Fort Widley Guided Exploration

Fort Widley is hosting a guided exploration on Sunday 11 October, starting at 10:00am and running for about three hours. It's a hands-on morning that takes you across the fort's historic landscape, collecting textures, shapes and traces of the past. You'll turn those finds into cyanotype prints and rubbings, then head into a meeting room to develop the work and talk through what you've made.

The walk is part of Placed in a Fortress City: Memory & Making of Belonging, a programme run by the University of Portsmouth's Centre of Excellence for Heritage Innovation (CoE-HI). The Centre builds on its predecessor, the Heritage Hub, and looks at new ways to identify, interpret and preserve tangible and intangible heritage through co-creation and participatory practices. This session is one of a series of workshops the university is hosting as part of the city's Portsmouth100 celebrations.

It's family-friendly and requires no prior experience, so you don't need to be an artist to get involved. The whole thing is about looking at the fort in a different way—not just as a building, but as a collection of textures and shapes you can actually work with. You'll spend the first part of the morning out on the grounds, and the second half inside, developing your prints and reflecting on them.

Meet at the entrance of Fort Widley on Portsdown Hill Road, Cosham, PO6 3LS. It kicks off at 10:00am and takes around three hours. One important thing to keep in mind: only registered participants can access the fort on the day, so make sure you've signed up before you head over.