Sadie Edginton

Sadie Edginton is an artist, educator, researcher and organiser with a focus on socially-engaged practice. Through working with other people, she creates projects where the process and methods for working together are often just as important as what is created at the end. Taking the local site and context as a starting point, the projects explore the relationships between the collaborators, their environment and locality.

[sadieedginton]

Woodwork Play Workshop!

Last May 2025 I created a woodwork play workshop for children aged 5+ and their families.

The rules were, just nails, pre-cut wooden pieces and mini kids hammers. It went down really well, a lot of children came and it was packed out! Lots of small and imaginative wooden creations were made such as planes, furniture, a pencil and a lollipop.

The blurb was: Join us for a fun woodwork play morning at the farm next week! 🔨 Wednesday 28th May 10:30am to 12:00. Get creative with wood! Make a scrap sculpture or an object for an animal at the farm. We'll be using children's tools, nails and offcuts of wood. A drop-in workshop for children aged 5+, no need to book.

[sadieedginton]

Woodwork Play Workshop!

May 2025 for children aged 5+

The blurb was: Join us for a fun woodwork play morning at the farm next week! 🔨 Wednesday 28th May 10:30am to 12:00. Get creative with wood! Make a scrap sculpture or an object for an animal at the farm. We'll be using children's tools, nails and offcuts of wood. A drop-in workshop for children aged 5+, no need to book.

[sadieedginton]

Wildflower Zine workshop for 5-12 yr olds

Last May 2025 at Spitalfields City Farm I created a workshop for families in the May half term holidays. Children could use lots of different techniques to make their own wildflower zine. We did Hapa zome (translating to "leaf dye" in Japanese, where you get a print from the natural pigments), Leaf printing with black ink, cyanotype, collage and using pens and real plants!

It worked well to create a space with lots of options where children could make their own mini booklets and collect their images and design it themselves!

[sadieedginton]

Wildflower Zine workshop for 5-12 yr olds

May 2025 at Spitalfields City Farm

[sadieedginton]

Mosaic project at Spitalfields City Farm, Summer 2025

I had a brilliant time creating a mosaic project for children and families at Spitalfields City Farm last summer, during my role there as part of the Education team.

Inspiration was the shapes and patterns inside fruit, vegetables and seeds, found on the farm at that time, which included tomatoes, figs, dried poppies and other seeds.

I used waste tiles donated to the farm, and prepared them, breaking into sections and dividing into colours. We used tile adhesive to stick them on, using gloves to be safe. And I grouted them after they'd dried for a while, in a waterproof outdoor Mapei Terracotta colour called 'Terra di Siena'. Which created a lovely contrasting colour and ended up looking like clay.

They were installed in the wildlife area which used to be called the 'Forest School area' of the farm on the fence and looked super great!

[sadieedginton]

I had a brilliant time creating a mosaic project for children and families at Spitalfields City Farm last summer, during my role there as part of the Education team.

Inspiration was the shapes and patterns inside fruit, vegetables and seeds, found on the farm at that time, which included tomatoes, figs, dried poppies and other seeds.

I used waste tiles donated to the farm, and prepared them, breaking into sections and dividing into colours. We used tile adhesive to stick them on, using gloves to be safe. And I grouted them after they'd dried for a while, in a waterproof outdoor Mapei Terracotta colour called 'Terra di Siena'. Which created a lovely contrasting colour and ended up looking like clay.

They were installed in the wildlife area which used to be called the 'Forest School area' of the farm on the fence and looked super great!

[sadieedginton]

Sharing practice: A Social Practice Group workshop for Royal College of Art masters students 2024

Ran a really fun workshop yesterday at @royalcollegeofart Kensington site with Co-artist educator facilitator @colourcollider for masters students from across college. Thanks for being such thoughtful and curious participants! Was really fun to plan this together with @colourcollider and think through more fun techniques to A) firstly discuss what is social practice? What questions, thoughts and issues are we thinking about? Then B) focusing on our own practices- what we’re aiming for through social practice and what we’d like to develop. We tried out lots of chatting in small groups, writing key words about our practice on us as a conversation starter and more visible way to share, but also as a student commented, we’d discussed other issues first before being summarised by the key words. Felt performative, fun, active and exciting. Would be a great start to an ongoing enquiry into different areas.. was also the end to the year but students commented it would have been useful at the start as well.. let’s see what follows on from this. Great to meet you all! Great to meet students running projects @sustainlabrca @campervan_collective

[sadieedginton]

Botanical Workshops with Nursery, Reception and Year 1, Gayhurst Primary School, with Claire Ward-Thorton, Art Hoppers

I assisted Claire with a series of workshops across the youngest year groups this term. We worked with a series of techniques with plants, looking at cyanotype sun printing, leaf printing, plant dissection and botanical drawing and painting, flower pressing and more! It was really fun and interesting working with the little ones on these small tiny considered processes, closely looking and observing plants.

