What is Lost then Found?
A lost key. A lost friend. A lost sense of self. Loss takes many shapes, and so does what we find in its wake.
In the process of losing, we often find something unexpected: a strength we didn’t know we had, an unlikely peace, a new skill, a renewed sense of connection. The moment of acceptance that quietly changes things. Lost then Found sits with both sides of that experience — and leans, with intention, towards what is found.
This project brings people together to explore loss and discovery through making, storytelling and shared creativity. The stories gathered will form the foundation of a large-scale collaborative artwork representing both loss and what lies beyond it.
How it works
Participants across Derbyshire and Greater Manchester will take part in workshops, and people anywhere in the UK can join through a mail-art pack sent directly to them.
Using drawing, stitching and storytelling, everyone is invited to share something of their own experience of loss and discovery — at whatever depth feels right for them.
At the heart of the making process is cyanotype: a slow, tactile technique that uses sunlight to create vivid blueprints from drawings. Participants will make cyanotypes of objects associated with things lost and found — transforming fragile memories into physical, lasting images. The process is gentle and mindful, creating space to reflect. There is something fitting about a technique whose photographic imprinting echoes the way emotional experiences leave their trace on us.
The artwork
All contributions will come together in two distinct but connected bodies of work.
The Found side of the project will take the form of a large-scale quilt — a form chosen with care. A quilt offers warmth and comfort. It carries personal and collective stories. Stitched with Xs and Os — the marks we put at the end of messages to people we love, kisses and embraces made textile — it speaks of love, healing and reconnection: the unexpected things we discover when loss shifts something in us.
The Lost side will become a series of cyanotypes printed onto cotton gloves. A solitary glove is one of the most quietly affecting things to come across — on a walk, on a railing, on a wall. Someone left it. Someone lost it. It once held a hand. These gloves, printed with participants’ drawings and labelled with handwritten swing tags, carry that same quality: each one numbered, each tag reading Lost on one side and Found on the other, with the maker’s own words between them. It is a form of lost property — held, catalogued, and given back.
Together the two works hold the full shape of what this project explores: absence and presence, wound and repair, the solitary and the shared.
Who can take part?
Everyone is welcome. You don’t need any previous experience of art-making — just a willingness to show up and explore.
Workshops are inclusive and carefully held, delivered in partnership with community groups and organisations. For those unable to attend in person, accessible art packs bring the project directly to you, wherever you are in the UK. Participation is flexible and supported throughout.
What difference will it make?
Shared making reduces isolation. Being heard matters. Being part of something larger than yourself matters too.
Through Lost then Found, participants will have a supported space to explore grief, memory and everyday experience in creative ways — building connection, confidence and a sense of purpose along the way. The final artwork will be exhibited in both traditional and unexpected venues, opening wider conversations around loss and resilience. A digital catalogue will share participants’ stories for audiences to relate and reflect upon.
Creativity offers ways to process emotion when words fall short. This project makes space for what is felt but often hidden — and turns personal loss into shared meaning, and shared finding.
Get involved
Whether you want to attend a workshop, request a mail-art pack, or find out more about how the project might connect with your work or organisation, I’d love to hear from you.
Lois Blackburn 