RACHAEL CLERKE
Working Model
Working Model is an idea for an alternative city. And we’re not talking 100 years in the future, or 50 years, or 10 years. Working Model is about how we might live, right here and right now, if we weren’t living like… this. The people creating and developing and physically building this city? Children.
The latest work from artist Rachael Clerke, in collaboration with adventure play organisation Woodland Tribe, Working Model explores what happens when you let children and their creativity lead, and entrust them with saws and hammers and wood to create their own space. The city will be at once tangible and solid constantly changing, inviting the public to interact with, build onto and even temporarily live within the space.
Working Model will challenge the idea that ‘adults know best’, or that our idea of ‘normal’ is correct or inevitable. Instead, by giving children the agency to build whatever they like, the project will explore the radical possibilities of realising eccentric ideas on a large scale.
Over eight weeks Rachael and a team of visiting artists will work with local school children to take over a warehouse space and make it their own. Workshops as part of Working Model will include themes of housing, death, decision-making and tradition.
For more information, commissioning and co-producing opportunities, please email matthew@mayk.org.uk
Image by Jack Offord.