All the artworks culminated in an exhibition showcasing the artwork as well as Claires painstaking attention to detail, through creating a faux science lab with plant IDs and botanical drawings sheets, a lab coat with printed leaf patterns and other artworks. The show is called 'Metamorphosis' and still on show at Gayhurst Primary until September 2024.

[sadieedginton]

Art Hoppers workshops in schools, Gayhurst Primary 2024

I did a lot of workshops with Art Hoppers this year, with Gayhurst Primary School in Hackney. I assisted Claire Ward Thornton with an incredible project, creating botanical artworks in the Tag Art gallery in the playground.

[sadieedginton]

Granville Play Area 2024 for Granville Community Garden and Granville Wellbeing Centre, commissioned Play Build Play.

Last week I finished working on this fantastic project with Eva Freeman from Play Build Play. We worked for a few months to make a disused and overgrown playground more friendly, colourful and accessible for local community groups to use.

Eva and friends built a huge shed, I painted it blue with volunteers and decorated with cutout plywood painted shapes and Eva made flags which we attached! We engaged the community in flag making workshops at the garden and at the food kitchen, where people cut out shapes to add to flags, and we worked with local teenagers and a young family who helped us paint the shed and wooden shapes.

I built a 21 metre long picket fence with volunteers and assistance from Sophie Johnson and created blackboard shapes for children to draw on!

We made a log lined flowerbed for the children and Eva designed and created a set of loose parts play equipment. We constructed tables and benches designed by Eva as well with the help of Toby Tobias Kidd and Sophie Johnson.

Thanks to everyone who helped out and got stuck in! Thanks to Good Gym and Granville community kitchen volunteers who also helped us clear up the site a bit

[sadieedginton]

I plan, design and lead workshops for schools, art organisations and universities. Get in touch if you'd like to chat about a workshop idea.

My expertise is centered around these areas but open to suggestions:

Collaboration and team-work

Developing creativity

Developing playful, experimental open-ended art processes in most mediums

Developing individual and group visual art practice

Exploring decision-making and co-design methods

Outdoor, nature and garden projects

Mosaic, outdoor wooden sign painting, insect hotels

Planting seeds and flowers

Children's workshops about recycling, nature, pollination, seed planting, making recycled mini planters, working with natural materials, leaf printing

3D making, DIY engineering, sculpture

Developing groups, starting a your own art school!

Recent workshops have been:

With the London Transport Museum for Year 3 children: I planned and led a series of three workshops, co-working with facilitator Lauren Grierson. They were about introducing children to ideas for sustainable transport, whilst developing stem & '21st Century' skills, collaboration, creativity, empathy and team-work. Through my sculpture background I was interested to develop making skills, so we invented our own balloon vehicles and created large collaborative maps of local parks, using paper engineering to make solutions to sustainability problems.

For BEAF Arts Co at TOSH (The Old School House) in Boscombe, Bournemouth: I did a public talk about planning collaborative and co-design workshops with vulnerable people. The next day I led a one day workshop about developing collaborative workshops! We

A six month project of 10 workshops to create a memory garden project for The Kingsley and The Royal Academy Of Art (2023). I developed 10 workshops leading the adults through a process of developing art practice, collaborative work and then outdoor art skills, to create mosaics, painted art boards and a flower bed area. See more on my tumblr site here. Previous Projects:

For White Cross Street Party, the Plant Procession, I led a series of workshops with three groups of children, in the engagement with the 'mobile pollinators' for the festival. I also created an area at the festival and led two days of drop-in family activities with Bryony James at the festival Ecological Commons area on White Cross Street in Islington. (July 2022)

I developed a women's art group for Culpeper Community Garden and we met up weekly, having a cup of tea, a chat and doing different art activities. The first 10 sessions were about sensory approaches to the garden using charcoal, drawing and collage. We developed long fabric prints using the leaf printing method. Next we worked on round mosaic bird-baths or stepping stones into terracota dishes. The group really benefited from the regular meet-up. They were a group for vulnerable women with mental health issues, who faced isolation due to the pandemic. Culpeper Community Garden 2022

'Sculpture around you' was four days of workshop sessions spread across two weeks for Art UK and Accumulate (sometimes called the art school for the homeless). The participants were eight young adults who were a mixture of refugees and homeless people living in temporary accommodation. The workshops were delivered at BBC Broadcasting House and Autograph Gallery, and a final exhibition was held at Autograph of the sculptures. (2019)

IMAGE Sculpture around you'. A final work by Frank. The project asked 'What does broadcasting and the media mean to young people?' (2019)

Sunday family workshop, Pump House Gallery, Battersea Park, as part of the 'Public Routes' project with Alex Parry (2019)

Sunday family workshop, Pump House Gallery, Battersea Park, as part of the 'Public Routes' project with Alex Parry (2019)

I spent 6 months working with three Secondary Schools and created an exhibition in the gallery at the end. We developed object, performance and animation work around the school grounds. A Saatchi Education project (2017)

I led a playful chair-making workshop with children and families, at the Pump House Gallery as part of 'Public Routes' project, a collaboration with Alex Parry (2019)

