COLLECT, MAKE, REARRANGE
Early years programme, Henry Moore Studio & Gardens. Funded by Arts Council England. April – October 2026
Collect, Make, Rearrange was a series of six workshops commissioned by the Henry Moore Foundation and delivered at the Henry Moore Studio & Gardens, Hertfordshire, for their 2026 season.
The workshops invited young children and their adults to active Moore’s making process, which involved collecting natural objects, combining them together to make new sculptural forms, and moving them around to create new relationships.
Children’s inherent drives to collect objects and creatively transform them were given space, resources and permission. This approach does not only seek to inform participants about Moore’s practice, but expand our existing understanding of it by exploring overlaps between sculptural making and children’s material encounters. Children needed little instruction to begin tracing the process, which was presented as an open-ended invitation.
I fabricated wooden display mechanisms which referenced Moore’s Bourne Maquette Studio. This was a place where he stored his collection of natural objects, joined them together and moved them around to inspire new forms for sculpture. The colours are informed by both Moore’s use of colour in his 2D works, as well as the carpets in Hoglands, the Moore’s family home. They are a means of scaffolding the critical importance of children’s creative contributions.
The workshops were the result of a long term collaborative practice with my daughter, when she was aged between 3 and 5. This began with our participation in the MOTHRA Artist-Parent residency in Toronto, Canada in summer 2025 where we began to experiment with collecting as a collaborative practice. This was then developed with research trips to the Henry Moore Studio & Gardens, and research in the Henry Moore archives. My daughter was a participant in some of the workshops, and her input is woven throughout the project.
