Name: A Curious Walk with Jessica Emsley
Start: 2026-02-07T11:00:00+00:00
Location: Florence Arts Centre

FREE EVENT, Book Online or In Person
Part of the FREE SCAR Programme
SCAR – cutting through the land exhibition and free creative programme.
‘A Curious Walk’, an outdoor/ indoor art workshop for women and girls 16yrs +.
What can we discover when we walk slowly, embracing our curiosity and attuning to our surroundings? An art workshop in which participants will create a number of drawings in response to their curiosity over the course of a short walk before returning to Florence Arts develop these into a simple book which documents the walk over a hot drink.
Date: 29th November
Time: 11:00-12:45 (this is an estimated finish time and depends a little on our pace of walking whilst outside)
What to bring: Drawing materials will be provided. Please wear appropriate clothing and shoes for walking and weather and bring any weather-related items you may need, e.g. umbrella, gloves, suncream.
Remember to bring water and anything you need for being outside e.g. medication and inhalers.
Accessibility: Unfortunately, due to the nature of this activity and the paths surrounding Florence Arts, it is not fully accessible. Participants will need to be able to walk comfortably outside for 45 minutes, and the footpaths are not suitable for wheelchairs or mobility scooters.
Please note, we will be out in the elements on tracks and footpaths. As such, please make sure you are confident in your physical ability to participate before joining and feel free to ask any questions. If you have any medical conditions which you feel the facilitator should know about, please let us know by email or speak to Jess at the beginning of the workshop (e.g. asthma, recovering from injury, allergies).
11 artists working in Cumbria have been commissioned to produce new work and a programme of free activities responding to the theme of ‘SCAR – cutting through the land’ to be held at Florence Arts Centre from 16 November to 22 February 2026.
Some of the artists came together to cocreate the theme, thinking of natural scars in rock or carved by rivers and the scars humans have made across or even below the land like roads, railways and mines. Artists also thought more broadly about the damage we do to the land with litter, erosion and climate control. Artist perspectives vary enormously from images from outer space to human emotion and memory, looking at scars across time from glacial remains to the future of nuclear waste.