Ageing: Creative and Historical Workshop

Explore how ageing reshapes touch, dexterity and identity through a collections tour and hands-on creative activities.
About this Event

About

How do our relationships with our hands change as we age? What happens to identity when haptic skills improve, decline, or require adaptation? And how do we learn to live with changing capacities for touch?

This workshop explores ageing, skill and the hand through historical encounters, hands-on engagement and creative reflection. The session invites you to consider how dexterity, sensitivity, strength and confidence evolve over time, and how these changes shape personal and professional identities.

Alongside hands-on activities, you will join a curator-led tour of The Hunterian Museum, exploring haptic impairments and how ingenuity, resilience and creativity emerge in response.

The workshop also includes the opportunity to make part of a textile sculpture with artist Ruth Singer. Selecting fabrics that reflect the workshop theme and discussion, you will use hand stitches and stuffing to create three-dimensional pieces that will inform an artwork to be displayed in 2027 at The Hunterian Museum and The Festival of Quilts.

This workshop takes place at The Royal College of Surgeons of England, London, and is funded the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

This workshop is free and open to those interested in surgery, sewing and other forms of handwork. All participants must be aged 18+.

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Schedule

More details to come.

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Additional information

Teas and coffees will be provided for attendees.

The workshop will be audio recorded for research purposes.

The workshop space has step free access via an elevator. If you have any additional access requirements, please contact [email protected].

This workshop is part of the Arts and Humanities Research Council funded Victorian Hand: Emotions, Embodiment and Identity project based at The University of the Arts London and Lancaster University and has been approved by the London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London, College Research Committee.