Hart School: Workshop with Katherine Smith

After months of planning, fundraising and organising, we are so proud to welcome our six students and our faculty team to Hart School! This week we explored the theme of ‘play‘ with guest lecturer Katherine Smith. Throughout the week the gallery was transformed into a multi sensory  wonderland with sculptures of found objects emerging from the window space and cut-out collages filling the walls.

To begin the week students made collages using recycled magazines and papers as well as combining their own drawings styles. The collages then came to live with the introduction of 3-d objects and the students explored how materials interact with their own bodies and the gallery space. We continued to learn about new materials with a monoprinting workshop lead by James Randell, our students transformed their drawings and collage ideas into printed editions.

I loved working with Hart School, this warm, inclusive space that focuses on connection and care. This really suits my practice which has play and inclusivity at its core. As a group, in the first week we worked through how to facilitate play for ourselves and each other, how to create together, how to be in contact with our bodies and materials in the same space. I felt really happy to work at Hart School as part of this active artist community of care.

My work is a playful investigation into how to connect to the body, using materials as an interface. Through play with materials I develop a body-led, sensory language. In this way I support myself, and connect with others, in an experience of touch and sensation. With hospitals / community centres, I collaborate with groups / individuals to co-create inclusive play spaces that prioritise sensation / embodiment / choice-making, and consequently the development of each individual’s embodied sensory language. 

Hart School is a 3 month Arts programme that is designed to be free, inclusive and accessible. This opportunity is open to adults of all ages and prioritises those who are typically excluded from similar opportunities due to financial barriers and lack of specialised support for disabled artists. Hart School is an intensive summer school where students and teachers work in a radically inclusive, non-hierarchical, collaborative learning environment that supports participants to develop confidence in their creative practice.

We provide highly specialised and supported learning with a ratio of one facilitator per two learners. With a superstar team of educators and industry professionals, students are guided through demonstrations, talks, studio visits and weekly meetings with an Art Therapist.

This is art school – with a difference! One that focuses on enabling and empowering some of the most creative but marginalised people in our society.