A Sea Bridge of Care: Living Heritage Workshop Series
About this Event
You are warmly invited to join this creative workshops workshop series, co-organised by Broken Silences 2026, and the Yuhang Intengible Cultural Heritage Centre (Hangzhou, China). Together, we invite you to explore living heritage - the stories, traditions, skills, memories, and everyday cultural practices that connect people across families, communities, and generations.
Each workshop explores a different aspect of living heritage through hands-on creative activities inspired by women’s stories, maritime heritage, care, memory, and cultural traditions.
You are very welcome to join one or more workshops.
At the end of the series, participants will be invited (but are not required) to contribute their creative work to a public exhibition, A Sea Bridge of Care, celebrating the stories, memories, and creative responses developed throughout the workshops.
Programme
Workshop One, Friday 14th August, 2-4pm
Women of Tides: From Coastal Images to Women's Lifeworlds
Coastal women are often remembered through beauty, dress and local colour. This workshop brings Chinese coastal women into dialogue with Edinburgh’s Newhaven fishwives to ask what lies beyond the image: labour, risk, care, family, faith and everyday life by the sea.
Open to families with children aged 5+, young persons or adult children.
(Children aged 5+ must be accompanied by a parent, carer or grandparent.)
What to expect:
- Explore “beauty, labour, and creativity by the sea”
- Storytelling: Costal women
- Artefact-making: heritage-inspired flower and mother of pearl collage
Workshop Two, Saturday 15th August, 2-4pm
Threads, Nets and Hands: Women’s Craft as Living Archive
Women’s craft is more than decoration: it is a living archive of bodily knowledge, ecological memory and care. Through weaving, knotting and repair, this workshop explores how heritage-inspired making can support intercultural awareness and more careful forms of working with others.
Open to all adults
What to expect:
- Explore “craft as memory and empowerment”
- Storytelling: Women’s craft, weaving, nets, and care
- Artefact-making: heritage-inspired bamboo boat making & repair and care net
Workshop Three, Sunday 16th August, 2-4pm
Sea Imaginaries: Love, Faith and Protection
The sea carries love, faith, migration, risk and protection. Bringing together Mazu, mermaids, Selkies and Scottish fish motifs, this workshop invites participants to create imaginations or protective symbols on Yuhang paper umbrellas and translate sea imaginaries into visual forms of care.
Open to all adults
What to expect:
- Explore “symbols of love, faith, protection and sea-shaped imagination”
- Storytelling:Mazu, Selkie, mermaids and sea symbols
- Artefact-making: heritage-inspired painting and writing on handcrafted umbrellas
About the facilitators: Dr Yujun (June) Xu (Zhejiang University) & Dr Jingyi Li (University of Edinburgh
Dr. Yujun Xu is a Research Professor at the College of Media and International Culture, Zhejiang University, where she also serves as Deputy Secretary-General of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) Research Center. She holds a PhD from the University of Edinburgh and completed a Boya Postdoctoral Fellowship at Peking University. Dr. Xu has led and contributed to multiple ministerial-level research projects on ICH education and chaired the 2023 Harvard-China ICH Education Forum. Her intercultural practice includes collaborations with National Museums Scotland, the Surgeon's Hall Museum, Edinburgh Zoo, the Pen Museum, and China's Intangible Cultural Heritage Museum, among others. During the pandemic, she founded the ARTea Sessions for E-connection, an intercultural initiative that brought together artists from eight disciplines across five countries.
Dr Jingyi Li is a Senior Lecturer in International and Comparative Education at the Moray House School of Education and Sport, University of Edinburgh. Her research is broadly situated within the sociology of education, with a particular focus on curriculum policy and practice. She is currently involved in projects exploring affect and solidarity in international classrooms, with a particular interest in teaching and learning practices informed by critical pedagogies. Alongside her teaching and research, she has over a decade of experience in community education in Scotland, working with multilingual families. She is passionate about building stronger connections between university classrooms and the wider community and has led a number of initiatives that bridge academic learning and community practice.
Where is it happening?
Event Location & Nearby Stays:
GBP 0.00
