For a week in February, we arranged for a number of design students from St Helens College to deliver a weeks print making residency course at the Foundry Warf in the town centra of St Helens, apartment with extra care for the over 55’s, run by Torus Housing. The students were supported by their tutor Mark and we managed to bring in a RISO copying machine for the week to support the workshop.

One of the aims for the students was to gain hands on experience of delivering community based workshops and encourage younger/older collaboration with the residents of Foundry Warf.

The week was structured around some initial set up, planning and test days, with more formal drop in sessions organised for Wednesday and Friday afternoons.

Mark brought along a couple of typewriters to help collect stories that participants could then add to their artwork. We provided a lot of pre-copied archive material already collected and encouraged residents to bring their own memorabilia to play with. Once they had created a print collage, this was then printed up using a two colour process with the RISO copier. Sometimes, using this two colour process we were able to mix combine the work of two people, creating a collaborative piece of artwork.

We had some great feedback from the residents at the end of the week, a sample of which is below.

“I enjoyed the artwork shop. It was a chance to experiment with crafts I have never done before and exchange ideas with friends. Very creative.”

“Delighted to have spent time on two occasions doing different things than we would normally do, spending time using painting and collage with old images and deciding what to do.”

“Had a really good time doing collage and the learners were brill and very helpful, and how to work with them again.”