I undertook a Creative Space Residency hosted by Contemporary Visual Arts Network North East in June 2020, during the national lockdown due to Covid19. I spent this residency ‘at home’ to develop the storytelling project about the glass ships in bottles.

“When heavy industry began to decline in the 1970s, newly redundant scientific glassblowers transferred their glass skills and established successful enterprise of glass ships in bottles.”

A half-century has passed, today as a researcher, I can summarise the history in a simple sentence like this. But, I imagine that things were not straightforward like that for the glassblowers. They must have lived days of endless trials and errors, perhaps not noticing that they were contributing to a significant phenomenon of glass art. I strongly felt through this research that the unceasing toil of orfinary people, in the end, built history.

The purpose of telling the story of glassblowers and their ships in bottles is firstly to celeblate this cultural heritage. There are enlightening messages we can learn about people’s resilience, friendship and global relationship. Furthermore, I’d like to say out loud that each one of us is already contributing something to the history by living each day as it comes.

People have power of creativity to move forward in a changing world – all the time. Hope we can survive this storm!