Join Sana Burney for a participatory workshop exploring place, memory and belonging. Sana is developing a new piece of art for North Shields’ Lowe! festival of art. This workshop will bring residents of North Shields closer to the artist and the work that is being developed.
What will happen in the workshop?
The workshop is part of the creative research for my public artwork, Signals of Belonging, being developed for Lowe! art weekend in North Shields.
I will begin by introducing myself, the project, and the idea of belonging at the centre of the work. Participants will be invited to think about what belonging means to them, both in relation to North Shields and more broadly.
I will use a series of simple prompts to encourage participants to think about their relationship with place. These might include questions about memories, family or historical associations, objects, images, traditions, places, architectural details or everyday things that they connect with North Shields or with a sense of belonging.
Participants will be able to respond through writing, drawing or conversation. If someone prefers to respond verbally, I can take written notes from our conversation rather than asking them to write.
Following this, I will introduce a simple pattern-making activity. Participants will select an object, image, shape or idea connected to their response and translate it into a simple visual motif. Using paper or graph paper, they will then repeat and develop this motif into a pattern.
The activity gives participants a small-scale experience of the process I will later use in developing Signals of Belonging. At the end of the workshop, participants will have their own pattern to take away and can continue developing or adding colour to it afterwards if they wish.
How the participant input will be used
Participants’ personal memories or stories will not be reproduced literally or translated directly into identifiable visual representations. For example, if someone shares a particular personal experience, I will not simply illustrate that experience and place it within the artwork. Instead, I will interpret the material more broadly, looking for recurring ideas, associations, visual forms, relationships and ways of thinking about belonging that can contribute to the development of my own visual language.
Participants will keep any written or visual material they create or bring to the workshop. I may make my own notes about the ideas and conversations shared during the session, and I may photograph aspects of the workshop with participants’ permission. This documentation will form part of my creative research and help inform the development of the artwork. Participants’ names or other identifying personal information will not form part of the finished work.
The final artwork will therefore be my artistic interpretation of the research and the wider conversations generated through the workshop, rather than a direct representation of individual participants’ stories.
About the artist:
I am Sana Burney, an interdisciplinary visual artist based in Preston. My practice explores ideas around identity, place, memory, belonging and cultural experience.
I am currently developing Signals of Belonging, a site-responsive public artwork for North Shields. The project draws on the history and visual environment of North Shields, but because the work is concerned with belonging, I also want the experiences and perspectives of the local community to inform its development.
The memories, experiences, drawings, written responses and conversations shared during the workshop will therefore contribute to my creative research. They will help inform the themes, motifs and pattern language of the final work.