Art Whispers: Creativity in Conversation

Director’s Blog- Originally posted on LinkedIn on February 14, 2025 by Artistic Director Kate Gorman

The Birth of Art Whispers

Last year I trialled a project that I’ve been dreaming about for ages. It was just for fun: for me and the people taking part.

I am really curious about how inspiration and ideas spread between artists and the conversation that this can stimulate. And so, I kicked off Art Whispers…along with some artists who fancied playing too.

Art Whispers starts with an artist being given a prompt. They then create an artwork in response to the prompt. This artist then shares their artwork with the next artist who creates their own artwork in response to it… and so on… and so on.

At the end we all came together and shared the artwork: everyone seeing the pieces (except their own and the preceding one) for the first time. It was fascinating seeing how ideas developed; what people had taken from each other; what was lost, gained, refined, developed…

A Creative Producer at Heart

One of the gifts it gave me was consolidating that I really am a Creative Producer at heart. I was meant to take part as an artist, creating one of the “whispers,” but things happened causing a delay and there ended up not being time for me to do it. But I wasn’t disappointed. I was surprised I wasn’t. It made me realise that my fun and play was the making it happen.

Excitingly I’ve just kicked off another Art Whispers with a whole load of artists — some of whom I know, some of whom I don’t. They also sit across a variety of practices… we have visual artists, poets, musicians. This time there are enough people participating for the project to last a whole year.

My task now is to ponder how we will all share our whispers… can’t wait to play 😊