Shipwreck – Co-Created Public Sculpture, Forest Worlds Festival 2019

Shipwreck was a large-scale public artwork co-created with young people in Stoke-on-Trent as part of the Forest Worlds Festival 2019. Working alongside artist David Bethell, participants explored ideas of imagination, loss and discovery through sculptural play and storytelling.

The resulting timber vessel, half buried as if emerging from or sinking into the landscape, became both a stage and a meeting place — a space where children could climb, dream, and invent new worlds. Developed through workshops in local schools and community sessions, the sculpture reflected the festival’s ethos of freedom, collaboration and creativity in the natural environment.

These creative processes also contributed to wider academic research into children’s creativity and connectedness to nature. Laurel Gallagher collaborated with Dr Jenny Hallam and Dr Karen Owen from the University of Derby’s Connectedness to Nature research group, resulting in two peer-reviewed, co-authored papers:

Hallam, J., Gallagher, L. and Owen K. (2022). ‘I'm not the best at art’: An exploration of children's growing sense of artistry within an outdoor, arts-based intervention. Thinking Skills and Creativity. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tsc.2022.101038

Hallam, J., Gallagher, L. and Owen K. (2021). The secret language of flowers: insights from an outdoor, arts-based intervention designed to connect primary school children to locally accessible nature. Environmental Education Research. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2021.1994926