Making, experiencing and sharing ideas of home – the year so far

We are taking a moment to look back on what has happened so far and let you know what is coming up in 2026. And if you have missed it all, don’t worry! There’s plenty that you can still catch up on through our blog and YouTube playlist.  

Home ground  

We explored how we share our home with all sorts of non-human living things. In the Cinemas, films like A New Kind of Wilderness, Bogancloch and Sleep Furiously allowed us to explore the lives of people living on the rural fringes in Norway, Scotland and Wales, whilst in Undershed we tuned into the world around us in multi-screen installation Framerate: Pulse of the Earth by ScanLab Projects, ecological audio walk Only Expansion by Duncan Speakman and our Ear to the Ground listening event curated by Christina Hardinge.  

Home improvement 

How does technology in our homes shape the lives we lead? Pervasive Media Studio residents came together to redesign kitchen taps, junk drawers and the Alexa Smart Home, and gathered online from our homes, to help each other make small but world shifting changes in how we use things. A group of young creatives got even more experimental over the summer, making prototypes of an unhelpful robot dad, an interactive campfire, a rhythmic toothbrush, and a movement responsive lamp.  

Making home  

We hosted ten Lunchtime talks (which you can watch again on YouTube) on the different perspectives on making and representing home, from dhaqan collective’s nomadic Somali homes, to Professor Shawn Sobers’ examination of Black British cultural history via the family home, to the domestic documentary of ground-breaking Video. Discussions - such as with ACORN community union and homelessness activist and artist Gill Simmons after a screening of Lollipop – offered insight into how the themes in our film programme are relevant in Bristol right now. We also introduced people to a wide range of brilliant new works-in-progress through an event in partnership with Diverse Artists Network, and hosting KWMC and Nik Rawling’s Bristol Civic Observatory, a sound installation sharing perspectives on Liveable Neighbourhoods.  

Writing home  

We have been celebrating the written word as a way of expressing ideas about home. Led by Bridget Hart, we commissioned new writing from members of our community. Dr Erinma Ochu explored home through stranger's houses, queer habits and childhood memories while ‘homemaking’ becomes a practice as Cèlia Dominguez Hernàndez takes us from Badalona to Bristol. We also hosted creative writing workshops using map-based game Pin the Tale to write poems inspired by Bristol’s hidden corners, and personal landmarks.  

Coming up… 

The Everyworld  

From Fri 23 Jan will host our first exhibition 2026 – The Everyworld, in our immersive gallery Undershed. A celebration of collaboration between father and daughter duo Andrew and Eden Kötting. Part of The Everyworld Season, which stretches from Undershed to cinema. Looking deeply at home as a place where family is forged and dreamed, from a home in the French mountains to memories of long-lost homes from the past.  

If These Walls Could Talk  

This February we’re also welcoming two artists to Watershed as part of our Winter Residencies for 2026: Nick Murray and Alison Stott. 

Nick (they/them) is a producer, game-maker and artist making socially-led narrative work focusing on loss, collective memory and digital cultures. For the Winter Residency, they will explore the Tamagotchi as a cultural artifact - a digital pet that sits between physical and digital life - using it as a lens to reflect on death, memory and digital afterlives. 

Alison's (she/her) practice explores the spaces between art and science, craft and technology, glass and light, material process and lived experience. During the residency, Alison will explore the development of an immersive light and sound installation that listens to a space and reveals its living rhythm: a shared heartbeat that emerges through presence, participation and resonance. 

Taking new releases Sentimental Value and Sound of Falling as inspiration, our Sunday season in the cinemas shares the name of the Winter Residencies’ theme – If These Walls Could Talk – and explores how homes embody memories and places hold presences from the past. From the gothic and ghostly, in Guillermo Del Toro’s newly restored feature The Devil’s Backbone and Jack Clayton’s classic horror The Innocents, to the poetic sensibility of Terence Davies’ debut Distant Voices, Still Lives, taking in several decades of family life and strife. 

Listening to Britain  

Also in the cinemas, we’ll be presenting a strand of documentaries throughout March that invite us to listen to Britain today, from a new generation of young activists in Gentle Angry Women, to a conversation bridging the Brexit divide in Blue Has No Borders. We’ll also be screening a selection of new shorts exploring working class Britain in Uncommon Voices and putting on shows of Bristol short documentary Postcodes, from Hartcliffe-based filmmaker Neil Maggs. Visit the Listening to Britain season page.

Lunchtime talks  

On Fri 6 Feb, we’ll be hosting the Lunchtime Talk Laundry Justice, with Lara Luna-Bartley and Dr. Rhiannon Craft. They will discuss Laundry Justice, a co-produced trans-disciplinary research project exploring off-grid laundry practices and knowledge with Vehicle Dwellers in Bristol.  
 
On Fri 6 March we’re hosting a Lunchtime Talk WrongMove. from artist, programmer, and Pervasive Media Studio resident Joseph Wilk. He’ll be talking about Wrong Move, his project visualising the lack of accessible housing in the London rental market.  

And finally! Keep your eyes peeled for an announcement about the House Party that we are planning for the end of March to celebrate this year of home.  

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