(above) Re Imagine….. 2025
Working with artists and rural communities in Weardale to explore the Bowes’ Museum’s foumnding story, and opening visual dialogues between museums objects and participants lived experiences.
(above) DesignLab Nation / High Street, My Street 2025
DesignLab Nation is a national schools programme delivered by the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A)., bringing together secondary schools in partnership with regional museums, designers, local design industries, and the V&A to inspire the next generation of designers, makers and innovators through in-depth design projects.
Between November 2024 and March 2025, I worked with the Shipley Art Gallery to deliver DesignLab Nation design challenge, High Street, My Street, with students from two local secondary schools inspired by the Shipley’s collection of Studio Ceramics. Using leftover packaging from worldwide businesses, students were tasked to create unique designs which respond to the needs of their community and celebrate local culture.
(above) Lostness, 2024
This collaborative installation was made over two days at Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art (Gateshead) in response to questions about how we understand and create shapes in 2 & 3 dimensions. Participants of all ages engaged with a series of initial structures, tracing shadows and playing with solid geometries and more ephemeral forms. The resulting installation was an expanded drawing entitled Lostness, referring to both the dreaming and drifting ideas of its makers and its evocation of ship wreckage.
Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, 2024
(above) All things Bright and Beautiful 2024
All things Bright and Beautiful is a vibrant celebration of colour, shape, nature and dance, exploring forms and structures and welcoming the Spring
‘I like it because it’s big and bright and beautiful’ (participant artist)
The installation which has no fixed form, is made up of drawing, collage and structural elements connected to each other with thread, which traces the movements of the makers and follows one participant’s particular interest in spiders’ webs.
The starting point for the project was an exploration of shape, form and three-dimensional structures, using a selection of materials and textures. The construction and connection of different 2D shapes and 3D forms allowed space for individual interests to be reflected in the artwork: Here is a space in which flora, fauna, ballet, armaments, colour, and popular culture joyfully co-exist.
BALTIC Stars / Croft Community School / Zoe Allen
Spring 2024
(above) Nostalgika, 2022
BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art
Nostalgika was a collaboration between Young People’s group BALTIC Producers 2022 and artist Mani Kambo.
Everyone has a childhood, but no two childhoods are the same. As we be become older and our lives become more complex, Nostalgika was an invitation to reflect upon our own childhoods and individual journeys offering a space for calm and reflection.
(above) The Butterfly Effect
The Butterfly Effect was a collaboration with students from Hawthorn Primary School following an intensive series of practical workshops and discussions focussing on sculpture. Students discussed and practiced different ways of making sculpture, including construction, assemblage and modelling, exploring shape, form, scale, colour and material, practising sculptural language and developing & extending ideas.
The installation aims to welcome and inspire students, staff and visitors to the school with colour, gesture and an expression of positivity The artwork is made up of 300 geometric shapes, designed to resemble a flight of butterflies. The shape of each ‘butterfly’ is taken from a prototype designed by students as an example of a 3-dimensional form that can be made from a 2-dimensional surface.
The butterflies are made from recycled plastic binders in which notes and knowledge can bestored. Students were keen that the materials could be made in different colours, each representing a different subject and, or, development of their individual learning journeys.
The title, refers to an idea first postulated in a short story, A Sound of Thunder, by Ray Bradbury in which the idea is conceived that small changes or happenings could eventually have a far-reaching ripple effect on subsequent events. The idea of the butterfly suggests metamorphoses – or a process of change, growth and the acquisition of knowledge, as individuals and as part of a wider community.
(above) Rainbow’s End, 2021
BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, 2021
In collaboration with BALTIC Young Producers and Adam Dixon,
During the lockdowns in 2020 and 2021, I worked with an inspiring group of Young People, BALTIC Young Programmers, who planned and delivered a commission that would reflect some of their experiences during the pandemic and which aimed to celebrate young people as makers, producers and leaders.
Rainbow’s End is the culmination of a collaboration BALTIC Young Programmers and game designer Adam Dixon. It asks us to playfully explore our own lockdown journeys, negotiate conflicting information and consider to what extent we should follow the rules and which we might break along the way.
(above) Pilot, 2021
Pilot was a collaboration with Art and Textiles students from Whickham School in Gateshead in response to the architecture, scale and light of the atrium at the heart of the school. The space itself and the form within naturally encourage theviewer to look up. The idea of this gesture, of looking to the sky is intended as one of aspiration and attainment. The values of the school, Respect, Aspiration, Resilience & Empathy – were the focus of initial conversations around how the work could take shape. Rather than spelling out the school values in words, the aim was to create a space which encourages individuals to come to values independently and on their own terms.
The different tones of blue and turquoise were chosen for their associations to wisdom,loyalty, tranquillity, intelligence and calm. These colours are also traditionally representativeof land, water and sky, locating the work in the hills surrounding the school building, and itsproximity to the river Tyne and the North Sea,
The artwork took inspiration from Gabriel Dawes’ work, 60 Miles of Thread in which theartist uses brightly coloured yarn to make ethereal drawings in space, creating ephemeral structures which allow light to penetrate. Students also explored James Turrell’s SkySpace structures, in which Turrell creates architecture to frame the sky, making an ever-changing canvas for natural daylight or starlight. Students saw a parallel between Turrell’s framing oflight and the way natural light enters the space through the skylights in the ceiling of the atrium.
The title refers to the act of guidance and navigation through space, but also to the role ofthe person teaching or leading the way. A Pilot is also a first attempt – a testing ground orspringboard for future endeavour.
(above) The Calm within the Chaos, 2018
BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art
Collaboration with Students from Cardinal Hume School, Gateshead
(above) Aurora, 2018
BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, 2018
Collaboration with Beacon Hill School, N. Tyneside.
This project was made into a written resource and short film for teachers (or anyone else who likes putting their hands in messy stuff)
https://vimeo.com/466174202/1f091a9318
Zoë Allen 