ASSUNTA RUOCCO

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Assunta and Lou Art Club

Assunta and Lou’s After School Art Club is a mobile, intergenerational art project led by artist Assunta Ruocco in collaboration with her daughter Lou. Centred around a transportable quilted print studio, the Art Club creates open-ended spaces for making, storytelling, and experimentation in libraries, community centres, and art spaces. It invites children and families to explore printmaking, drawing, and collaborative installation in an environment that values process over product, and play over prescription.

The project explores themes of care, co-creation, and access, and reflects Ruocco’s wider research into artist–parent support structures and sustainable creative practices. Assunta and Lou’s Art Club is part of a wider programme of workshops, exhibitions and residencies supported by Arts Council England through a Developing Your Creative Practice grant.

Go to assuntaandlouafterschoolartclub.org to subscribe to our mailing list and find out about our upcoming workshops !

All Kinds of Hands, The Storey, Lancaster, 2025
Curated by Ellie Barrett. Photographs by Assunta Ruocco, Saul Argent, Beki Melrose

All Kinds of Hands was a group exhibition of co-produced sculpture curated by Ellie Barrett at The Storey, Lancaster (2–11 May 2025). Bringing together works by Assunta Ruocco, Beata Podstawa, Sarah Ryder, and Nisha Duggal, the exhibition explored collaborative making practices, particularly those shaped by motherhood, play, and shared authorship.

Each artist presented work developed through participatory or intergenerational methods: from Barrett’s Tangles sculptures co-created with young children at local playgroups, to Duggal’s clay forms made in dialogue with Pendle residents, and Podstawa’s textile-based collaborations with her son. Ruocco and her daughter Lou contributed Assunta and Lou’s After School Art Club, an interactive installation where visitors were invited to make, draw, and copy in a shared studio environment.

Foregrounding collective action, material exploration, and accessible forms of sculpture, All Kinds of Hands challenged conventional hierarchies of authorship and display. The exhibition was accompanied by a family-friendly programme and will culminate in a symposium in Morecambe (September 2025).

Read a review of All Kinds of Hands in Corridor8 by Natalie Bradbury here.

Assunta and Lou After School Art Club at Nottingham Central Library, 2025

From February to June 2025, Assunta and Lou facilitated a series of intergenerational art workshops at Nottingham Central Library. Centring on their mobile print studio and quilted workspace, the sessions offered an open, playful environment for children and families to experiment with printmaking, drawing, and collaborative making. Taking place in the newly reopened library building, the workshops emphasised care, access, and visibility—creating a space where families could feel welcomed, seen, and creatively supported. These sessions formed part of Ruocco’s ongoing research into sustainable, child-inclusive art practices.

Assunta and Lou Art Club at Stryx, Birmingham, 2025
Photographs by Sylwia Ciszewska-Peciak

With support from Arts Council England’s Developing Your Creative Practice (DYCP) fund, Assunta Ruocco was able to deliver a workshop at Stryx Gallery in Birmingham in collaboration with her nine-year-old daughter, Lou. As part of their ongoing project Assunta and Lou’s After School Art Club, the workshop provided an opportunity to test new materials, refine their co-facilitation methods, and engage with families and artist-parents in a new setting. This session formed part of Ruocco’s broader research into accessible, intergenerational forms of making, and contributed to the development of future participatory installations and collaborative exhibitions.

Assunta and Lou Art Club, Summer Camp, Eastside Projects, 2024

Assunta Ruocco and her nine-year-old daughter Lou presented Assunta and Lou’s After School Art Club as part of the Summer Camp group exhibition at Eastside Projects, Birmingham. The project was tested for the first time as an interactive installation rather than a live workshop. Visitors were invited to engage with a collaborative quilt featuring digitally copied drawings made by Assunta and Lou, alongside scattered art materials and a playful prompt: to improve and transform the drawings together. While many participants created their own contributions, the installation opened up valuable questions around clarity, authorship, and how to sustain a collaborative drawing practice in the artists’ absence.

Assunta and Lou Art Club, Backlit, Nottingham, 2024

A public workshop at Backlit Gallery, held during the 2024 Members’ Exhibition, offered the first opportunity to test Assunta and Lou’s quilt installation in a public setting. The interactive, fabric-based structure functioned as a mobile print studio and collaborative workspace, inviting children and families to engage in experimental mark-making, storytelling, and shared making. This event was an important step in developing the physical and conceptual framework of the Art Club, allowing the duo to explore how the quilt could support both practical workshop needs and embodied forms of co-creation.