Sara Downham-Lotto is a socially engaged abstract artist whose work explores transformation, memory and relationships through paper, colour and abstraction. Alongside her studio practice, she has developed a participatory visual arts methodology that integrates artistic enquiry, peacebuilding and community-led change.

Her paintings and installations have evolved through more than forty years of artistic practice and collaboration with communities in the UK and internationally. Rather than existing separately, her studio practice and participatory visual arts practice continually inform and enrich one another. Many of her artworks begin with collaborative mark-making and visual expressions of cultural identity created with participants before being transformed through an intuitive process of deconstruction and reconstruction in the studio.

As founder of Arts Lab and the Rural Peace Hub in Northumberland, UK, Sara works with artists, educators, researchers and community leaders to explore how participatory visual arts can strengthen creativity, relationships and more resilient futures.

“My work explores how creating art together can deepen observation, strengthen relationships and make change visible.“

Sara Downham-Lotto