People Make Places: A Fortnight of Creative Community Workshops in the Heart of Kingston

Over the past two weeks, we’ve had the immense joy of transforming Kingston Market House in Kingston Market Square into a vibrant gathering place for creativity, conversation and connection. As part of The Community Brain’s ‘60 Years of Fashion in Kingston’ project, we ran a fortnight of affordable (or free) creative workshops for all ages, celebrating Kingston’s fashion legacy while reimagining how our public spaces can serve the people who live around them.

Some of the workshop highlights

• Cyanotype & Crochet with Daisy Bow - We ran two cyanotype workshops for both adults and kids, and one crochet workshop where the attendees explored cyanotype printing and crochet in a relaxed, multi-generational environment led by content creator, crafter and Kingston University PhD researcher Daisy Bow.

  
  

• Pole Ninjas Life Drawing - An energising life drawing session hosted by Shepperton-based pole studio, Pole Ninjas, whose creativity and movement brought their performances into a whole new light for the onlooking artists.

  
  

• Upcycled Crown and Bracelet making workshop with Kjersti Smith - Children and parents got hands-on with upcycled materials to create regal accessories inspired by Kingston's fashion history to wear to the Athel’s Town Saxon Fayre in Canbury Gardens, Kingston. Another workshop included reusing cardboard and cloth scraps to make beautiful bracelets for kids and adults alike.

  
  

• Basic stitching and embroidery workshop with Dr Elena Catalano - An introduction to stitching and embroidery workshop, teaching the attendees a basic life skill that we often forget about until we really need it. The workshop encouraged mending our clothes and other textiles. 

  
  

• Ariadne’s thread with Magdalena Gwovatska — Magdalena has been conducting embroidery workshops since the war in Ukraine began, initially working with Polish and Ukrainian members who came together to create a beautiful tapestry by a Ukrainian artist. It now involves lots of other nationalities as well and has travelled far and wide, collaborating with many other community groups and art forms.

These aren’t just workshops

They were moments of placemaking. Not about making a place ‘look good’ but about making it work well: for families, young creatives, isolated adults, and everyday neighbours.

In an age where we often connect more through screens than faces, these workshops created an opportunity to:

• Encourage hands-on learning by building creative confidence

• Offer low-cost, local activities during school holidays

• Foster useful connections between residents, artists, and organisations

• Turn underused venues into welcoming community spaces

They also gave local creatives like Daisy Bow, Kjersti Smith, Dr Elena Catalano and Pole Ninjas a platform to share their skills, shift perceptions, and show how creativity exists in many forms.

We received wonderful feedback

“The workshop is an excellent idea to bring the community together. Children can learn how to be creative with each other, likewise adults. I would like this to continue for the best.”

“Despite the everyday problems of life, this is a great opportunity to connect and share. For children, one of the core skills is to learn focus and communication, this workshop increased their level of focus while blending it with the sweet world of imagination.”

“My husband and I had a great time. It was fun, relaxing, sociable, and extremely well-prepared. It felt accessible and easy to find, right in the heart of Kingston.”

“Wonderful workshop. Kids were so engaged. It’s great to show different types of art beyond paint and playdoh.”

“Thank you for organising this lovely workshop for the local community, to encourage arts and crafts for all ages.”

What’s next: Nourishing connection through food with Kitchen Roots Community

As we reflect on the joy, creativity and connection sparked through our craft workshops in Kingston, we’re turning our attention to another vital ingredient of placemaking: food.

At the heart of this work is Kitchen Roots Community, our community food project based at Baking Ideas in Tolworth Station, where we’ve been cooking up free and affordable meals to local residents, many of whom are facing food insecurity, isolation or rising costs of living. The Lunch service takes place in Chessington at St. Mary’s centre every Thursday.

Led by our brilliant nutritionist Manny Epton, Kitchen Roots Community has done more than just serve meals. It has helped bring neighbours around the same table. It has’s sparked friendships. It has’s offered relief, conversation and warmth at the end of a hard week.

We’ve seen first-hand how sharing food can restore dignity, invite learning, and build bridges between people who might never have crossed paths otherwise.

Now, we want to grow that work.

A Community kitchen with creative ambitions

With your support, we’re ready to open up our kitchen space to offer:

• Hands-on cooking and baking workshops for families, individuals, schools and businesses

• Supper clubs that celebrate diverse cultures and shared stories

• Affordable catering for private and corporate events (to help us fund our free meals)

• Wellbeing-focused sessions combining food, health, and creativity

• Corporate team-building workshops that give back while bringing people together

Everything we do stays rooted in what matters: affordability, accessibility, community care, and creativity.

We are looking for funded Partnerships to keep this work alive

Our free meal service is made possible by the support of partners who believe, like we do, that everyone deserves access to good food and a welcoming space to belong. But to sustain and grow this work, we need funded partnerships from councils, organisations, businesses and individuals who see food as more than just nourishment, but as infrastructure for community resilience.

Partnering with us means helping:

• Keep free and low-cost meals available to those who need them most

• Create real training and employment pathways for local people in a supportive environment

• Deliver joyful, hands-on events that bring life to local places and forgotten places

• Reimagine the role of kitchens, not just as places to cook, but places to connect, heal and create

We want to keep this energy going. We believe people make places. And when we design for human connection, creativity, and inclusivity, our spaces can live and breathe like never before.

We look forward to using more under-utilised venues for our creative programming and inviting more people to get involved, so we can continue to help Kingston grow as a neighbourhood that belongs to everyone.

We’ve done this before. We know how to manage, coordinate and bring the right people together to deliver powerful, practical, and deeply human events while still keeping them playful and fun!

If you’d like to collaborate, commission a workshop, sponsor a meal, or explore a partnership, we’d love to talk.

Let’s nourish our neighbourhoods one meal, one moment, one workshop at a time.

contact@thecommunitybrain.org

@communitybrain