Art Journal Project participants have now moved into the Graduate Programme, but before we share more about this, we are looking back on their year of creative exploration with Liz McQueen. Now in its third year, the project has continued to grow in both scale and reach – this year, we welcome our largest and most geographically diverse cohort yet, with 30 participants joining from across Dumfries & Galloway. It has been a pleasure to bring together these individuals who all come from a wide range of life experiences.
This year’s Art Journal Project participants brought a mix of curiosity, openness and determination. Across 32 weeks, they embraced everything from doodling and mark making to working with clay, natural pigments and collaborative processes, all supported by guest artists and peer mentors. A strong sense of community emerged very quickly, and strangers soon became friends.
At its heart, Art Journal Project is a space where there is no pressure to “get it right” and creativity becomes a tool for reconnecting with self. Over time, participants not only developed their artistic practice but also grew in confidence, finding their voice and learning to trust their instincts.
In this Q&A, Liz reflects on a year shaped by play, risk-taking and connection, sharing her insights into a project that continues to evolve as a vital and uplifting creative community!
This was your third year leading the Art Journal Project – what felt distinctive about this cohort?
This was our most geographically spread cohort yet, with participants joining from across Dumfries and Galloway – from Stranraer out west, to Eskdalemuir on the eastern border. AJP is self-referral, but places are given on the basis of the barriers participants face – rural isolation, caring responsibilities, mental or physical health, neurodivergence, low income, often a combination of several. We have links with community mental health services, Carers Centre and other local partners, and some referrals come through them. This year we were oversubscribed, and the cohort reflected the real breadth of need and experience that the project exists to serve.
You welcomed your biggest group yet. How did having thirty participants shape the dynamic this year?
Thirty participants is a lot to bring together, and so the project launch ‘Welcome Session’ is designed to get everyone on the same page right from the start. It can be overwhelming meeting so many new people in a new place, but we hand out sketchbooks and materials, there’s tea and cake, and curiosity tends to take over. I lead everyone through some doodle exercises to break in the new sketchbooks and fill a few of those blank pages. By the time participants leave, no one is a stranger. After that they have a few weeks to settle in, and by the first Zoom session they’re raring to go. Attendance at workshops has been really strong this year – it’s been a genuinely mixed group, different backgrounds, different reasons for being there. The enthusiasm and energy was really high, friendships formed quickly, and you could tell participants were genuinely excited to see where the project would take them.
Were there particular moments in the reflection sessions that really stayed with you?
The reflection sessions are some of my favourites in the whole programme. The first one comes halfway through, just before the Part 1 trip, and it’s about opening up how we look at and talk about art. We use a writing exercise with a painting by an outsider artist – a bold, scribbly blue abstraction – and participants who initially dismiss it as scribbles gradually find their way into it and start articulating what it makes them feel. It’s a real lightbulb moment – they give themselves permission to share their impressions, to have an opinion about art, often for the first time.
By reflection 2 at the end of the 32 weeks, participants turn that same lens on their own work and journey. Some had really struggled with the more experimental elements early on – the doodling, the mark-making felt pointless to them. Then the penny drops. It’s about play, about figuring out what materials do, about experimentation for its own sake. That’s actually where the name came from for the end of project exhibition -Press Play captures exactly that moment of activation. The Creative Compass activity at the end asks participants to map where they’ve been and point towards where they want to go next. Seeing that done thoughtfully by participants who have shown up week after week and put the work in – that’s when you can see how far they’ve come.
How did you see participants’ confidence shift over the course of this term?
Some of it I’ve touched on already, but the shift over 32 weeks can be quite striking. It starts at the welcome session – most participants arrive nervous – and by the end they’re sharing work and reflections in their Facebook group without hesitation, warts and all. The good stuff and the mistakes and accidents too, but with an awareness that they will try again or do something differently next time. You see it in their willingness to try things outside their comfort zone, to turn up to a new workshop they’ve never done before. Some go on into the graduate programme and keep building from there.
The work itself changes too – from tentative to genuinely bold. Watching that happen is inspiring for my own practice, honestly. It’s infectious. It reminds me to take risks, to practise what I preach – whether that’s colour, materials or unconventional approaches.
One of the loveliest things is hearing from family members at the end of project exhibition – telling me their loved one seems happier, or more like their old selves. That’s lovely to hear.
The first in-person workshop with Helen Walsh and Ruth Elizabeth Jones focused on shaping materials – what impact did that have on the group?
