Behind the scenes with Trena Cox Community Workshop Facilitator

My family moved to Chester in 1993 and to be honest I didn’t really know anyone here. In the first week I was walking near Northgate with my two daughters, one aged three years and the other just two months old, and I guess that I was probably looking pretty shattered, a tiny baby and moving into a new home can have that effect. A woman approached me. ‘You’re new here,’ she said, before going on to tell me about the babysitting circle where parents exchanged curtain rings in exchange for babysitting. ‘You’ll need a night out,’ she said, and she was right.

Well, that small, kind interaction was one that has stuck with me. Thirty years later, many of those women, and men, who were trusted to look after each other’s children have remained firm friends. I have always valued the fantastic community spirit in Chester.

Like other parents of young children, I found Chester Cathedral to be a magical place for a picnic, a place to run around, to make daisy chains and to toss a coin into the Water of Life Sculpture in the Cloister Garden whilst making a wish. Inside we looked at the elephant figure in the Quire and obviously the beautiful stained glass windows, little knowing that one day I’d be creating the Community Workshops and my eldest daughter, an established stained glass artist, would be designing and making a stained glass panel for the Trena Cox: Reflections 100 Project as envisioned by Aleta Doran.

The Community Workshop challenge was to engage with a wide range of people and start a conversation about the work of Trena Cox whilst creating work in response to her stained-glass panels. If you look closely at her leaded ‘lights’ it is apparent that nature is a key feature of her work. Her images of landscapes, trees and rivers are populated with colourful birds, tiny mice, fish and vibrant butterflies. The emphasis of the workshops too was on nature and how being creative, especially as part of a group, can be a powerful tool for well-being. I wanted to find groups who would be willing to create collaborative work using different crafts, for example wire work, weaving, felting or ‘stained glass/tissue’ windows, inspired by Trena’s work. So, there was the challenge.

One advantage I had in this task was that I have worked in a numerous community and workplace settings in the local area. Having a background in both Art and English, Primary Schools to Higher Education plus community centres and charities, meant that my career has always been educational, academic but always creative. Having good local community relationships meant that I was quickly able to start to plan who to invite to the workshops and unfortunately many more could have been included.

Workshops have taken place with participants from:

• St Werburgh’s RC School

• Fallen Angels Dance Theatre

• Theatre Porto Family Hangout

• Chester Sexual Abuse Support Service (CSASS)

• Storyhouse Elders

• Tomorrow’s Women

• Fifteen wonderful women of Chester have ‘volunteered’ to each paint a piece of a collaborative jigsaw.

Thanks to all the participants who have taken part in the workshops and to the people who have made these workshops possible by allowing me to collaborate with their schools and communities. Also, thanks to the brilliant technicians at the University of Chester.

The culmination of the community workshops can be seen in the exhibition from Monday 7 October – Friday 8 November 2024.

Clare Owens is our Community Workshop Facilitator for the Trena Cox: Reflections 100 exhibition. Clare's role is funded by the UK Shared Prosperity Fund.