Nicole Morris is an artist whose work spans textiles, film and creative writing.
Her practice moves between exhibitions, community settings and learning environments, exploring how making can open up space for reflection and connection.
Since 2019, Nicole has worked with ACAVA’s Flourish programme, co-creating playful, hands-on sessions with families in Barham Park and Maxilla Walk Studios. Alongside her own studio practice, she develops resources and workshops that support wellbeing and collective creativity.
In this Q&A, Nicole shares more about her practice, what inspires her as a Flourish facilitator, and her current projects in both community and healthcare settings. This interview is part of a series featuring artists from ACAVA’s studio and community network. Visit this page to read more.
Your name
Nicole Morris
Your art practice in a few words
Textiles, film and creative writing
Where can we find your work?
Online:
nicolemorris.co.uk
@nicole_e_morris
Drawing Room: Making Room
A New Direction: Doing it Justice
MAP Magazine: Living With
New Town Culture: Ceremony
In person:
Lightbox, Drawing Room
Permanent works:
Coborn Centre for Adolescent Mental Health (wall painting)
The Bridge, Southwark (fabric hanging)
Upcoming:
Maudsley Hospital, Lucas Ward (mural)
Drawing Biennale 2026
Tell us a bit about yourself
My work in textiles and film exists across exhibition, learning and community contexts. In this cross-disciplinary practice, I explore analogue technologies that consciously resist digitisation. I’m interested in the dialogue between textiles and film, and how one process can translate into the other, blurring the relationship between tactile and filmic space. The work avoids linear narrative, favouring a poetic and tactile exploration of how we record emotions, with themes of architecture and the body explored through construction, destruction and repair.
Sharing practice is central to my work. In the studio, I work with drawing, textiles, creative writing and film, using materials that are accessible and transferable both economically and conceptually. The studio is a space for hands-on making, discovery, and not knowing, which directly informs my work with marginalised communities. Together, we explore methods of making, with the repetitive nature of studio processes creating opportunities for conversation, reflection and mindfulness — each becoming a creative tool.
What Flourish programmes have you worked on recently and what did you do?
I have worked with Flourish since 2019, exploring play and art practice alongside families. From September 2023 to July 2024, I was the lead artist for Flourish at ACAVA’s Barham Park. The project culminated in the co-production of an interactive resource for Wembley families to creatively explore the park together. The zine was designed with artist Sadie St. Hilaire and printed at PageMasters in Lewisham.
What interests you about being a Flourish facilitator, and/or has it influenced your practice, or your way of thinking about art?
Working outdoors in the Maxilla garden or Barham Park, I love the performative quality of these spaces and their endless potential for discovery. Responding to Flourish values of play, co-creation, wellbeing, discovery and emotional resilience, each session brings something new as we explore alongside families.
Do you have any upcoming projects or exhibitions you’d like us to platform?
My ongoing project Making Room, which began in March 2024, explores art practice as a critical service in mental health support. Working in partnership with Southwark Directorate Occupational Therapy staff, the project is currently based on the acute and psychiatric intensive care wards for women at Maudsley Hospital, as well as within the Drawing Room Community Studio. It is supported by Asha Fontenelle and Daphne Greca.
Sessions invite service users to try new activities and experiment with different mediums in a non-judgmental, safe space. Making together in collaboration, through drawing, poetry, paint, textiles, clay, print and collage, nurtures collective joy. Each session ends with sharing the work created and celebrating achievements over a drink and snack. Outcomes have been displayed throughout the wards, establishing Making Room as a studio within an institutional space.
I’m currently an artist-in-residence on the neonatal intensive care unit at Great Ormond Street Hospital, working at the bedside with parents.
