Open afternoons: Wednesday 30 and Thursday 31 July 2025, 1-4pm
Mother Artist Lucy Arden and her 11-year-old son, Luther, will create an interactive installation, Climbing a Mountain Every Day, to explore the challenges faced by those navigating the journey to secure a Dyslexia, ADHD, or Autism diagnosis.
Through a collaborative process, they aim to depict the struggles and triumphs of the neurodivergent experience by artistically weaving together a real-life Game of Life, with elements from Snakes and Ladders, Monopoly, and It’s a Knockout.
Throughout the residency, before the high school journey begins, Lucy and Luther will reflect on their own experience, filled with setbacks, delays, and emotional exhaustion, highlighting the alienation caused by an often-unresponsive system. Through humour and heartfelt moments, the installation will explore the complexities of diagnosis, from lightbulb moments to grief.
This project aims to foster empathy and understanding by shedding light on the struggles of securing a diagnosis, while offering a space for reflection and dialogue on the neurodivergent experience.
About the Artist
Lucy is a mother and a maker, and strongly values both of these roles. She wears many other hats; as artist, crafter, writer, poet, creative activist, feminist, home maker, fun maker, educator, philosopher, dyslexic thinker, ADHD dreamer and a dedicated change maker. She is a lover, and a fighter - for all that is good and right – and sees the world through neurodivergent rose-tinted spectacles.
Lucy is passionate about women supporting women. Motherhood, mental health and women's place(s) in the world are important influences on her life and work. Lucy's writing features on the Dwell Time and Sheroes in Quarantine websites. Her work has been published in The Mum Poem Press and 100 Voices. Lucy plays an active role within the Mothers Who Make peer support network. She is a member of the wonderful One Voice group, in Halifax, which helps highlight women’s voices through a creative lense. Lucy sewed, knitted and created from an early age, inspired by her own mother and grandmothers. Her passion for textiles was nurtured in secondary school by an inspirational teacher. After gaining a degree in Fashion Design, she followed a digital career in clothing design. A long fertility journey and a battle with chronic fatigue syndrome brought a halt to her original career path as she had to focus on her health and wellbeing. This healing journey led her to new pathways, ideas and ways of thinking.
She makes words spill out from her brain onto a page, makes art on a canvas, hand-stitched embroideries, felt fabric from wool fibres, random things with wire and collages with inspiring words. The physical process of making all of these “things” helps her to navigate her way through life. She uses creativity to process both her inner and outer worlds. To create, dream, develop, recharge and try to make sense of life. To re-energise through creative energy, so she can return to motherhood a better mother. Creativity is the oxygen she needs to breathe.
Lucy recently collaborated with writer, Miranda Roszkowski to create the Woven Warriors project. They invited 12 local women community leaders to take part in a series of workshops to create a unique tapestry, to tell the story of their lives and values, in celebration of their struggles, achievements and the many other women who shaped them. Given the rich weaving history of Calderdale the tapestry highlights contemporary lives in our borough and celebrates our shared history. They received funding from the Doreen Pickles Memorial Fund and were inspired by the life and work of Doreen Pickles.