This is your sun

Through a series of workshops, artist Laura Onions worked with the Bangladeshi Women’s Association at Tipton Muslim Centre on This is you sun, a printmaking project that encourages a re-framing of our thinking towards the sun as an energy-giving entity.

This is your sun is part of Multistory’s cultural programme that invites Sandwell residents to explore how we might build environmentally resilient communities through our local, natural and urban environments. The project takes inspiration from workshops we did last year with the young girls’ group at the Centre where we invited them to design, print and handwrite postcards advocating for the preservation of green spaces and there was one postcard with a painted image of the sun on a black sky with the reverse reading: ‘Yaseen. this is your sun; you own it’.

In this year’s workshops, again working with the girls’ group, the focus was on this sense of a youthful ownership of the environment around us and they examined what energy means to them and made collaborative drawings that track their daily energy levels and how this can be connected to the sun. These drawings, alongside photographs taken by the group, were then used to create circular cyanotypes – a printing technique that uses sunlight to create an image. The prints reflect the group’s exploration of how energy is held and used between us and their feelings towards the climate landscape they have inherited.

“I have learnt how to put emotions on paper and how to use a camera but, most of all, I have loved having fun with my friends.”

This is your sun continues Laura’s interests in how ‘making together’ resonates with our environment, deepening relationships with urban conservation and how accessing this creatively can support and preserve green spaces for the future.