This was the first time the group had been together since the welcome session, and the buzz in the room was palpable – participants chatting, showing each other their sketchbooks, reacquainting. There was real excitement and energy to get together and try something new.
We had two rooms, two artists, two materials. Helen Walsh led collaborative drawing and then 3D paper vessels – tearing, folding, stitching. Ruth Elizabeth Jones worked with clay – surface texture on tiles and a goddess votive. Groups rotated between the two, each material informing the other. At the end we did a show and tell – everyone walking round looking at all the work that had been made that afternoon. A great moment. The work ended up in the Press Play exhibition at the end of the year.
I’m always a little nervous ahead of the first workshop – it’s been a few months since the welcome session, you’re never quite sure how it will land or who will show up. But they did, almost all of them, and threw themselves into techniques they’d never tried without hesitation.
The natural pigments workshop and sessions with guest artists brought new techniques into the mix. How did participants respond to those creative challenges?
The natural pigments session with Old Mill Arts is a highlight every year – Lucy and Ed have a way of making the whole thing feel like alchemy. This time we were at Old School Thornhill, a beautiful sensitively repurposed community space and a new venue for us, at the end of September which felt exactly right for making gall and acorn ink and grinding warm earth pigments into rich paint.
Martha Schofield and Elizabeth Stephenson both joined us as guest artists this year. Martha was an AJP participant in 2023 so having her come back to lead a session was a proud moment – one of our own. Elizabeth is an experienced community-based artist who has been a supporter of our work from the start, and brought mark-making approaches rooted in her stitch-based practice. Their sessions came early in the programme – Martha in May, Elizabeth a fortnight later – so they were foundational, setting the tone for how participants approached materials for the rest of the year.
The trip to Kirkcudbright has been described as feeling more like a road trip than a formal session – what did that say about how the group had grown?
We had a sunny day, peer mentors came along and participants car shared. It just felt relaxed. We went to Kirkcudbright Galleries to see the Scottish Landscape Awards, then sat in the park to talk about what we’d seen, then over to Vintage Printworks where Phil gave a brilliant demonstration of the old presses and equipment. Finished with tea and cake.
By that point in the programme the group had found its feet and it showed – everyone just got along. That’s what you’re working towards really, that sense that it’s just a group of participants who enjoy each other’s company, and the creative bit is woven into that rather than separate from it.
Participants shared their work publicly at Press Play, with some stewarding the exhibition. How significant was that step?
For the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival we usually display a patchwork of sketchbook photos in the outpatient corridor at DGRI. This year one of our 2024 graduates, Heather Bestel, had a full solo show in that space – a really significant body of work documenting the twelve months following her CPTSD diagnosis. We were incredibly proud of her. It felt like the right moment to try something different for AJP, so we took the work into town – into the Green Room at The Standard, Midsteeple Quarter, as a pop-up as part of SMHAF. We showed the work made in the workshops: a collaborative piece made from handmade paper, yarn and pigment, clay votives, and an installation by the OutPost Arts Collective. What was really lovely was seeing participants come along and volunteer in the space, talking to members of the public about the project and what they’d made. It was a new step for the project and we learned a lot from it.
You’ve spoken about participants ‘repurposing’ themselves or reconnecting with a visible, emotional part of themselves – what does that look like in practice?
A lot of participants come to AJP feeling quite invisible – whether that’s through caring responsibilities, loss, a diagnosis, or just the general weight of life. The project gives them a space to set that aside and make time for themselves. Through meeting new participants, trying new things, working with materials and mark-making in ways that don’t require words, they start to reconnect with who they are and find new ways to express that. One participant described it as finding “the visible and emotional part” of themselves.
I genuinely believe AJP isn’t about teachers and students – it’s about sharing. Everyone is on the same creative path, just at different stages. Participants bring as much to the project as any artist or facilitator does. I learn from them constantly. What connects us all is a love of art and making.
As you progress through the Graduate Project, what are you most excited to build on from this term?
We’ve just finished working with Vicky Inam through January and February – prompts, imagery and storytelling to keep creativity sparking through the darkest months. Now we’re moving into drawing in more depth with Steven Burnie and Bea Last, culminating in something genuinely exciting – a life drawing session led by George Donald RSA, celebrating the Royal Scottish Academy’s 200th anniversary.
To everyone who took part in AJP this year – thank you for being brave enough to trust the process. I hope you keep making, keep exploring. And for those continuing into the graduate project – I’m genuinely excited to see what you’ll do next.