Art Unites: Our Stories | Princes Risborough 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. For Princes Risborough’s artwork, a session was held in a local community centre as well.
Princes Risborough’s artwork was led by Kremena Dimitrova. It was inspired by and uses the art created by the participants at all the workshop sessions. It focuses on Princes Risborough’s strength, depicted through the knight on horseback, and the poem about the young carer.
Kremena told us that:
“Although each location has its individuality, there are histories that connect the different areas, such as the chair and lacemaking industries as well as the occasional ghost story. It is always exciting to try and bring history to life using creativity especially so when co-creating with communities since we never know what the final outcomes would be. There is always an element of surprise and something to look forward to which makes the process of visual history-telling ever so inspiring.
In order to communicate the message Art Unites: Our Stories, the final pieces emphasise collaboration and co-creation. They were digitally assembled to form colourful large-scale collages celebrating local creativity. The collective visual narratives intersect different local themes and histories and weave text and images generated during the workshops.”
The workshop set up at Princes Risborough
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.