ASSUNTA RUOCCO

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Assunta and Lou Art Club

Assunta and Lou’s Art Club is a mobile, intergenerational art project developed by artist Assunta Ruocco in collaboration with her daughter Lou. The project emerged from their ongoing collaborative practice and from Lou’s desire to share the ways they make work together with other children and families.

Centred around a transportable quilted print studio, the Art Club creates open-ended spaces for making, intergenerational collaboration and experimentation in libraries, community centres and art spaces. Children and adults are invited to explore drawing, digital print and collaborative installation through methods developed within Assunta and Lou’s shared studio practice. Sessions prioritise process, play and collective attention, allowing participants to work at their own pace and to shape the activity together.

The project reflects Ruocco’s wider research into care, access and artist–parent working conditions, and responds to the limited visibility of collaborative, child-inclusive artistic practice within cultural institutions. Since 2024, Assunta and Lou’s After School Art Club has been delivered through workshops, exhibitions and research activity across the UK, and was supported by Arts Council England through a Developing Your Creative Practice grant in 2025.

For updates and upcoming workshops, visit assuntaandlouafterschoolartclub.org.

Making Room for Children and Art at New Art Exchange, Nottingham, 2025
Hosted by CVAN East Midlands, with Jo Harrison and the Art Working Parents Alliance
Photographs by Janhavi Sharma and Nicola Guy

With support from Arts Council England’s Developing Your Creative Practice (DYCP) fund, Assunta and Lou delivered a public workshop and conversation at New Art Exchange, Nottingham. The event formed part of Assunta and Lou’s After School Art Club and marked the conclusion of the DYCP project, bringing together artist parents, carers and children through shared making and discussion.

Delivered in partnership with CVAN East Midlands, the session combined a relaxed art club led by Assunta and Lou, supported by artist Chiara Dellerba, with a public conversation featuring Jo Harrison from the Art Working Parents Alliance. Drawing on New Art Exchange’s welcoming, family-oriented context, the event enabled sustained participation and informal exchange, supporting dialogue around care, collaboration and working conditions for artist parents within institutional settings.

The event built on the Better Together session delivered by the Art Working Parents Alliance in 2024 and contributed to Ruocco’s wider research into intergenerational collaboration, artist-parent support structures and feminist approaches to co-creation, developed through Assunta and Lou’s mobile studio practice.

Assunta and Lou Art Club at Primary, Nottingham, 2025
Photographs by Becky Beinart, Assunta Ruocco

With support from Arts Council England’s Developing Your Creative Practice (DYCP) fund, Assunta and Lou delivered a summer holiday workshop at Primary, Nottingham. The session formed part of Assunta and Lou’s After School Art Club and built directly on their shared practice of layering drawing, painting and collage over digital prints in an open, child–adult studio setting.
Delivered within Primary’s holiday programme, the workshop benefitted from the organisation’s strong, ongoing relationships with local families, enabling relaxed and sustained participation across different ages. The context also allowed time for in-depth conversation and mentoring with Primary’s Collaborative Programme Lead, Becky Beinart, supporting reflection on facilitation, access and the practical realities of child-inclusive work in a gallery environment.
The session contributed to the continued development of Assunta and Lou’s collaborative methods and to Ruocco’s wider research into accessible, intergenerational approaches to making that can operate within institutional and community settings.

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, a new large textile 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 December 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.