Multi-sensory arts session with Turner Prize nominated artist Catherine Yass

Hello everyone!
This activity is suitable for young people aged from 8 - 16 and for anyone that is passionate about art!
We would love you to join us for this incredible multi sensory arts session led by the incredible artist Catherine Yass.
These sessions will be part of the Turning the Tide programme led by the Thames Festival Trust. Catherine will be leading a workshop where our young people will be getting involved in art themed around the river Thames. Looking at colours, smells, sounds, light and impressions.
Art created at these sessions will also be displayed as part of a month long riverside exhibition in September 2026!
Please do sign up and if you have any questions regarding the session do feel free to reach out. Please read further information about the project and the sessions below:
Turning the Tide is a major cultural engagement programme by the Turner Prize-nominated artist Catherine Yass in partnership with Thames Festival Trust, disabled-led theatre company Graeae and the City of London Culture Service.
The project has recently been shortlisted for the prestigious Art Explora Académie des beaux-arts European Award, the leading European Award championing new dialogues between the arts and audiences. Catherine Yass’ own personal and family experience caring for her daughter who has cerebral palsy is part of the driving force behind the project’s core objective to turn the tide on perceptions of disabled people, celebrating them and making visible people who are often marginalised in public space. Catherine will bring this lived experience to work dynamically and sensitively across the four core elements of the project: Installation, Education Programme, Exhibition and Film.
● Installation - A major site-specific video installation of disabled performers from Graeae Young Company, projected over the Thames onto the old Blackfriars Railway Bridge columns. This will be a free public art-work centring disability in an iconic central London public space, to an anticipated audience of over 10,000. The films will be created through a workshop rehearsal process at Graeae studios, exploring agency in representation and developing the young performers confidence and skills. The installation will be live for four nights in September 2026.
● Education Programme: a series of visual art creative education film & photography workshops over 10 months led by Catherine Yass, for disabled/ SEND children, young people and adults. The project centres disabled people supporting them to develop new art skills, increase confidence, pride and a sense of creative ownership and social empowerment. The workshops offer them the opportunity to express their experience of how disability is perceived in public space, and support them to create artworks that represent how they see themselves, ensuring that their creativity and ambition is supported and developed.
● Exhibition: Together with Catherine, the workshop participants will create artworks to be shown as part of a month-long riverside exhibition sited in a prominent public space in central London, a month-long, free riverside exhibition for Totally Thames festival in September 2026, in an area of high daily footfall, to an anticipated audience of 390,000, fostering creative pride & boosting confidence for the participants. The exhibition will also feature documentation of the workshop process by Deaf photographer Becky Bailey. ● Film: Created by Catherine & renowned videographer Hugo Glendinning, the film will be the culmination of Turning the Tide, an artwork in itself, extending the legacy and impact of the project, screened in museums and galleries in 2027, with huge scope for international touring to film festivals and galleries.
Turning the Tide workshops with RSBC Initial workshops outline
Location: RSBC and site visit to Thames Workshop
format: 2 workshops, each with the same format, allowing 2 groups of RSBC community to take part and for young people to attend both workshops if they wish. Each workshop will be 4hours long (including a 45min break for lunch).
These workshops will engage with the Thames river as a colourful, rippling, moving, light-filled, deep, mysterious body of water. In the morning session, the group will visit the river with artist and workshop leader Catherine Yass, gathering sounds, smells, colours, light impressions and using words and sound recordings. Back at RSBC, the group will bring together all the impressions and discuss how they can be presented, possibly recording voice and sound and holding coloured acetate to the light.
The videos will be projected around the room and onto individuals. The process of of projections will be documented through photos and video. The results will be shown in a Riverside Exhibition for the month of September 2026, during the Thames Festival. Parts of the workshops will be documented (photography and film) as part of the creation of Catherine’s artwork film about Turning the Tide. Workshop participants are welcome to opt in or out of being documented (and if opting in will need to sign relevant permissions and release forms).