L-INK 2026/27
About L-INK
L-INK are a group of young people who work with the Laing Art Gallery and Hatton Gallery to create events, workshops, resources and make their own art work. In their most recent project, the group worked with the Hatton team to co-curate HAPPY! from the Jerwood Collection – an exhibition which explored the idea of joyfulness in creative process, inspired by Victor Pasmore’s Art Education exhibitions which displayed examples of progression in art education, and which were displayed in the Hatton during the 1950s.
The L-INK project is annual, beginning each year in October and finishing in June/July, in line with school and college terms. Each year, the L-INK project invites new participants to join, as some older members leave to study or work in different places.
L-INK 2026/27 project
For their 2026/27 project, L-INK are offered the opportunity to explore and research the Hatton’s history through it’s historical exhibition programme and reputation for connecting art, design, architecture and installation, with reference to the Basic Course taught by Victor Pasmore and Richard Hamilton during the 1950s & 60s. The project will incorporate research, design, practical art-making, exploring collaborative practice, as well as working with practising contemporary artists and the Hatton gallery’s team.
L-INK will explore the Hatton’s Collection and learn about pivotal exhibitions including Pasmore & Hamilton’s an exhibit and Pasmore’s Apollo Pavilion in Peterlee – as well as making connections to transient or relocated structures including Kurt Schwitters’ Merz Barn Wall. The project will culminate in the design of a large-scale temporary installation in the Hatton’s atrium in response to the Hatton’s Spring 2027 exhibition.
Free Taster Session (Information about this workshop is below)
An artist-led taster workshop takes place before the project starts, which an opportunity for potential participants to come along and find out more, meet the team and some of the existing group, and work with an artist whose practice is relevant to the project.
Lets Talk about Commitment
L-INK is a fixed-term project and we ask for a time commitment of approximately one day per month plus one potential overnight trip to visit other galleries during the summer. We understand that participants have many extra-curricular commitments and responsibilities as well as school work, so if participants find that they are unable to commit to the project, please let us know so that we can offer places to others. There is no charge to become a participant in this project.
Dates for project sessions: 2026/27*
Artist-led Taster workshop: Saturday 26 September 2026 (Information about this workshop is below)
Application deadline for L-INK 2025/26: Monday 5 October 2026
2026/27 Session Dates:
Saturday 17 October 2026
Saturday 14 November 2026
Saturday 12 December 2026
Saturday 16 January 2027
Saturday 6 OR 13 February 2027 + extra sessions as necessary – Dates TBC
Saturday 13 March 2027
Saturday 10 April 2027
Saturday May 2027 – Date TBC
Saturday June 2027 – Date TBC
Saturday July 2027– Date TBC
August: Overnight Galleries trip, dates TBC
*Session dates are subject to change to accommodate group member schedules and exhibition schedules as much as possible.
L-INK sessions usually run from 10.30am – 4pm with a break for lunch. Snacks are provided but participants should provide their own lunch. Where necessary, some sessions may be shorter and could take place via video call. Advance notice will be given.
Additional opportunities
Where possible and appropriate, we endeavour to explore exhibitions at other galleries through research trips to other venues both in and outside the local area.
See what L-INK have been up to in the past…
- L-INK 2025/26 | Hatton Gallery
- L-INK - young adults guide to Matt Rugg: Connecting Form | Hatton Gallery
- L-INK 2024/25 | Laing Art Gallery
- L-INK | Laing Art Gallery
- L-INK - young adults guide to Mali Morris | Hatton Gallery
Apply
Or contact learning@laingartgallery.org.uk or zoe.allen@northeastmuesume.org.uk for further information.
Free Taster Session
L-INK 2026/27: Artist-led Workshop with Artist Mani Kambo, and Architect Claire Harper
Saturday 26 September 2026,10.30am – 4pm
Hatton Gallery, Kings Road
Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU
For people aged 16-21 who are interested in art.
About the Workshop
This taster workshop is an opportunity to meet the L-INK group, find out more about the 2026/27 project, work with the Hatton team and with practising artists and architects, collaborate, create and ask (and answer) some big questions. (We also provide lots of snacks.) This session is a taster for the L-INK 2026/27 project, but with no obligation to join should you choose not to.
In this session we are delighted to be joined by Contemporary Artist Mani Kambo and Architect & Researcher Claire Harper.
