The Web We Weave

As part of my Creative Black Country Creative Communities commission, I led a three-part workshop exploring how we are connected to each other and the living world through a human web – a tangible way of seeing that no thread of life exists in isolation.

The physical web activity was a storytelling exercise. We sat in a circle, passing a ball of wool. Each person said their name and shared a story or lived experience about their connection to nature – trees, water, animals, people, place – holding their strand before passing it on. A web formed between us. If one person moves their strand, the whole web responds – a core ecological truth: what happens in one place affects everything else.

We added natural items (leaves, stones, seeds) and then, gently, man‑made objects like plastic. We observed how the web looked, felt, and shifted – showing that human actions become part of the same web as nature.

We photographed the wool web. Those photos guided the stages of the artwork , I collaborated with expert mural artist Daniel Evans (Ginger Dan) to help us recreate the physical web activity on canvas – a lasting record of our dialogue during the activity. Together, we guided participants in tracing, thickening, and building the web’s lines through drawing, collage and mark‑making and stenciling to keep the activities accessible and easy. The final canvas mural became a lasting record of how we are all connected to each other and to the world around us.