Across the Spring and Summer terms in 2026, I worked alongside with the Generation Hull Arts Council in Malet Lambert school to co-create an exciting new youth-led project.
Generation Hull is Hull’s youth-led LCEP, and the schools Arts Council consists of young people with an interest in the arts. After considering a number of local artists, they chose to commission me to co-produce an ambitious, public-facing project with them. Through 11 lunchtime and after-school sessions, we worked on our co-created brief:
“We will work together to create a colourful, story-filled art installation made entirely from paper and cardboard. The installation will show a group of magical animal-inspired or elemental creatures, gathered together in a shared world, taking part in a mysterious ritual. We will explore the identified themes through drawing, sketchbooking, printing, storytelling, costume-making, mask-making and large-scale / theatrical collaborative artwork. We’ll help bring it all together visually by using a limited colour palette and material (paper and cardboard) – this is important as it will help the installation feel intentional, imaginative, and well-designed”.
At the heart of the installation is a shared act of hopeful imagination: together, we created a parallel world inhabited by strange, compassionate Beings who gather beneath a vast Heart Tree. Connected between worlds through unseen roots, the Tree responds when an imbalance is felt in our universe – serving as a call to action for the Beings in their world. This installation sees them coming together to conduct a ceremony/ritual, to help bring back balance to our world.
Each Being carries traces of its maker, incorporating fragments of individual identity, emotion, resilience and hope. Together, these characters form a mythology created from the pupils’ own ideas and voices. The resulting installation becomes both an imagined ecosystem and a reflection on what it means to belong: how difference can be held with compassion, how communities can respond to one another, and how acceptance might become something active rather than simply an idea.
We co-wrote the story – read out HERE – and supported the exhibition with a ‘story-zine’, which explained the story, the characters, and served as an exhibition guide by mapping out which creature was where in the installation.
We also partnered with papermakers GF Smith, Hull Libraries and The Big Malarkey to produce the work. The installation was exhibited at Hull Central Library between 18 June and 31 July 2026, with additional zines shared at The Big Malarkey Festival in East Park.
