Contemporary Community Textile Artist Derbyshire UK
Collaboration Kindness Carbon Sensitivity
Daniel Lismore | Be Yourself Community Programme
From Studio Research To A Major Community Exhibition
Period
2022
My Role
Community Engagement Co-ordinator
Project Type
Community Exhibition Programme
Location
Coventry
Project Overview
Daniel Lismore's homecoming exhibition at the Herbert was one of the major exhibitions of Coventry UK City of Culture. My role went far beyond delivering community engagement activity around an exhibition that had already been made. I spent time in Daniel's studio at the Herbert studying how he worked, looking closely at the way he built his life size figures, layered materials and objects, and turned clothing, found pieces and personal collections into highly individual sculptural forms.
That research became the starting point for a new community programme that I developed on Daniel's behalf. I designed the idea of inviting Coventry communities to create their own life size figures in response to his approach, then pitched the whole programme directly to Daniel. Once he supported the idea, I built it from the ground up and led its development and delivery.
Building The Programme
The programme had to translate the scale and freedom of Daniel's practice into something communities could genuinely take ownership of. I developed accessible ways for groups to explore identity, self expression, clothing, memory and belonging through making. Alongside the mannequin programme I delivered accessible exhibition engagement, worked with schools and specialist groups, and ran a dedicated two hour Art Masterclass for young people aged 8 to 16. The session began with a short tour of Daniel's Be Yourself exhibition and then invited the young people to make mini hand stitched banners about social causes and change, using cross stitch, fabric and embellishment. I also ran a separate young people's mannequin group as part of the wider community programme. Daniel met that group at their launch, and their finished mannequin was later displayed separately by the front door of the Herbert. I also built relationships with community organisations across Coventry.
The technical development was part of my role too. After seeing how Daniel used vacuum forming in his work, I traced that process back to work he had done with English National Opera and contacted ENO for advice. I then worked directly with WMG at the University of Warwick, going to Warwick to be trained on their vacuum forming equipment and borrowing a machine for the community programme. I also sourced Alexander McQueen fabric for the groups to work with. These partnerships, materials and technical processes were all part of turning the original idea into an ambitious community response that could sit confidently alongside Daniel's own exhibition.
Community Launch
Before the wider community programme began, I organised a formal community launch to introduce the project, explain the idea and invite people into the process. It marked the point where the research, Daniel's support and the technical development became a public programme, giving community partners a clear starting point and a shared understanding of what we were setting out to make together.
From Community Workshops To Exhibition
Six community groups created the main collaborative life size figures, using approaches informed by Daniel's own processes but shaped by their own stories and identities. The work brought together making, conversation and personal expression, allowing people who might not usually see themselves represented in a major gallery programme to make work that occupied that space on its own terms. The separate young people's mannequin group was run by me as an additional strand of the programme. Daniel met the young people at their group launch, and their finished mannequin was displayed separately at the Herbert's front entrance rather than as part of the six main community group works.
The resulting exhibition, Be Yourself: Communities Respond To Daniel Lismore, became a substantial community legacy to Daniel's Herbert exhibition. The display used Daniel's authentic techniques, including vacuum forming, alongside found and repurposed materials and Alexander McQueen fabric, while the groups used those methods to express their own social, historical and cultural concerns. Its launch coincided with International Peace Month, adding another layer to a project already rooted in identity, understanding and community voice.
For me, the significance of the project lies as much in how it was built as in the final figures. It began with close observation of another artist's practice, moved through an idea that I researched and pitched directly to him, and then required partnership building, technical research, new skills, equipment sourcing, material sourcing, accessible engagement and long term relationships to turn that idea into a large scale public programme.
The Herbert community response exhibition records the groups, vacuum forming and found and repurposed materials that became part of the finished programme. That material thinking also connects with my wider approach to resourceful and carbon sensitive making, where reuse is a practical method rather than an afterthought. The programme also sat within a longer thread of community engagement at the Herbert that had developed through Turner Prize 2021, where access, relationships and participation were already shaping how I worked.
