Project Partners: SKIP Gallery, Self Space, Centrespace Design, GSE Skips

Project Brief: 1 in 4 of us will experience mental health challenges in our lifetime, something that has been significantly impacted by the global pandemic. Challenges with our mental health can feel incredibly isolating but in reality it’s something so many of us experience. This art / architecture installation aimed to create a connective and immersive experience for the public to step inside to find connection and meaning in our shared experiences of being human. The brief we set ourselves also intentionally limited the use of any materials that would not be reused or could not decompose naturally.

Our Services: Idea Generation, Brief development, Concept Design, Developed Design, Technical Design, Construction.

Photographs: Katie Edwards, Aron Klein

FEELINGS LIBRARY is a three week immersive pop up, designed to help us check in with our big, and sometimes messy feelings and connect with others within the creative space of a skip.

The lockdown propelled mental health to the forefront of our minds, and we wanted to find a way to address it in true CAUKIN fashion. We brought the idea to life with the help of two amazing collaborators, Skip Gallery and Self Space.

Skip Gallery, produced by Baker & Borowski, offers opportunities for artistic interventions in unexpected places, utilising skips. Skips are part of our everyday lives, providing the means with which we voraciously dismantle and renew our environment. Skip Gallery is a new type of itinerant art space, presenting an alternative to the conventional routes to art, for both artists and audience.

Self Space Space is a contemporary mental health service offering a good conversation with a qualified person, through flexible access to straightforward therapy. Their mission is to modernise the culture around mental health by supporting committed individuals and companies to reach their full potential.

The thatch monolith is intended to be striking, getting people to pay attention, talk about, smile at and take a moment out of their day to make their feelings a priority by writing them down within.

Journaling is an important part of processing your internal thought, and what can be even more valuable is the realisation that you are not alone in the way that you’re feeling.

When a user enters the Feelings Library, they are faced with 10 books, each titled with a different feeling or emotion. Self Space wrote an introduction to each, along with a series of prompts which encouraged users to start their journalling.

The structure was built using 100% materials that will either decompose naturally or be used on our next project- a design & construction workshop with a school.