SEEDLINGS - the Haarlem Artspace family art club
Join us for the very first SEEDLINGS, a new family arts club at Haarlem Artspace for children aged 4–10 and their families.
Inspired by nature, imagination, and Haarlem’s exhibition programme, Seedlings is a fun, process-led workshop where children are encouraged to experiment, explore, and create freely in a welcoming gallery environment. Together we’ll imagine magical forests, strange landscapes, and growing worlds through storytelling, sensory play, mark-making, and hands-on material exploration.
Guided by experienced art educator Katy, the sessions focus on curiosity, confidence, self-expression, and the joy of making — with no pressure to create a perfect finished artwork. Seedlings is all about creativity, discovery, and playful experimentation.
Thursday May 28 Morning Session: 10:00–11:30 Afternoon Session: 13:00–14:30
£10 per child (plus booking fee) - link in bio
Parents and carers are asked to stay and support their child throughout but we encourage children to explore independently where possible and embrace a little creative mess along the way.
Please wear comfortable, scruffy clothing suitable for art-making. Aprons and bibs will also be provided.
Spaces for each session are limited to 20 children, so advance booking is essential.
We’d like to say a huge thank you to Turner’s Art Supplies for their generous support and sponsorship of Seedlings, helping us provide creative opportunities for children and families at Haarlem Artspace.
Poster design by Robin James Day
Photos by @natashadixonphotography
GERMINATOR 26/27 — OPEN CALL
With the first Germinator exhibition closing today and degree show season beginning, Haarlem Artspace and Playing Fields are pleased to announce the next iteration of the programme.
Germinator developed in response to the shifting conditions of art education and the widening gap between academic study and the realities of sustaining a practice beyond it. As courses come under increasing pressure and professional development is increasingly sidelined, many graduates leave without access to the networks, knowledge and context needed to navigate the art world. Projects like this feel increasingly important — particularly in regional areas outside so-called cultural centres — where opportunities for recent graduates and early-career artists can be limited despite the vital role they play within the wider creative ecosystem.
The programme is a small but direct response: supporting recent graduates connected to the East Midlands through a year of mentoring, dialogue and practical guidance, culminating in a group exhibition at Haarlem Artspace. Following the success of the first iteration, we are now looking ahead to the next cohort and are particularly interested in artists committed to developing their practice through critical dialogue and long-term engagement.
—
Graduated in the last few years…or about to graduate?
Based in (or connected to) the Midlands?
Send a short introduction + link to your work: [email protected] before August 31
Tutors, lecturers and peers — please share or recommend someone.
Download the poster via the link in our bio and share it in your studio.
Germinator - Lucy Nelson @lucycollardnelson
Lucy Nelson’s practice explores cycles of becoming and unbecoming, presence and absence, often drawing on experiences of pregnancy loss and the underrepresentation of female reproductive health. Working primarily through sculpture, she creates ambiguous forms that hover between the natural and synthetic, giving shape to what is unseen, interrupted or unresolved. Her work frequently references medical display and museum staging, combining fragility, uncertainty and material tension to examine the emotional and physical complexities of the body.
Lucy Nelson is a visual artist based in Nottingham. She graduated with distinction from the MFA Fine Art programme at Nottingham Trent University @ntu_mfa_fine_art Her work has been exhibited across the East Midlands, including at Nottingham Contemporary, as well as in Cambridge, Sheffield and Staffordshire. She is an associate artist at BACKLIT Gallery @backlitgallery and a member of the Lumina Collective @lumina.collective and has been commissioned to produce new work for the 2026 Maid Marian Legacy Project. Nelson is a recipient of the Eaton Fund Award and was a finalist for both the Vieunite and Women in Art prizes.
— 📸 @willslater53
Germinator is a group exhibition developed through a year of mentoring and support for recent graduates, exploring material, memory and process across sculpture, painting and installation.
Exhibition open until 10 May Fri–Sun, 12–5pm
Haarlem Artspace @haarlemartspace The Red Lion Market Place Wirksworth DE4 4ET
Germinator - Jessie Farnsworth @jessieffarnsworth
Jessie Farnsworth’s paintings emerge from sensory experience, internal dialogue and emotional responses to sound. Through fluid forms, shifting colour fields and layered mark-making, she constructs imagined spaces that feel both bodily and atmospheric. Organic shapes drift across the surface like organisms or sonic reverberations, creating works that move between slowness and intensity, structure and improvisation. Her paintings often suggest fragments of alternate environments, connected through recurring forms and rhythms.
