Inspired by Cavitation: Breathing Ocean by Izabela Pluta and the lost concrete map once embedded in Newcastle Canoe Pool, this collaborative workshop invites children and their grown-ups to build a temporary world from sand, water and simple natural and reusable materials.

Rather than recreating a fixed, recognisable map, participants will work together to create an unstable, tidal world of islands, coastlines, waterways, pathways and imagined territories. Working with an artist educator, families will shape, excavate, connect and transform their shared landscape before introducing water to see what shifts, disappears or becomes newly connected.

Participants are encouraged to photograph their world before and after its transformation, contributing to a collective Atlas of Change created across the two workshop days.

Through playful experimentation, children will explore a central idea within Cavitation: that maps, coastlines and borders are never completely fixed. They are continually shaped and reshaped by water, weather, movement and the stories people attach to place.

No art-making experience is needed. Come prepared to work with sand and water, and to let your carefully constructed world change.

Suitable for people of all ages. Children must be accompanied and supervised by a participating adult throughout the workshop.