In our short series Five Minutes With, we’ve been shining a light on the people who help bring Meadow Arts’ vision to life. From dedicated team members to our brilliant board members, trustees and the artists who we commission, we’re taking a closer look at the individuals who make everything we do possible.

In this episode of Five Minutes With, we’re finding out more about Sarah Taylor Silverwood as she continues her collaborative projects with the young people from Pershore Riverside Youth Centre.

I like working with people in a live and responsive way, and the work is like a chat with the people I collaborate with… Often with highly collaborative projects I feel like my role is a designer helping people develop a visual language that they have ownership of.

Sarah Taylor Silverwood

Sarah Taylor Silverwood is a visual artist whose drawing practice runs across animation, textiles, ceramics, sculpture and print. Through her work she combines her interests in making, storytelling and working with other people, to create artwork for exhibitions, the public realm and the home.

She is continually researching making techniques and experimenting with materials, developing the practical application of drawing in response to the ideas and projects on which she is working. Her studio is at Grand Union and she also runs Sunday Tiles, a ceramic tile studio.

Meadow Arts have been working with Sarah at the Riverside Centre, Pershore since 2023, where she has co-created some wonderful projects with the Monday Club, known as Pershore Youthy. These projects have included Wild Imagination, an animation inspired by the landscape at National Trust Croome, and Youthy’s Fantastic Food, an illustrated cookbook and handmade ceramic plates, launched in Pershore on 8 November. Sarah is now making a new series of plates for the Youth Centre’s kitchen. Plate Up, an exhibition of the plates, will open at National Trust Croome in January 2026. 

Clare: Your artistic style is quite minimalist; you are able to animate the simplest of forms using just a few lines (e.g. Wild Imagination, 2024 and Adventure Awaits, 2020). Has your work always had this style, or was that something that took you time to develop?

Sarah: In animation things really come to life when they are exaggerated and loose. When each frame is just suggestive of a movement it seems to let your brain fill the gaps in. I’ve always had drawing as the central part of my practice, but over the years I’ve embraced the looser line that evolved particularly out of translating drawing into ceramics and animation, through making my own brushes, and making work in sequences, like animation frames and tiles.

Clare: Your work usually involves people and some of the most recent projects have been in youth settings (e.g. Pershore Youth Centre, Dame Ellen Pinsent School, Sandwell CAMHS for Hospital Rooms). How does collaboration shape your approach?

Sarah: I like working with people in a live and responsive way, and the work is like a chat with the people I collaborate with. With the Youth Centre project with Meadow Arts, they approached me when the young people wanted to make a cookbook, and we discussed how we could make it happen. This was an exciting starting point for me… how could we co-design in an ambitious way, how could we do something that is totally separate from school, that lets the young people work in the way artists do everyday. And how could we expand this thinking into other things like making plates, aprons and cooking together. Often with highly collaborative projects I feel like my role is a designer helping people develop a visual language that they have ownership of.

Clare: Can you tell us about a recent project that shifted or expanded the way you think about storytelling through drawing?

Sarah: With the artworks for Hospital Rooms X Sandwell CAMHS, I made a series of sculptural drawings for the staircase. We realised that people could enter the staircase on different levels, so we came up with a set of images that could form a story in any order. They were kept very loose so that the imagination could take it in different directions. The story elements came from workshops from young people there, including the title of the work: Moon Fish and Crown Bird. 

Clare: You are very busy at the moment; aside from working with us on the 2026 exhibition at NT Croome, what other projects are you working on currently? 

Sarah: I’m mid-way through a new animation commissioned by Animate Projects, exploring land access rights in the UK. I’ve been working with campaigning organisation Right to Roam to find out more about plots of land that have a public right of way but are surrounded by private land, so are completely inaccessible (except by parachuting in). The animation is a psychedelic visit to one of these ‘access islands’, where our main character discovers a wildlife nirvana.

I’ve also just launched Sunday Tiles, a handmade ceramic tile studio in Birmingham. I make playful and collaborative tile commissions for domestic and public spaces, bespoke to a specific time and place. Currently there are two fireplaces and a bathroom in progress to be installed in 2026. 

Clare: Finally, as an artist who works in community settings, what top three tips would you offer others wanting to base their creative practice outside of the studio? 

Sarah: Stay in the studio! For every public art project I spend a huge amount of time in the studio developing it. I’ll be working through processes and materials, researching tools, thinking about knowledge sharing, function and sustainability. This feels important to give projects the time and space to grow organically.

Be open to all ideas at first, and get to know people as individuals and see what they want from the project. What can this community or neighbourhood offer and what can you offer them.

Evaluate things afterwards, sometimes it’s easy to just move onto the next project but it can be helpful to reflect on what didn’t work and what did.

www.sarahsilverwood.com

@sarahtaylorsilverwood

www.sundaytiles.com

@sunday_tiles