[sadieedginton]

Journal Article: Structures within structures: Examining alternative cultures of learning in the institution (2021)

Sadie Edginton, Alex Parry, Cicilia Östholm

Abstract

This article explores the possibilities of using critical pedagogy inside and outside the art school to counter the effects of neoliberalism. Developed from an initial transcript of a conversation between three graduates of the Royal College of Art (United Kingdom) about our education-as-art projects, it takes the form of a constructed dialogue that mirrors our approach to working collectively. We discuss particular issues that arose for us whilst studying, as we experienced how the neo-liberal art school conceptualized a form of education and arts practice that promoted individualized paths and set competitive dynamics between students. We are interested in how art practices characterized as being social, collaborative and democratic can resist the neo-liberal art school. Advocating for process-based methods that facilitate learning between groups of students, we aim to open up space for embodied and situated knowledges. Bringing critical pedagogical approaches to the inside of the university creates a porosity with the alternatives we experienced outside. Through re-practicing historically radical methods and creating supportive structures, we challenge the dominant ways of communicating and managing the student-body. We argue that students and artists can organize their own cultures of learning in opposition to those that the university-as-business wants to promote, whilst creating supportive models that take students’ needs into account.

This article explores the possibilities of using critical pedagogy inside and outside the art school to counter the effects of neoliberalism

Edginton, S., Parry, A., & Östholm, C. (2021). Structures within structures: Examining alternative cultures of learning in the institution. Art & the Public Sphere, 10(2), 265-274. https://doi.org/10.1386/aps_00064_1

[sadieedginton]

Ongoing project... The Walking Listening Mapping project (started in 2022 with Arts Council DYCP funding for a research project titled: Mapping with People: Experiments with Collaborative Material'.

More info here.

[sadieedginton]

[sadieedginton]

The Kingsley Garden Project 2023.

For more info see here.

[sadieedginton]

Notes on making creative decisions with people in projects where discussion isn't the dominant form.

My big project of 2023 was the Memory garden 🌱with Kingsley Centre adults in collaboration with Royal Academy of Arts community Programme 2023. Thinking about co-design & collaboration, learning and being creative together, I’ve been reflecting a lot on methods that developed or I became aware of for involving people. A garden area created through developing art practice together, planting seeds, potting and making decisions. When I talked to a friend about the decision-making in the project it was interesting to map out how different ways of deciding or not deciding became kind of crucial to the project. What is the ‘Co’ part..?🌱sometimes this was making and doing creative things alongside each other, 🌱at the end when we had lots of processes at the go, layering of paint, sealant, materials, fixing, installation, it wasn’t clear whos work was who as each object had been worked on by at least 3 people, then it felt very dynamic and collaborative. We set up an outdoor workshop and we got into a flow. Things weren’t necessarily decided. Sometimes creative practice makes the decisions. 🌱We used sketchbooks / nature journals that were also shared, to develop practice.. then the shapes and patterns informed the outdoor wooden shapes in the garden. Transferring artwork to materials that endure outside was also a major thing to learn about & took a lot of research! 🌱we tried using voting to choose people’s preferred arch designs or roses, but often was flawed as particular designs weren’t available. 🌱when discussion and speech isn’t necessarily going to be the main form of decision-making then what other ways can people be involved? 🌱 Doing things creatively and deciding by doing in the moment. 🌱Using small scale models & materials to try out mini versions for designing larger things. 🌱Connecting lots of ideas into one larger work. 🌱Instead of group discussions, use questions and prompts to have smaller one to one conversations. 🌱Record words, thoughts, memories, and sketch recollections. I’d be super interested to hear about others techniques too! 👂

[sadieedginton]

Over six months in 2023 I worked on a lovely project with the Kingsley Centre and the Royal Academy of Arts communities programme. The Kingsley Centre supports disabled adults and 'provides opportunities for personal development, education, training and independence', in North Hampshire. Every two weeks we travelled to the Kingsley.

Through 10 day-long sessions we gradually built up individual & group art practice processes in nature art journals and through clay, and created a memory area of the garden together. And used recycled tile mosaic and creating painted wooden shapes, based on participants collages, planted seeds and potting up plants and planters. We all worked together exploring different processes for collaborating, co-designing and co-making alongside each other. Using the outside world as a starting point, we asked questions about out memories and sensory experiences of being outdoors, we thought about how we can support more wildlife, and chose nectar-rich plants to thrive next year, creating butterfly & bee supporting flower beds.

The final garden should be seen as a starting point, and each component, each painted piece of wood, and mosaic was worked on through many processes by many people. This layering of collaborative art-making processes produced an all-over cohesive colourful and playful garden design, that was created by everyone's input, including 7 support workers, two RA staff, and 20 adults participants. The project felt truly collaborative in the final month when we set up large tables in the October sunshine and worked across different stages of many parts of the project together. We will return this year in 2024 to see how the plants grow up and all the insects that will come along!