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Bow Skills workshop: building participatory art practices with Lydia Newman
Thursday 16th July 2026 , 6:00pm to 8:00pm
Are you interested in developing participatory practices and bringing your unique voices to art facilitation? Join multidisciplinary artist Lydia Newman for an interactive and reflective workshop to look at how you might bring participation into your art form.
Interdisciplinary artist and creative facilitator Lydia Newman will share insights into her participatory practice, exploring how audience interaction has shaped her work across performance, painting and soon to be public sculptural activations.
Through a combination of artist talk, discussion, and creative exercises, you will be invited to reflect on your own practices and consider new ways of bringing audiences into dialogue with your work. Together, we will explore participation not as a fixed methodology, but as a way of creating opportunities for exchange, collaboration, unexpected outcomes and shared meaning-making.
Drawing on examples from Lydia’s own work, the session will consider how artists can move beyond presenting work to audiences and instead create conditions for audiences to contribute to, influence and become part of the artwork itself.
In this workshop, you will:
- Learn about Lydia’s approach to participatory practice through examples from her artistic work.
- Reflect on your own practice through guided creative exercises, discussion and peer exchange.
- Develop ideas for incorporating participation into your work in ways that feel authentic to your interests and artistic intentions.
- Connect with other artists and practitioners interested in participation, collaboration and audience engagement.
This workshop is open to artists, creatives and practitioners who are curious about participatory approaches, whether you are completely new to the field or looking to deepen an existing practice.
This workshop will take place in the Courtyard at Bow Arts Trust, 183 Bow Road, London, E3 2SJ.
More about Lydia Newman
Lydia Newman is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans painting, sculpture, installation, live performance and creative facilitation. With over 15 years of participatory and socially engaged practice across the UK and internationally, her work explores how inherited histories, social structures and systems of survival shape the body, psyche and sense of self.
Her practice is deeply interconnected, with each medium feeding the other: images from live performances often appear in paintings, while forms, materials and themes from her paintings return through sculpture, workshops and performance. Her current body of work, In the Wake of Ruin (2024–ongoing), brings together painting, The Sand Suit – her wearable sculpture, live performance and participatory practice to explore weight, entanglement, rewilding and transformation.
Newman completed an MA in Performance Making at Goldsmiths, University of London in 2021, having previously studied Drama at Queen Mary, University of London. She was runner-up for the East London Art Prize 2025 and was awarded the New Emergence Art Prize 2025.
Recent performances and exhibitions include the East London Art Prize exhibition, Nunnery Gallery (2025); Sand Suit 2.0, Nunnery Gallery (2025); Sand Suit 3.0, Whitechapel Gallery as part of the East London Art Prize Gallery Takeover (2025); Coercive Contortion, The TATE INSTITUTE (2024); and The Renovation Revisited, All Hail Disordia, The Anatomy Theatre, Summerhall (2023). Newman was also a performer in Lygia Clark’s Corpo Coletivo and Elastic Net, Whitechapel Gallery (2024).
About Bow Skills
Bow Arts seeks to support creative professionals at all stages of their careers. In 2015, Bow Arts launched Bow Skills in response to an artist survey which showed over 90% of practicing artists find it useful to receive further support outside formal education.
Bow Skills is a dynamic and relevant programme of Continuing Professional Development (CPD) which is informed by an artist steering group and open to all creative practitioners across London. The programme of talks, panel discussions, new skills labs and peer crits is open to all, with concession rates available to students, over 65s, under 18s, Bow Arts artists and key workers.
Access Information
The Bow Arts Trust office has step-free access throughout from street level, including to the accessible toilet, and is service animal friendly. This venue does not have a hearing loop system. Accessible parking is not available on-site.
If you have any questions regarding accessibility at this venue or event, would like to make us aware of any access requirements that you have in advance of visiting, or would like this information in an alternate format including Easy Read, please email nunnery@bowarts.com or call 020 8980 7774 (Ext. 3)
Access requirements could include things like providing equipment, services or support (e.g. information in Easy Read, speech to text software, additional 1:1 support), adjusting workshop timings (e.g. more break times), adjustments to the event space (e.g. making sure you have a seat near the entrance) or anything else you can think of!
Transport Information
Opening hours: Mon-Fri, 9am-5pm
Address: Bow Arts Trust, 183 Bow Road, London, E3 2SJ
Nearest stations: Bow Road (District and Hammersmith and City lines) is a 6-minute walk away, and Bow Church (DLR) is a 3-minute walk away.
Bus: 205, 25, 425, A8, D8, 108, 276, 488 and 8 all service the surrounding area.
Bike: Bicycle parking is located at Bow Church Station. The nearest Santander Cycles docking station is at Bow Church Station.
