Art Unites: Our Stories - Marlow Library
Art Unites: Our Stories was an Arts Council funded project aiming to connect Buckinghamshire residents to their local history through visual arts. The goal was to work with artists to create pieces of art inspired by the towns of Amersham, Bourne End, Princes Risborough and Marlow respectively, with this art being housed in the library it was made in. Subsequently, an exhibition would tour the libraries, to connect these four towns alongside the project, with the exhibition art being donated to schools and community centres who worked on the project.
Over the course of the project, participants had the opportunity to interact with the artists through a series of workshops, as well as get hands on with history through sessions provided by local museums and the county archives.
Marlow’s artwork was led by Emily Cooling. It was inspired by and uses the art created by the participants at all the workshop sessions. It focuses on Marlow’s unique architecture and allowed the participants to create their own lantern contribution to Marlow’s landscape.
When speaking about the project, Emily said:
“Marlow has a rich history and an abundance of beautiful buildings and architecture. So I was initially drawn to this for inspiration alongside the local artist and illustrator Nicola Metcalf who inspired me and the project. The participants that did partake had a wonderful time, were all very intrigued by the process and the model making element. As the weeks went by I was building up to the finished pieces. So, finishing off was not too bad as we had all the pieces to fit together. It was a matter of using the gelli printed papers crested to decorate the 3D buildings we built. It was an absolutely lovely project.”
Art Unites: Our Stories ran from October 2024 to May 2025. We are incredibly grateful to all the participants who took part, to our artists Maura Hawkes and Emily Cooling and lead artist Kremena Dimitrova and the Buckinghamshire Libraries team.