Jessie Farnsworth (b. 2002, Nottingham) is a Manchester-based painter. She graduated with a First-Class Honours degree in Fine Art from Manchester School of Art @mcrschart in 2024, where she was awarded the Wallace Seymour Painting Prize and nominated for the Freelands Painting Prize. She has exhibited across the North West, including at The Manchester Contemporary, Oceans Apart @oceansapartgallery FG Gallery @thefggallery SEESAW @seesawspace and 50MV @50__mv During her studies, she undertook a residency at Cortijada Los Gázquez, Vélez Blanco with Joya: AiR @joya_air
—
Germinator is a group exhibition developed through a year of mentoring and support for recent graduates, exploring material, memory and process across sculpture, painting and installation.
Exhibition open until 10 May Fri–Sun, 12–5pm
Haarlem Artspace @haarlemartspace The Red Lion Market Place Wirksworth DE4 4ET
📸 @willslater53
Germinator - Lucy Bronwen Davies @lucybronwenart
Lucy Bronwen Davies works intuitively with found and foraged materials, weaving, carving and assembling biomorphic forms that reflect the interdependence of natural systems. Rooted in close engagement with rural and local environments, her practice explores ideas of belonging, ecological connection and material transformation. Through a process-led approach, Davies treats materials as collaborators, allowing their textures, limitations and behaviours to shape the direction of the work.
Lucy Bronwen Davies is an ecological artist and facilitator based in Nottinghamshire. She graduated with a First-Class BA (Hons) in Fine Art from Nottingham Trent University @ntuart in 2024, receiving the Ecological Awareness and Sustainability Award. Her work has been exhibited across the East Midlands, including at BACKLIT, Surface and ILKON. She has undertaken residencies at Haarlem Artspace and through the East Midlands Graduate Project at Surface Gallery, alongside working as a freelance facilitator and producer with organisations including Refugee Roots, the National Justice Museum and Ashfield Creates.
—
Germinator is a group exhibition developed through a year of mentoring and support for recent graduates, exploring material, memory and process across sculpture, painting and installation.
Exhibition open until 10 May Fri–Sun, 12–5pm
Haarlem Artspace @haarlemartspace The Red Lion Market Place Wirksworth DE4 4ET
Join Amanda Wray @amandawraymud & Johnny White @johnnys_kinetic_sculptures for a Meet the Maker talk at Cromford Mill.
Collaborating since 1995, Amanda and Johnny combine expressive figurative sculpture with playful kinetic engineering. Their work spans exhibitions, public art and community projects across the UK and Europe — bringing humour, movement and character into everything they make.
From hand-modelled clay to interactive mechanical forms, this is a chance to hear how their distinct practices come together, and how ideas evolve through making, collaboration and experimentation.
🍷 Beer & wine provided 🎟 FREE — booking essential 🔗 Follow the link in bio to book
#derbyshiremakes #kineticsculpture #publicart #meetthemaker #cromfordmills
Germinator - Vidhi Jangra @vidhi.jangra
Vidhi Jangra’s practice explores domesticity, material memory and the home as a site of micropolitical intervention. Working across sculpture, installation and curatorial frameworks, she repurposes everyday materials to question how spaces are inhabited, shaped and reclaimed. Her work approaches making as a process of cultivation—foregrounding care, slowness and ongoing learning—where acts of repair and reassembly become tools for thinking through identity, belonging and agency.
Vidhi Jangra is a visual artist and curator working across art-making, programming and research. Recent projects include developing Bonington Connects (2024–25), and exhibiting and co-curating at Surface Gallery, Nottingham Contemporary and BACKLIT Gallery. She has also led Art Walks for London Gallery Weekend. Jangra is currently Artist-Curator Trainee at Eastside Projects @eprjcts Birmingham, and a trustee for AA2A and No Jobs in the Arts. With thanks to Vidhi for her enthusiasm and support in helping to organise this exhibition.
—
Germinator is a group exhibition developed through a year of mentoring and support for recent graduates, exploring material, memory and process across sculpture, painting and installation.
Exhibition open until 10 May Fri–Sun, 12–5pm
Haarlem Artspace @haarlemartspace The Red Lion Market Place Wirksworth DE4 4ET
📸 @willslater53
Germinator - Sireen Martin @sireen.martin
Sireen Martin’s work explores the intersection between digital, physical and metaphysical space. Working across sculpture and installation, she constructs abstract landscapes where organic forms merge with imagined structures, creating speculative environments that feel both familiar and otherworldly. Her practice considers how digital realities shape perception, belief and experience, proposing alternative systems and futures where these realms coexist.
Sireen Martin is a mixed-media artist based in the West Midlands. She graduated with a First from Birmingham School of Art @birmingham_school_of_art and has collaborated with Birmingham Opera Company on productions including Voices of an Ancient Youth and Are You Ready to Be Heard. She is currently Artist in Residence at Grand Union @granduniongallery Birmingham, and has exhibited across Digbeth First Friday @digbethfirstfri at venues including Junction Works, Secret Space and Eastside Projects. In 2024, she was shortlisted for the Birmingham Open Prize and is currently developing new sculptural work in collaboration with curatorial students at the University of Birmingham.
