Projects

Fragile Lands was a Towner-led programme, as part of our wider collaboration with De La Warr Pavilion (DLWP), working together to deliver holiday activities for families across the 2022 - 2023 academic year. We collaborated to deliver an artistic programme for four artists to develop their socially engaged practice across East Sussex.

In October (2022), February, April and May (2023), artists Laura Ribbons and Lucie MacGregor designed, developed and led intergenerational workshops responding to their socially engaged creative practice, Towner’s Collection and Eastbourne's natural landscape and its unique vulnerability to enviromental changes.

Laura and Lucie developed activities and installations that tested the boundaries of our new studio spaces. Full-space takeovers with an inclusive approach to materials and tools opened up new possibilities of creative engagement, enabling rich intergenerational creativity and conversation, facilitated by the artists open ended activities and approach.

Spanning paper pulping, ice mark-making, blending, performance, dyes made from soil, coffee grounds and beetroot, natural chalk and charcoal and a Materials Library including sheep wool, herbs, water, shells, drfitwood, lavender that encouraged audiences to explore the natural resouces of East Sussex and reflect on the fragilty and care of our landscape.

De La Warr Pavillion Collaboration

Laura and Lucie collaborated with DLWP artists Hannah Collinsson and Harry McMorrow to explore wider themes including environmental concerns, queer and trans intimacies, anti-racist practices and migration.

All artists will be supported by regular practice development sessions with teams across DLWP and Towner.

Please visit our What's On page for information on upcoming Families workshops.

Towner Eastbourne:

Lucie MacGregor is a multi-disciplinary artist, whose making spans the collective gesture as a notion to stir mindful collaboration, to facilitate social change and to consider conversation as creative material. Drawn towards recycling materials connected to her personal geographies, paper pulp has become a therapeutic and playful process for her to question the blurriness between drawing and sculpture. Lucie is currently facilitating workshops with young people at Camden Arts Centre, Drawing Room London and recent exhibitions include make 2022 at Freelands Foundation, a collaborative commission with The Children’s Art School in Kirklees and Deptford X Festival 2021.

(@lu__say) • Instagram photos and videos

Laura Ribbons is an artist, curator, educator and environmentalist. She graduated from Wimbledon College of Art in 2012 and also holds a Masters degreein environmental anthropology. She has exhibited across the UK and internationally, including in Spain, where she lived between 2018-2019. By exploring her fascination with plants and the ways in which we coexist with them, her bold, mixed-media paintings celebrate the resilience of plants and represent a desire to find solace and resolution in nature against the backdrop of the climate crisis. In 2022 Laura worked with Watts Gallery to co-create an outreach project around sustainability and this summer took part in Towner’s Open Plan residency. She currently lives and works in Hastings.

Laura Ribbons (@laura.ribbons) • Instagram photos and videos

De La Warr Pavillion:

Hannah Collisson is a multi-disciplinary artist, facilitator, and musician based in St Leonards on Sea. Her work spans theatre, performance, poetry, music and photography. With a background in journalism, storytelling is a common thread running throughout Hannah’s work. She is fascinated by place making and stories told and untold. Hannah is a director of ExploreTheArch, a company which develops experiential theatre, site specific installations and community projects, and a director of Lifesize, a community arts CIC. She is a member of Babes in Arms [September 2022 - January 2023], a collective of artist mothers, currently exhibiting at DLWP.

Hannah Collisson (@hannahcollisson) • Instagram photos and videos

Harry McMorrow, (BA) is a non-binary queer artist living in St Leonards on Sea. They create tufted wall rugs usually focused around specific iconography and trends from the past. They are currently working on their first solo show, Come As You Are, which will be showing at Big Yin Gallery from November 4th. As well as being a practicing artist they are studying for their postgrad cert in education at University of Brighton. When not training to teach, or making art, they run a queer club night, Club FliQ.

Harry McMorrow (@harrymcmorrow_artist) • Instagram photos and videos

This project is supported by The Arts Society