Workshop Examples.
This page offers a snapshot of past workshops, sharing examples of creative processes, materials and approaches. Each session is designed to encourage experimentation, observation and making, showing a different way of engaging people with materials and ideas.
Workshops can be adapted or developed for your setting, from schools and galleries to community groups or creative teams.
Printmaking Workshops.
Play-Doh Texture Prints
Relief Printing using everyday textures
Summary: A playful, tactile workshop exploring surface and texture through printmaking. Participants use Play-Doh to capture raised textures and translate them into two-dimensional prints.
Learning Aims: Observation · Sensory awareness · Translating 3D to 2D.
Outcomes: A series of detailed prints that can be developed into zines or visual narratives.
Adaptability: Works across age groups; encourages experimentation and careful looking.
Screen-printed Textiles
Tote Bag Screen-printing with Archive Graphics.
Summary: Inspired by historical graphics and illustration from the M&S Archive, participants create their own screen-printed tote bags.
Learning Aims: Design awareness · Understanding print and manufacturing processes · Experimentation with composition and branding.
Outcomes: A series of printed tote bags that translate historical imagery into personal, shareable artworks; extending the archive experience and encouraging creative connection with heritage collections.
Adaptability: Accessible for all ages and abilities; encourages playful exploration of design and history through making.
Images: M&S Archive - Totes Workshop using archive images.
Drawing Workshops.
Mark Making and Textures
Working with alternative tools for drawing.
Images: MMU BA (Hons) Textiles in Practice - Level 4 student workshop.
Summary: Participants create their own drawing tools from found materials (twigs, seed heads, and everyday objects) then experiment to see what marks, patterns, and textures emerge.
Learning Aims: Creative experimentation · Observation · Exploring abstraction · Material awareness.
Outcomes: Unique drawings and textured surfaces that can be developed further. Great as a warm up exercise or to develop surfaces for collage, illustration, or surface pattern design.
Adaptability: Engaging and accessible for all ages; encourages curiosity, hands-on discovery, and a deeper connection with materials.
Print : Cut : Paste
Paper-based image making with Monoprint and Collage.
Summary: This workshop introduces simple monoprinting techniques to create textured and patterned papers. Participants then cut, arrange and layer these prints to develop collaged illustrations or abstract compositions.
Learning Aims: Experimental monoprinting · Texture, pattern and colour exploration · Collage as a method for constructing images.
Outcomes: A collection of monoprints and collaged works demonstrating creative process, layering, and inventive image-making.
Adaptability: Highly adaptable for any visual theme or context. Levelled learning from playful exploration with children to structured illustration and design projects for older learners.
Pattern and Repeat Workshops.
Relief Print: Tesselating Repeat Tiles
Reinterpreting Archive Fashion Prints
Summary: Drawing inspiration from fashion prints in the M&S Archive, this workshop explores how historic motifs can be reimagined through hands-on printmaking. Participants isolate and simplify archival imagery before developing their own relief prints using linocut, experimenting with repeat structures, layering and colour overprinting.
Learning Aims: Archival research · Pattern development · Relief printmaking · Colour and repeat design.
Outcomes: A collection of linocut tiles and printed sheets showing motif development, colour play and repeat pattern exploration.
Adaptability: Accessible for beginners with scope for advanced design exploration; adaptable outcomes from playful pattern-making to more refined textile-inspired prints.
Images: M&S Archive Lino-cut Workshop.
Colour Workshops.
Colour Theory and Palette Building
Colour relationships, meaning and preferences.
Summary: This workshop investigates the principles of colour theory, drawing on teachings from Joseph Albers and contemporary colour research.
Learning Aims: Colour mixing and relationships · Understanding colour meaning and semiotics (symbolism) · Confident application of colour palettes in creative practice.
Outcomes: Participants leave with practical knowledge of colour theory, a clearer sense of personal colour preferences, and confidence in using colour to enhance their own creative work.
Adaptability: Ideal for adults and older young people; adaptable for design and creative contexts.
Natural Dye for Textiles
Extracting and working with natural colour on fabric.
Summary: Participants extract colour from plants, berries and vegetables, working with mordants to fix and alter tones, and apply dyes to natural fibre fabrics to create unique samples.
Learning Aims: Material awareness · Sustainable making · Colour theory · Textile experimentation · Safe handling and technical recording.
Outcomes: A collection of dyed fabric samples showing colour variation, layering and tone control, alongside documented recipes and notes.
Adaptability: Ideal for adults and older young people; adaptable for community, education or creative industry contexts.
Ideas-led Workshops.
Stimulus beyond Sight
Using touch to inspire marks and visual interpretation.
"The human organism is an open, breathing membrane in continual contact
with its surroundings.”
(Lupton, E. & Lipps, A. (eds.) (2018) The Senses: Design Beyond Vision).
Summary: Inspired by the above text; this workshop investigates drawing through touch and sensation rather than sight alone. Using haptic techniques, participants engage directly with materials, textures and space, making marks that reflect the ongoing exchange between body and environment.
Learning Aims: Tactile awareness · Risk-taking in mark-making · Exploring the body’s role in artistic expression.
Outcomes: Drawings that capture sensory engagement and embodied perception, deepening understanding of how materials and space interact with the body.
Adaptability: Ideal for adults and older young people; can be adapted for schools, galleries, or creative industry contexts.
Something is Nothing : Nothing is Something
Exploring form, tone and perception through light and shadow.
"We find beauty not in the thing itself but in the patterns of shadows, the light and the darkness, that one thing against another creates… Were it not for shadows, there would be no beauty.”
(In Praise of Shadows, Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, 1933).
Summary: Inspired by Jun’ichirō Tanizaki’s writings on light and shadow, this workshop invites participants to explore how absence and presence can generate form. Using simple paper constructions, they investigate the poetic and visual potential of shadows before translating these ephemeral shapes into experimental drawings.
Learning Aims: Observation · Translating 3D to 2D · Experimentation across media · Exploring meaning through material and light.
Outcomes: A series of drawings developed from shadow projections.
Adaptability: Works well across learning levels; bridges literature, philosophy, and visual art through a hands-on, reflective process; tapping into mindful drawing approaches.
Images: LAU BA (Hons) Textile Design - Level 5 student workshop.
Want to chat workshops?
Get in touch to discuss possible taught sessions and how we might work together.
If you'd prefer to send a direct email please send your message to hello@carolinepratt.co.uk