Join us for a special edition of the Landscape Drawing Club, delivered in collaboration with WALK, TALK, DRAW. This creative workshop invites young people aged 11–16 to explore drawing from nature through a guided walk around Lloyds Park.

Led by garden designer Lucy Pearce and artist Barry Sykes, the session encourages slow looking, close observation, and curiosity about the natural world. Participants will learn how to identify key plant characteristics and consider what these details can tell us about the plants and environments around us. Through playful prompts and group discussion, the workshop supports both creative confidence and a deeper connection to place.

Drawing will be used as a tool for noticing and recording, with a focus on mark-making and experimenting with different materials. Each participant will create a mini zine over the course of the session, documenting their observations and responses in their own unique way.

This workshop is takes inspiration from 3 landscape artworks from our permanent collection: The Drum Bridge at Kameido Tenjin Shrine, a Japanese woodcut print by Hokusai depicting people leisurely engaging with a designed landscape; Arthur Heygate’s delicate watercolour of a managed Landscape, and The Window Seat by May Morris, showing the connections between indoors and outdoors spaces.

About the artists

WALK TALK DRAW is a guided walk with a difference. Led by garden designer Lucy Pearce and local artist Barry Sykes it’s an opportunity to see a familiar space afresh – to learn about plants and their characteristics and have a go at drawing what we see.

Lucy Pearce is a qualified garden designer with a special interest in the beauty and joy of everyday encounters with plants – in private rear gardens, and in shared spaces, whether at the front of our homes or in public parks. Alongside creating considered, welcoming gardens for people in East London, Lucy founded WALK TALK DRAW to share her love of plants and what can be learned through observation and dialogue, with others.

Barry Sykes lives and works in Walthamstow, London, and is an artist with a varied practise, including drawing, sculpture and performance, used to explore play, pleasure, vulnerability and interaction. As Barry’s Anywhere Arts School he has recently hosted workshops and events in museums, cafes, parks, hospitals, schools, colleges and saunas.

About this workshop series

Landscape Drawing Club is a series of artist-led outdoor workshops inspired by William Morris’s belief in close observation of the natural world. Participants explore en plein air drawing, learning to observe and capture the landscape directly from life. Each session is shaped by landscape works from the Gallery’s permanent collection, using these as creative starting points while offering insight into how historic landscapes continue to inform contemporary practice.