Little Legends

The Little Legends residency was an exploration of the stories of Newark & Sherwood, past and present. Inspired by artefacts, collections, buildings and heritage sites across the District. I worked collaboratively alongside community members to learn of local stories and their own tales to gather and collect these and curate them into a ‘book as exhibition’ style artwork.

Throughout the residency I designed activities for visitors, both in the studio and out in the community. Allowing for creative expression, where visitors could explore stories and capture them in watercolour, inks, crayons and coloured pencils. Materials designed to evoke a sense of childhood play and creativity.

I worked with the Museum curators to explore the National Civil War Centre collections, finding artefacts that I felt were rich with stories. I found opportunities for creative play with these objects and created false histories. With thanks to visitors to the space I melded imaginative ideas of each objects’ past and wrote short form texts in the style of museum interpretation.

The final outcome of this project was ‘Little Legends’ a book of collected stories, poems and manifestoes gathered by me, with some texts I have written. ‘Little Legends’ can be read both as a document of the research and writing of this residency and for simply enjoying the texts.

To get your hands on ‘Little Legends’, a lending copy will be available to visitors of The National Civil War Centre in the near future. An online version will also be coming soon.

Thank you to all the participants who collaborated on Little Legends. Your energy, dedication and creativity has been incredibly generous and exciting to witness.