014 and completed a Postgraduate Diploma in Fine Art at the Royal Academy Schools in 2023.She lives and works in London.

Shepherd Manyika is a London-based artist-educator whose works take on multiple formats and mediums. He is interested in memory, place, space and repair as forms of restoration, themes such as workshopping, play, music and sound are utilized in his practice to create transformative art spaces.

Sam Williams lives and works in London where he is a current resident at Somerset House Studios. Using a diverse range of media spanning moving-image, choreography, text and assemblage he develops bodies of work which de-centre the human, focusing on species entanglements, ecological systems, bodies-as-worlds and folk mythologies. Sam takes a holistic and collaborative approach to work making and is resistant to beginnings and endings. A significant aspect of his practice is the cross-disciplinary dialogue created through collaboration with a range of artistic and scientific practitioners; including dancers, natural historians and ecologists.

Sara Heywood (b.1971) is a British multidisciplinary artist based in London, UK. Her practice focuses on site responsive interventions where natural and manmade environments and materials converge and impact one another. Intrinsic to the work is an urgent dialogue between humans, heritage and environmental land legacy and their impact on the planet for future generations. Utilising photography, drawing, installation and sculpture, alongside found and natural materials, Heywood addresses our present-day relationship to the world around us, the legacy and imprints we leave behind, and the physical and emotional repercussions of a planet in climate crisis.

Lydia (aka Sylkysydney) is a creative youth worker and visual artist. Using art and creativity as tools for transformation, Lydia creates spaces for young people to make sense of themselves and the world around them, while bringing the cultural and social impact of youth work into public view.

Eva Jonas is a London-based visual artist and educator. Her practice invites viewers to reflect on our relationship with the natural world, recording where the body mediates how we experience, preserve, and perform within landscapes. Her projects lean on the processes of collecting and publishing. They are often informed by sculptural pieces and research ephemera, such as visual guides for creative crafts and outdoor activities. She draws on these instructional images to consider the extent to which engagement with the natural world is taught versus innate.