PCT100 Creators: Poetry, Call & Response with Nomakhwezi Becker

As part of the Powell-Cotton Trust’s centenary celebrations, we’re inviting our local communities to help connect the museum’s past, present and future via a series of artist-led creative workshops throughout the summer.

From photography and film to screen printing and poetry writing, these sessions offer the chance to respond creatively to what you discover in the museum and its collections. Your work will then form part of a special community exhibition opening in October 2026.

Poetry & Call & Response: Stories carried in material and memory

Led by artist and facilitator Nomakhwezi Becker

This participatory workshop draws from the South African storytelling tradition of Call & Response to bring material culture into conversation with poetry, memory, and personal storytelling.

Through ukuzimamela – a practice of listening to the stories carried within the body – you’ll explore the histories held within the museum’s Zulu beadwork and isishweshwe fabric displays alongside your own memories, inheritances, and lived experiences.

Through a series of guided writing and reflection exercises, we’ll consider how objects carry stories across generations and how your own life might enter into dialogue with them.

The workshop will culminate in a collective act of making, where words and material traces gathered throughout the session are brought together into a shared poetic response. Through this process, you’ll contribute to an evolving artwork that intertwines your own histories with those encountered in the museum.

Dates and times:

Wednesday 29 July

Wednesday 19 August

Drop-in from 11am to 2pm (times subject to change)

All drop-ins are included with standard museum admission. Simple book tickets for your preferred date to take part.