Is everything really meant to last forever?
Mani and Claire will lead the session, exploring connections between art, architecture, light and rhythm, with a focus on temporary and portable architecture. Participants will consider the transience of different materials, buildings and artworks and work together to (re-)build something new….
There will also be an opportunity to ask questions and sign up for the L-INK 2026/27 project at the end of the workshop if you would like to.
About Claire Harper
Claire is an architect, educator and researcher an interest in housing strategy and urban development. As co-director of Harper Perry, she leads the studio’s engagement work and community-led design projects. The practice has established a reputation for creative and effective community engagement and delivering projects through co-design.
Alongside her work in practice, Claire has held teaching posts at University of Westminster and Newcastle University and regularly contributes to design and professional practice teaching. She is also co-founder of Something Concrete + Modern, an online archive documenting post-war architecture across the northeast.
About Mani Kambo
Mani Kambo is a multidisciplinary artist working across textile, print and moving image, based in Newcastle upon Tyne. Her work explores the inner spirit through a visual language shaped by her own personal, totemic symbols. Rooted in an upbringing of superstition and protection, she draws on origin myths, routines and rituals distilled from everyday and cosmological understanding. Black and white run through her work as opposing forces: good and evil, light and dark, creation and destruction, being and non-being. Through repetitive motion, the act of creating becomes a physical manifestation of how gesture and action hold power, and that energy embeds itself within each artwork.
Her work has been commissioned and exhibited nationally and internationally, recent solo exhibitions and commissions include Between Passage and Place, All Over Each Otter, Otley (2026), Lumiere Light Festival, Durham (2025), Ax•is Mun•di, Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art (2024-25), Harewood House Biennial: Create/Elevate (2024). Recent Group exhibitions and screenings include Exeter Contemporary (2025), New Art Exchange (2025), Sudden Beams 2: Extraction, Platform Asia (2023) ‘Swimmers Limb’ Somerset House – Gallery 31 (2022), ‘Hinterlands’ Baltic (2022-23), ‘Jubilee’ Vane Gallery (2022). Recent Awards include Arts Foundation Futures shortlisted Visual Artist (2025), Womxn of Colour Art Award, Altitude, 198 Contemporary and Learning (2019).
Glossary
transience / rhythm / purpose / intention / function / revolve / orbit / time (timeless?) / space / light / Incandescence / movement / action / dance / scale / permanence / cyclical / ephemeral / solid / fluid / weight / permanent / eternal / enduring / concept / form
About the Hatton Gallery
Newcastle University’s Hatton Gallery was founded in 1926 and named in honour of Professor Richard George Hatton, professor of what was then the King Edward VII School of Art, Armstrong College, Durham University. He subsequently became Head of the Department of Fine Art at Newcastle University.
The Hatton’s diverse collection includes over 3,000 works from the 14th – 20th centuries. Key pieces in our paintings collection include works by Francis Bacon, Prunella Clough, Richard Hamilton, Palma Giovane, Patrick Heron and William Roberts. The gallery also has extensive archive material including paintings, sculpture, prints, drawings and textiles, and material connected to the history of the Gallery, such as exhibition posters designed and printed in the art school.
The Merz Barn Wall is part of a construction created by German artist Kurt Schwitters in a Lake District barn in 1947-8. The Elterwater Merz Barn was based on the idea of collage, in which found items are incorporated into an art work. Schwitters applied a rough layer of decorator's plaster and paint over these found objects, giving the three dimensional collage an abstract quality. Asked what it meant, he replied 'all it is, is form and colour, just form and colour'.
The barn was designed as a permanent structure, somewhere Schwitters could exhibit existing work. When he died in January 1948 it was left unfinished. In 1965, after lengthy discussions about the barn's future, the Wall was given to Newcastle University who undertook its removal, restoration and preservation.
The Laing Art Gallery was founded in 1901, by Alexander Laing, a Newcastle businessman who had made his money from his wine and spirit shop and beer bottling business. Alexander Laing didn’t leave any paintings or other art to the Gallery. He said that he was confident “…that by the liberality of the inhabitants [of Newcastle it would soon be supplied with pictures and statuary for the encouragement and development of British Art”.
The gallery today is home to an internationally important collection of art, focusing on British oil paintings, watercolours, ceramics, silver and glassware.
Hodgson Sayers sponsor North East Museums young people’s programme.
