Strengthening Communities Through Creative Connection
My name is Katie Dale-Everett and my name is Caroline Murray and we are both creatives working to improve the wellbeing of communities through innovative creative approaches. We met in 2025 when we were both selected for the UK Creative Community Fellowship and share a common goal to support people to discover new ways to support their wellbeing and understand impacts on their health through creativity.
Katie’s work spans hospitals, care homes, schools, new parent/carer groups, libraries, homeless shelters for young people, hospices and bereavement services. Through creativity, play, movement and technology, she creates inclusive experiences that meet people where they are and encourage safe, supported movement to aid recovery.
Her work helps build meaningful connections between carers, healthcare teams and the people they support, extending the impact of traditional healthcare approaches through creative practice. Katie also works with teams who have not previously offered creative activities to patients, demonstrating how creativity can enhance wellbeing, communication and care. Her motion capture and dance project ‘Playscape: How to Build a Galaxy’ is currently working with young people, staff and their families experiencing paediatric care at a hospital in London.
“An opportunity for the family to have an experience together, having a bereaved event about space connects them to the child that died – space, magical thinking, dreaming all strong themes.” – Children’s Hospice Play Specialist
“I’ve never done it before. I am enjoying it. I like to have a different day and I’ve got that today.” – Care Home Resident
Knitting the Air is a collective community art project blending science, data, art and community, using knitting to visualise air pollution data in Poplar, east London. Largely invisible and intangible to most, air pollution is one of the most pressing environmental risks to public health in the UK. Knitting the Air aims to make that scientific data accessible, tangible and personal.
Through the combined efforts of 132 knitters across Poplar, Bow and east London, the project has produced a 13-metre textile translating a year of air quality data into something handmade and human, inviting people to connect with the data that shapes their daily lives and to share their own stories about the air they breathe. In September, the collective will be staging their first public exhibition of the piece at The Nunnery Gallery in Bow, east London.
Knitting the Air is led by Caroline Murray, a creative community practitioner and textile artist. Working across knitting, quilting and weaving, her practice explores how collective making can foster connection, meaning and care – for ourselves, for one another and with the world around us.
‘I have learnt so much about air pollution since doing this project, it has been an eye opener for me. Before I didn’t think about air and took it for granted. I’ve loved being part of it all and seeing so many people get together to complete it’ – Local Knitter
Katie and Caroline have plans to bring their expertise together to explore new projects and approaches in the near future.
