Lambeth Wilds is large-scale, site-specific installation on permanent display at the Garden Museum, London. The project was funded by Arts Council England, Heritage Lottery Fund and the Charlotte Fraser Trust. It was conceived and produced through combining archival research in the museum collection with recollections, stories and other contributions by often-neglected groups, producing new insights for the museum, the public and the participants themselves; exploring how wild, opportunistic plants can be used as metaphors for overlooked communities.

Collaborative clay workshops with Lambeth Young Carers, the Clay for Dementia group and visitors to the museum, formed a major part of the investigation. Making-together enabled the elicitation of tacit knowledge that participants might not have had the confidence or ability to make public on their own, and the creation of new knowledge through the materialisation of lived experiences of the groups involved. These insights informed the resulting installation; both the plants featured, which represent a participant’s story or plants documented in the museum collection, and the decision to give as much prominence to roots as the above-ground elements of plants. The public gained new insights into the experiences of these marginalised groups through the display of the artwork, alongside an accompanying exhibition of the Young Carers’ work and the participants’ collected stories.

The creation of the installation resulted in invitations to present at the Crafts Council’s Craft and Social Practice Roundtable, the PTI’s Clay Creative Professional Development Day and Oxford University’s Creative Careers Night. Additionally Katie was shortlisted for the Whitegold International Ceramic Prize 2019 and invited to be the first Make artist-in-residence at Hauser & Wirth Somerset. A new project based on the format of this investigation is being devised for St. Peter’s Church, Norwich.