Located in Poplar, the Balfron Tower provides both residential housing and a dedicated community space for local groups to gather. Building on the success of last year's sessions with Men’s Cabin, we returned to host a new series of printmaking workshops. This time, we partnered with the Wild Women and Knit and Knitter groups, as well as the men, to create prints using recycled materials.
We hosted a series of eight eco-friendly art workshops to show participants how to transform everyday household waste into beautiful, affordable art. Throughout the sessions, we explored a variety of inventive techniques: etching and collagraphy with Tetra Pak cartons, monoprinting with plastic bags, nature-inspired Gelli printing, natural cyanotypes, and newspaper art inspired by Tom Phillips’s A Humument.
The workshops changed how the group looks at everyday rubbish. By turning household waste into beautiful pieces through the different printing methods, everyone walked away with affordable new skills and a fresh perspective on sustainability. It was great to see how seamlessly art, mental health support, and eco-awareness was blended together to bring people closer.
“
Huge thanks again for the workshop, thoroughly enjoyed by all and so good to do something completely different with the Wild Women”
Jayne, participant from the Wild Women
We were thrilled to see the positive impact from the feedback collected. Across the board, the programme provided a significant boost to everyone’s mental, physical, and social wellbeing. All participants reported improved mental health, with “feeling good” during the workshops emerging as the highest-rated aspect of the entire programme. While the physical demands of certain sessions varied, every participant also noted an improvement in their physical wellbeing and enjoyed the physical aspects of the workshops at least once.
Beyond personal wellbeing, the workshops fostered a beautiful sense of community and connection. Every attendee felt that the sessions offered a valuable chance to socialise and combat isolation. Almost all of our participants reported feeling a strong, increased sense of belonging within their local community as a direct result of the programme.
The sessions also sparked a wonderful wave of creativity and personal growth. Almost everyone left feeling inspired, having learned something new, and expressing an enthusiastic desire to attend more workshops in the future. While the belief that they could teach their new artistic skills to someone else started low in the early sessions, it steadily climbed throughout. We’re proud of the creativity and connection this project had, and grateful for the financial support from East End Community Foundation’s Community Grants Programme.
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