This year, Islington and Tower Hamlets boroughs are paired together to work with Artists in Residence, Linden K McMahon and Cora Sehgal Cuthbert, for SPINE Festival 2023. Below are details on how to contact participant libraries and more information about the artists. We’ll be adding to this page later in March with events that are happening during the festival.

Islington

Website: see what’s on
Twitter: @Islingtonlibs
Facebook: @IslingtonLibraries

Events

SPIN Show | Fri 14 Apr – 10.30-11.15 with Desree, Adam Kammerling and Antoinette Brooks
Location: Lewis Carroll Library, 166 Copenhagan Street, N1 0ST

Tower Hamlets

Website: see what’s on.
Twitter: @ideastores
Facebook: @THLHA

Events

Sat 15 Apr – 14.30-1600
Kindness Dominoes with Meng Ni Beh

Being kind has the ultimate domino effect and one small act of kindness can inspire people around you to do the same. Kindness Dominoes – Easter Egg Project is a Children Art Project, part of Spine Festival 2023. It invites children to make their kindness pledge in a personalised bookmark and share it with their family and friends.

In this project, Meng will share fun drawing techniques with children to create their personalised easteregg kindness messages. Small act of kindness can start a domino effect and this is a great opportunityto practice kindness to yourself and those around you, making the world a brighter place
Location: Idea Store Whitechapel 321 Whitechapel Rd E1 1BU

About Meng Ni Beh
Meng Ni Beh is a London based artist and her main sources of inspiration come from familiar everyday surroundings and family activities. As an artist and a mother, she enjoys working with families and children to encourage co-creative processes to enhance a sense of connection between family members and to promote well-being. For more information about her work, please visit her website: www.mengnibeh.com

Sat 19 Apri – 14.30-16.00 and Sat 6 May – 14.30-16.00
Spine Festival Kindness Workshop with Linden MacMahon & Cora Cuthbert

Our fantastic artists in residence have woven the theme KINDNESS to create a workshop about caring for ourselves and nature as one and the same. We’ll do a drawing activity and a writing activity, and then create mini zines which we will then hang from our KINDNESS tree!
Location: Idea Store Whitechapel 321 Whitechapel Rd E1 1BU
Link: www.ideastore.co.uk/our-services/children-and-families/spine

SPIN Show: Fri 14 Apr – 10.39-11.15 with Desree, Adam Kammerling and Jay Sandhu
Location: Idea Store Whitechapel 321 Whitechapel Rd E1 1BU

Artists in Residence

Linden K McMahon

Artform: poetry/spoken word

Linden is a poet, performer, fiction writer and arts facilitator – they write about our connections with ecology, dreams for the future, ideas about belonging and family, and queer joy!

They have been an artist in residence at Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park, created a trail of poems and stories through the community gardens of Bethnal Green with the Live Art Development Agency, and they currently run creative writing clubs for young people at Ministry of Stories in Hoxton. They also like baking elaborate desserts, making pots, and reading sci-fi novels.

Connect with Linden:
Website lindenkatherinemcmahon.org

Cora Sehgal Cuthbert

Artform: photography/visual arts

Cora Sehgal Cuthbert is a London based multi-disciplinary artist. Her work observes the connections between the personal, the cultural and a universal humanity/spirituality, with the aim of finding the extraordinary in the ordinary. She works across several media including photography, sculpture, video and text. While the form of each work may change, the objective remains to explore moments of magic within the everyday.

Connect with Cora:
Website corasehgalcuthbert.com