PLANTING SEEDS FOR CHANGE

The Wishing Tree Project, named “Planting Seeds for Change”, was a collaborative effort between The Lowry, Salford CVS family hubs, and Salford council. The aim was to create an art installation that would travel around thirteen Manchester community hubs, engaging with children, young people, and families to write their wishes and post them into a post box as part of the art installation. The installation was designed to be colourful, welcoming, and interactive to make families feel safe to engage.

The project’s questions were designed in consultation with staff from The Lowry and the Salford Family Partnership. Experts working in Salford within established organisations collaborated to design the questions. The questions were open-ended, expediting comprehensive and reflective feedback. The questions were: What do you wish to access for your family? What do you wish to improve for your family? What do you wish to share with other families?

To understand what parents wanted the outcomes of the touring installation to be, I hosted focused groups. The main feedback was that the installation should be colourful and sustainable. I delivered immersion arts and crafts activities at the community centres to increase engagement with the art installation.

After the installation had toured all the community centres, I designed an art installation focused on the outcomes. The installation was colourful and impactful, highlighting the four main outcomes: better health and well-being, access to creative activities, access to sports, and safe outdoor spaces. I created four large flowers, bold, and impactful to highlight the councillor’s areas that needed improvement. On the exhibition day, I asked leaders to make suggestions on how they could help improve their organisations and areas of the key areas.

“I created a colourful wooden tree that is now a permanent structure in The Lowry. The tree has wishes hanging from its branches, and I designed it to include a permanent post box so that the project can continue to collect wishes to improve the community areas.”

I am extremely passionate about working on meaningful art campaigns that aim to uplift and inspire people. If you have any such project in mind that requires collaboration, I would be more than happy to get involved. Get in touch and let us together create something truly amazing and impactful.