MAKE Room
How did we reconnect with Nature?
What was MAKE Room?
What does it mean to truly connect with Nature? To pause, notice, and engage with the landscapes we live in - not just as backdrops, but as collaborators in shaping more sustainable, imaginative futures?
MAKE Room was our roaming arts programme throughout 2025, that invited communities across Derbyshire to explore these questions. Through hands-on workshops, artist residencies, talks and walks, MAKE Room was creating space - literally and metaphorically - for people to come together and reimagine their relationship with the natural world.
Developed in collaboration with Buxton-based Glassball Studio, and shaped in collaboration with local partners. At its heart, MAKE Room was about curiosity, creativity, and climate – using art and making as a way to engage with the places we live and the futures we want to build.
MAKE Room has completed its chapter within the Derbyshire Makes programme, but its journey continues, The ideas, conversations and creative explorations it sparked continue to shape how we think about nature, place and community.
You can read more about the project and its journey here.
Where It Started: From Green Room to MAKE Room
MAKE Room began life as a concept developed through a six-week live project with students from the University of Sheffield’s School of Architecture. Working under the project title Green Room, the students were asked to prototype a mobile, low-impact structure that could help facilitate environmental conversations in public spaces.
Through site visits, stakeholder interviews and design workshops, the students explored what a sustainable, community-led engagement space could look like. Their designs became the blueprint for MAKE Room - not as a fixed structure, but as a roaming idea that adapts to each place it lands.
Following this early R&D phase, Glassball Studio were commissioned to take the concept forward - developing the MAKE Room methodology and leading artist residencies in Glossop (High Peak) and Heanor (Amber Valley) to begin testing the approach in practice.
Who was Involved?
MAKE Room was a collaboration between artists, communities, environmental groups, and cultural organisations across Derbyshire.
Glassball Studio were the lead artists, delivering place-based residencies and co-creating activities with local partners and residents.
In Glossop, our host partner was The Bureau, a wellbeing-focused community organisation who helped root the programme in local priorities and run Move More Glossop, a partnership of community, sports, health, and council organisations that are passionate about inspiring people in Glossop to move more and make physical activity a part of their everyday lives.
We worked with Wilder Whitfield, working with local residents, schools, community groups and the Council to improve spaces for wildlife and people.
In Heanor, we worked with Make/Shift and Craft Wood — a woodland-based organisation offered creative, hands-on experiences for adults with a range of support needs.
The initial research was developed with students from the University of Sheffield’s School of Architecture, whose work helped shape the project's ethos.
Local Creative Project Ltd, producers of Derbyshire Makes, oversaw MAKE Room’s delivery, coordination and wider strategy.
We worked closely with Derbyshire County Council’s Environment and Economy Team to align with the county’s forthcoming Local Nature Recovery Strategy, which was due to be adopted in Summer 2025.
