Matt and Holly have been working alongside children in schools across Wokingham to co-create imaginative responses to themes of nature connection, biodiversity, and art. Each workshop has been a unique journey shaped by the students ideas, curiosity, and sense of wonder. Their collaborative artworks will be exhibited at the Forest of Imagination festival, where we’ll reunite to explore the event together and continue our shared creative journey. This evolving project celebrates children as artists and thinkers, honouring their voices and visions while fostering deep connections with the natural world through playful, meaningful, and expressive experiences.

At Gorse Ride Primary School, Matt and Holly began the sessions with an exploration into “What is the Forest of Imagination,” letting the children lead the way. The theme went in the direction of mythical creatures, continuing to make and iterate them in clay. The group seemed keen to develop their creatures, so we began to question “what is my creature made from?”, bringing in a jar of “limbs” for them to choose from and sculpt. We saw their testing of and experimentation with the medium really develop over the sessions, as they learned to push the limits of what it could do. The class has been looking at topography in their schoolwork, so we decided to create a giant drawn mythical map of Dinton pastures, in which they could invent their own stories over the site in a parallel reality. In another session we constructed the forest, making sculptural trees from charcoal rubbings. The map, creatures and trees were then digitally stitched together and edited on photoshop, and layered to make one rich, imagined, collaborative landscape!