Creative workshop in which participants bring a personal archive to turn their stories into visual narratives through collage, cyanotype printing and rubbings.
Placed in a Fortress City runs at Fort Cumberland on Saturday 7 November, a creative workshop that asks you to bring something of your own to the table. It's run by the Centre of Excellence for Heritage Innovation at the University of Portsmouth, with lead artists Evagelia Hagikalfa and Thaïs Verhasselt guiding the session. The whole thing lasts about three hours, and it's part of the Portsmouth100 celebrations.
The core idea is simple: you bring a personal archive — a photograph, an object, a memory, or an article linked to the fort — and work with it. From there, you'll use collage, cyanotype printing and rubbings to turn those personal stories into new visual narratives. It's not about being an artist; it's about taking something you already have and seeing what it becomes when you put it on paper.
There's a specific local thread running through it, too. The project draws on Portsmouth's D-Day heritage, like the temporary Mulberry Harbours built across southern England to aid the 1944 landings. The Centre of Excellence for Heritage Innovation grew out of the city's Heritage Hub and works with people to find new ways of identifying, interpreting and preserving tangible and intangible heritage through co-creation — this is that in practice, taking a piece of the city's history and letting people build their own thing around it.
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Registration is essential, as only registered participants can gain access to the forts on the day. If you're planning to go, get your name down early. It's at Fort Cumberland, Portsmouth PO4 9LD, on Saturday 7 November, running for about three hours.
