Den!, 2024Mixed media
Camden Arts Centre
© Hydar Dewachi
Den! was a year-long project by artists Lucie Macgregor, Tom James and Declan Leslie in collaboration with pupils from Swiss Cottage School and The Village School that takes us between the gallery and the garden to explore themes of shelter, waste and abundance.
Over a year of workshops, artists and participants have worked with materials found and foraged from Camden Art Centre in movement with the seasons: from the natural abundance of materials found in the garden (berries, branches, leaves and flowers), to the human-made abundance of items found in the Centre’s bins and on the kerbs of local streets (scrap wood, mop handles, electrical cables and laundry bags).
These abundant, abandoned and obsolete resources have been repurposed through processes such as burning twigs to make charcoal, breaking apart and felting wool, smushing berries to make ink.
Finally, the group has combined these tools and materials to build a series of dens of increasing scale, built through a new language of intuitive construction and playful decoration, with decision making led by a sense of play. The process has culminated in two dens - one room-scale den in the Drawing Room, and a second, wheelchair accessible den in the trees behind the cafe.
Welcome to our den. Come in, take shelter, make yourself at home.
The programme is delivered in partnership with ActionSpace.
Supported by the Kusuma Trust.
Pulley system showcasing the young peoples artworks, this pulley was an important device used in workshops in which the students sent messages between each other in the garden (between the accesible cafe patio and higher up grass section).
Visitors were encouraged to come in to the den, touch and draw as guided by BSL signage. The invitation to enter a space that welcomes and celebrates curiosity was also guided by the workshop groups experience of spending time outdoors in different weather types. Questioning what components an outdoor space needs to offer an inclusive and safe experience, recurring visits to the garden and encountering the spectrum of weather types meant an appropriate outdoor den could be made. A ramp was built outside to make sure the den was accesible to all and included a drawing station in which charcoal made during the workshops could be used and the den drawings could continue beyond the in schools sessions.
The outdoor den with it’s first visitors from the school groups during the celebration day - the opening day of the exhibition.