—
Germinator is a group exhibition developed through a year of mentoring and support for recent graduates, exploring material, memory and process across sculpture, painting and installation.
Exhibition open until 10 May Fri–Sun, 12–5pm
Haarlem Artspace @haarlemartspace The Red Lion Market Place Wirksworth DE4 4ET
📸 @willslater53
Germinator - Iris May @irisjpmay
Iris May’s practice centres on the creation of sculptural ‘possible bodies’—forms assembled from wood that are designed to fold, move and be reconfigured. These works exist somewhere between object and companion, accumulating histories through processes of reuse and recombination. Emerging from an interest in post-humanism and the conditions of contemporary life, the sculptures propose alternative ways of thinking about embodiment, connection and presence, particularly in relation to transience, space and the need to carry a sense of home.
Iris May is a multi-media artist based in Glasgow. She graduated with a First from The Glasgow School of Art @glasgowschoolart and was recently selected for the RSA New Contemporaries. Her work has been featured in publications including The Skinny, The Herald and voc .a (Issue 8, Accademia di Architettura di Mendrisio). Recent exhibitions include A Dark Pool of Water at The Colour Factory, London, and a solo presentation at Rumblehouse Gallery, Calgary. She will begin a residency at The Shift Gallery, Glasgow, in May 2026.
—
Germinator is a group exhibition developed through a year of mentoring and support for recent graduates, exploring material, memory and process across sculpture, painting and installation.
Exhibition open until 10 May Fri–Sun, 12–5pm
Haarlem Artspace @haarlemartspace The Red Lion Market Place Wirksworth DE4 4ET
Germinator - Lucy Vardy @lucyvardy.art
Lucy Vardy’s practice centres on the overlooked rituals and residues of everyday life. Working across sculpture and installation, she draws attention to the quiet traces of use—tea bags, textiles, worn surfaces—transforming them into objects of care and contemplation. Through processes of collecting, arranging and re-presenting, her work elevates the ordinary, exploring how memory, touch and repetition shape our relationship to domestic space and the materials that surround us.
Lucy Vardy is a Nottinghamshire-based artist working across drawing, sculpture and installation. She graduated with a First in Fine Art from Nottingham Trent University @ntuart in 2025, where her work was acquired for the university’s art collection. She recently completed the East Midlands Graduate Project at Surface Gallery @surfacegallery Nottingham, including a residency, public workshop and group exhibition. Upcoming projects include group exhibitions with Crop Up Gallery and Hagstone Collective, and inclusion in No Jobs in the Arts zine @nojobsinthearts (Issue 10).
—
Germinator is a group exhibition developed through a year of mentoring and support for recent graduates, exploring material, memory and process.
Exhibition open until 10 May Fri–Sun, 12–5pm or by appointment.
Haarlem Artspace The Red Lion Market Place Wirksworth DE4 4ET
GERMINATOR — OPENING TONIGHT
Join us this evening for the opening of Germinator, featuring work by Iris May · Jessie Farnsworth · Lucy Bronwen Davies · Vidhi Jangra · Lucy Nelson · Lucy Vardy · Sireen Martin
Germinator brings together practices that engage closely with material, memory and transformation — from sculptural ‘possible bodies’ and hybrid landscapes to works rooted in domestic residue and natural systems. Across painting, sculpture and installation, the exhibition explores how meaning is assembled, carried and reworked in a shifting present.
The project developed in response to the changing conditions of art education, offering recent graduates time, support and context as they move beyond study. Selected through an open call, the artists have spent the past year in dialogue and mentoring, working towards this exhibition as a shared point of arrival.
With thanks to Steve Swallow (Castlegate Gallery, Cumbria), Dan Howard-Birt (Kingsgate Project Space, London), David McCleavy (Humber Street Gallery, Hull) and Séamus McCormack (New Contemporaries / Commonage Projects) for their generous mentoring and support.
—
Tonight | 6–9pm All welcome
Exhibition: 1–10 May Open: Fri–Sun, 12–5pm
Haarlem Artspace The Red Lion Market Place Wirksworth DE4 4ET
Join Sarah Ogden — dried flower artist and founder of Horseshoe Flowers — for a Meet the Maker talk at Cromford Mill.
Based in the Derbyshire Dales, Sarah creates striking arrangements using preserved botanicals, reimagining dried floristry through colour, texture and sustainable design. With a background in fashion and training in New York, her work brings a fresh, modern sensibility to a traditionally overlooked medium.
At this talk, Sarah will share her journey into floristry, her process, and how sustainability and longevity sit at the heart of her practice — from bespoke commissions to her book Design and Style: Modern Dried Flowers.
🍷 Beer & wine provided 🎟 FREE — booking essential 🔗 Follow the link in bio to book
#DerbyshireMakes2026 #derbyshiremakes #floristry #driedflowers #sustainabledesign
