In summer 2024, I was invited to contribute to the week-long Summer Art School Sensing Sculpture at Hauser & Wirth Somerset, working closely with the gallery’s learning team. Designed for 11–14 year-olds, the programme explored sculpture through embodied making, touch, and sensory perception, with an emphasis on process, experimentation, and site-responsive work.

The sessions took inspiration from Phyllida Barlow. unscripted, encouraging young people to engage with sculpture beyond the visual—to think about how form is felt, navigated, and understood through the body. Rooted in my ongoing material-led and ecologically conscious practice, the workshop invited participants to expand their understanding of sculpture by engaging directly with the non-human world.

Rather than beginning with fixed outcomes, we explored the possibilities of reciprocity with place—thinking about what it means to make with the environment, not just in it. Each session centred on tactile encounters with material and landscape, from gathering natural elements and native clays to sculpting forms that responded to the site’s textures, tones, and rhythms.

I encouraged participants to slow down, to listen, and to notice—to work in dialogue with what they found, rather than impose their ideas on it. We talked about care, attention, and responsibility as artistic strategies. Some materials were foraged and returned; others became part of ephemeral, collaborative sculptures that shifted throughout the week.

Together, we questioned what sculpture is, who or what it serves, and how we might build relationships with our surroundings through making. The group installation that emerged from our sessions—displayed in the Oudolf Field—was not a final product, but a living trace of connection, exploration, and embodied learning.

This workshop reflects the heart of my practice: making as a means of communication between self, site, and material. Working with young people in this context reaffirmed my belief that sculpture can be a gentle, powerful way to understand and honour the more-than-human world.