Nursery Row Park goes rural - Re-imagine Your Elephant workshop

Re-imagine Your Elephant took place again last weekend at Nursery Row Park for their 'Nursery Row Park goes Rural' Annual Festival. Again it went down well, despite the vegetables withering (along with everyone else) in the heat. 

Peppers became palaces, Elephant's 'castle' was made with a cabbage leave roof and carrot turrets, and cucumbers, cauliflowers and leeks were sculpted into an alternative South London skyline.

Eleanor Shipman

PLAY SWAP

PLAY SWAP: Summer sessions - meet at 3.45pm every Thursday at Pembroke House

PLAY SWAP: Drop in to start Thursday 10th May

Street Game Collection: PART 1

Street games collected from local residents, clients of Pembroke House and the stallholders of East Street Market. A brilliant range of exciting games from around the world, from India to Wales to War-time London, from older people to children currently playing in Elephant and Castle, with similarities and adaptations evolving along the way. These games will be the inspiration behind the upcoming PLAY SWAP drop in sessions, due to start next Thursday from 2.30 - 5.30pm.

Exciting times ahead!

Pembroke People

Eleanor Shipman

Get the Message Training Weekend - Camden Arts Centre

The weekend was spent submerged with 15 other selected artists in fascinating debate around socially-engaged art, public projects, community-based workshops and educational events. The weekend's focus was centred around Get the Message, an educational outreach programme at Camden Arts Centre. Get the Message is a collaboration with students from three Special Educational Needs schools in the local area who have multiple and complex learning disabilities.


Artists Natasha Kidd, Raine Smith and Jo Addison are mentors for Get the Message, and have been involved with the programme for 7 years, with the last three as mentors to artists Georgie Manly and Judith Brocklehurst. 


The weekend was spent dissecting socially-engaged practice, analysing and discussing what we found before reassembling the parts in the form of collaborative workshops which responded to Zoe Leonard's current exhibition at CAC Observation Point. 


The challenges and discussions which arose were reassuringly shared and it felt that, as a group of freelance artists, we all cherished the opportunity to openly raise our concerns, opinions, challenges and successes. The energy in the room was almost audibly buzzing, as we bounced ideas off each other and responded to our briefings from Natasha, Raine and Jo with a positivity and enthusiasm which can only come about through shared passion. 


It was a fantastic weekend, and I have returned full of fresh ideas and renewed confidence in existing ones. A brilliant two days in Camden.


Read more about Get the Message here.

Clotted cream chaos.

The mysterious St George was celebrated today, in the first event here at Pembroke House. Vast quantities of scones were baked, cream was whipped (a joint effort of about four people) and dragons were slain.

Local resident Ken and his children braved the drizzle to attend the Dragon pinata-making workshop, joined later by two members of the Pembroke Youth Group.

Wanting to avoid papier-mache as much as possible, I devised a dragon template using origami balloons as the base, handily with a hole in the top to pour the sweets in. The children were fantastic, and fuelled with scones were kept entertained by the dragons for two hours solid. The slaying was certainly the best part, with floats (pound store find!) used as batons to beat, spear and smack the dragons to their deaths. I hope St George would be honoured.

And they were slain...

Pembroke People

Eleanor Shipman