The Wishing Tree by Clair Martin and Steve Baker, Directors of Seekers Create CIC, with young people from Motiv8 and Seekers Social Travel Club.

What do you wish for Portsmouth? The Wishing Tree brings that question to Cosham Park for We Shine. Young people from Motiv8 and Seekers Social Travel Club co-created the artwork with Clair Martin and Steve Baker of Seekers Create.

After dark, look up into the branches. Eighty orange and white ribbons stretch across three trees, with wishes cascading from the branches. Under ultraviolet light the ribbons glow, picking out the black lines of the young people’s doodles. From across the park you can see the sweep of colour. Up close you can follow a line and see what someone has drawn.

Two large doodled teepees sit beside the trees. Walk around them to see the drawings on each side, then step inside and look back out at the glowing wishes. If you’ve come with someone, see which drawings each of you spots first.

At the large doodle boards, you can add your own wish for Portsmouth. Think about something you love in your neighbourhood and want to keep, or something you’d like to change for the next person growing up here. Pick up a pen and draw your wish, write it in a few words or make a doodle together.

Over the three festival evenings, each new wish becomes part of the artwork. Before you leave, take a look at what someone else has added. You might find a wish that you share.

Artist Bio:

Seekers Create CIC is an award-winning creative community development organisation based in Portsmouth. Its directors, Clair Martin and Steve Baker, bring people together through art and community research. They often start with a pen and a question. Drawing gives people time to think, something to talk about and a way to share an idea in their own words or pictures.

Co-creation runs through their work. For the People of Paulsgrove mural, local schoolchildren helped shape the artwork for their neighbourhood. At Stamshaw Underpass, pupils from Stamshaw Junior School contributed to This is Stamshaw, bringing their ideas onto walls they pass with friends and family.

The same approach shapes Seekers Social Travel Club. Young people helped develop maps, games and activity cards to practise travelling independently. For The Wishing Tree, members of the club worked alongside young people from Motiv8 as fellow artists.

Clair and Steve work with schools, youth groups and residents across Portsmouth and beyond. Their murals, trails and exhibitions give people a chance to see something they helped create in a place that matters to them.