L-INK 2026/27: Artist-led Workshop

Time  

10.30am – 4pm

Please note that this workshop will take place at the Hatton Gallery.

Price  

Free, but registration is essential. Register for this workshop

Age range 

For people aged 16-21 who are interested in art. 

L-INK are a group of young people who work with the Laing Art Gallery and Hatton Gallery to work with artists and curators, co-curate exhibitions produce events, devise workshops, design resources, create their own artwork and develop collaborative practice. 

The L-INK project begins 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. 

More information about L-INK 2026/27 is online here: L-INK 2026/2027 | Laing Art Gallery

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.

Register for this workshop

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