At the end of 2019, inspired by some rather wonderful 15th Century atlases housed within York Minster Archives and taking inspiration from our beautiful city, we started a Community Art project entitled “The Place Where I Live”. We asked our tutors to complete projects in class based upon this theme, and planned one ‘small’ group piece, where we asked local people to design a small section of our map of York.

Sadly, COVID hit after just one workshop, and lockdown forced us to pause our plans. As it became clear that we would be in this situation for a while, we tentatively moved forward by meeting in very small groups, over Zoom, and slowly chipping away at the city and surrounding areas.

Much of this piece has been created in lockdown. Participants were sent an A5 piece of watercolour paper, with roads and rivers lightly traced onto it. We asked everyone to maintain these features, and shared some resources to give people ideas, but encouraged everyone to be as inventive as possible in terms of the imagery and symbols they used.

The rest as they say… was up to them!

In celebration of the 250th anniversary of the Ancient Society of Florists, the oldest florists’ society still in existence in the world, a new festival, Bloom!, took place in historic York in 2018. The new four day festival, celebrating horticulture and flowers in York, marked the milestone with events and installations right across the city.

In response to Bloom! York Learning created flowers in a wide range of media including recycled to create a flower wall at Explore York Libraries.

PolliNation was 2017’s Community Art Project, inspired by microscopic images of pollen and created from over 300 individual hexagons. The project was part of Telling the Bees, a 12 month project bringing drama, design, storytelling, media arts and the maker movement together to explore playful, immersive ways to understand environment issues and share future visions about bees and bookkeeping.

PolliNation was a partnership project between York Learning, Explore York, University of York and supported by Telling the Bees project partners – Sheffield University, Lancaster University and Grow Theatre.

Images were created by learners and members of the public and the exhibition took place from Friday 27 October – Friday 24 November 2017 at York Explore Library.

Tiger Moths and Memories created a whisper of moths at York Art Gallery to celebrate the contribution of aviation to the First World War.  Over 1500 people including learners at York Learning workshops, classes, community groups and members of the public created moths, many of them choosing a design that had personal meaning to them.

The Face of York created a visual census of the people of York here and now, past and present.

Over 500 A4 portraits of ordinary and famous people that have an attachment with the city were created by York Learning learners as well as members of the public. Images were created in one day workshops, art and craft classes  and community groups around the city. The collected images were exhibited at York Explore Library and York City Screen during July 2015.

The Road Through York formed part of the events at York Racecourse for Le Grand Depart (Tour De France) in July 2014.

The design was created by Karen Whinship and and then reproduced on 320 separate one metre square panels by local people, including York Learning students. The final piece was approximately 20m by 16m and was viewed from above on TV by billions of people on the day of the Grand Depart.