Lines of Connection: Journeys, Landscape and Community

Join the University of Stirling Art Collection and Emily McLennan for a relaxed, creative workshop exploring how journeys through landscape connect us to nature and to one another. Using drawing and mark-making, participants will trace meaningful walks and paths from their lives, transforming them into shared visual forms inspired by natural systems and patterns of connection. All materials provided, no experience needed.

Every journey leaves a trace. Repeated walks, remembered routes, and moments of movement through land shape how we experience place, time, and connection. In nature, systems such as roots and mycelium link living things together, allowing energy, nutrients, and information to flow. This workshop draws on these ideas to explore how human journeys — through landscape and through life — also form networks of connection and community.

Beginning with a meaningful walk or path, participants will draw a single line that traces its journey. When brought together, these lines form a shared visual landscape — a collective expression shaped by many individual experiences. From this starting point, we’ll explore repetition, layering, and mark-making to create new images inspired by natural patterns, movement, and growth.

Over two relaxed hours, you’ll work with simple drawing materials to experiment with line, rhythm, and texture. Alongside making, we’ll reflect on how our journeys overlap with others, how shared places are experienced differently, and how connection — like mycelial networks in nature — is built through interaction, care, and movement. No experience is needed, and all materials are provided — just bring your curiosity. This is a process-focused, enjoyable session designed for reflection, conversation, and creativity, and a gentle way to connect with others through making.

About the Artist

Emily McLennan is an artist based in Stirlingshire whose practice is rooted in ecological observation and connection to place. Working across painting, print and drawing, she explores how art can inspire care for the environment, build community and reimagine more sustainable ways of living.

Her work often focuses on soil, roots and mycelial networks, the hidden systems that sustain ecosystems and human life alike. Through slow, sensory, material-led processes, Emily’s work invites viewers to reconnect with nature, to observe more closely and to consider their role in preserving the delicate balance of our ecosystems. For her, the threads of mycelium embody communication, nourishment and resilience, offering metaphors for the unseen forms of support that connect us to each other and to the natural world.

About the University of Stirling Art Collection

Through a series of exhibitions, events and workshops, the University Art Collection aims to make art and culture a part of daily life for students, staff and visitors. All are welcome to the Pathfoot Building to explore our collection of Scottish contemporary art and to participate in our events. Each year our work focused on a theme, relating to the research of the University. This year our theme is Art & Science where we are exploring the shared communities of practice between artists and scientific researchers.