Belonging Workshop with Travellers’ Tree CIC

In this free 2 hour workshop, come along and discuss ideas around home and belonging, while creating your own clay house using air-dry clay.

The session will be led by Sophia Moffa, of Traveller’s Tree CIC, who works providing cultural and integration opportunities for asylum seekers in the West Midlands.

For the project ‘From Soil, to Clay, to Home’ funded by AMAL Birmingham, they have spent two months working in co-production with participants from the asylum seeker community creating a ceramic installation made from clay houses.

They used clay made from local soil, and then fired the clay in the ground, using the Saggar technique, at the Digbeth Community Garden.

While being creative and learning new things, participants were also encouraged to share notions of home, place and belonging. They also visited different cultural organisations together to explore their collections and integrate asylum seekers in their local surroundings and communities.

Working with Collections Curator Julie Brown, the group have participated in the the Class&Identity embedding diversity strand of work at The New Art Gallery with our Collections Community Panel.

As well as exploring and selecting work for display from our Collections Store, they have installed the artwork they jointly created to offer visitors the opportunity to reflect on this limbo state they are experiencing, and the new homes they are having to create.

You will have an opportunity to view the artwork they have created on display as part of the workshop and talk to them about their experience of creating it.

Come and be part of the conversation, and create something meaningful together.