Ten artists from Skimstone Arts Young Artist Collective (YAC) spent a week exploring the themes of freedom, connecting and disconnecting.

During their time, the artists discovered interesting ways to explore the themes through art forms such as photography, sound and music, creative writing and performance. A theme, Connecting:Disconnecting, was created by Skimstone Arts YAC and they were later commissioned by Juice to produce art for an event in October called Our Time (From the Freedom City Event), based around positive change since Martin Luther King’s Speech at Newcastle University in 1967. Taking all three themes into consideration, the artists worked collaboratively to make pieces of art exploring concepts such as family and relationships, the refugee crisis and even exploring gender and connecting with our past selves.

Michaela, an artist working in sound and spoken word, said: “For me the residency was a worthwhile experience, it was good to be able to get a chance to work together and I’m looking forward to pushing my abilities further with the collaborative piece we are working on as it has time signatures and other aspects I’m not used to so it will be a learning experience.”

Emma, working in creative writing and visual art, said: “I really enjoyed the residency, it was great to spend time with people who I hadn’t spent much time with. It was really useful to try something new with the mix of photography and text in the piece I’ve been working on and get some advice on how to take photos – especially using manual focus.”