Imagining Life Underground

We can’t stop thinking about last week’s clay workshops with Ellie Towers!

Over two days young families were busy making their own underground creatures with colourful air dry clay. We thought about our creatures and where they live, what they eat, and each wrote a letter of our favourite memories to feed back to the soil for the creatures to keep safe.

We also got to dig around in a big pile of soil, discovering what was hidden underneath - shiny clay worms, colourful beetle heads and wings. As our hands dug around, we also discovered the reverberant and strange echoes that the soil made. 

This workshop was inspired by a sound piece by DARCH created for Liverpool Biennial. DARCH is the collective practice of Umulkhayr Mohamed and Radha Patel. Halfway through the workshop, the group got to go and listen to this sound piece that we were the commissioning partner for, displayed in Crosby Library (and FACT Liverpool).

It was so great to see families get involved, get their hands dirty, and to hear the intricate backstories of each of the creatures. Thank you to Ellie for sharing her knowledge and building a workshop where our imaginations could run wild, and to Sara Wolff for creating the installation of sounds hidden underneath. 

Ellie Towers is a Liverpool based artist who collages hand sculpted, painted and drawn elements into 3D environments, creating fictional, digital and physical spaces. Using a mixture of fantasy and personal reference, her artworks include narrative-based films, interactive props and explorable installations with various imagined landscapes. Ellie often works collaboratively with other artists and young people, hoping to provoke a thoughtful outlook on world building and community.