Queen’s Hall Arts worked with the community linked to RAF Spadeadam, a military base on the Northumberland and Cumbria border, commissioning Creative Producer and multimedia participatory artist Emma Tominey to run workshops inspired by Simon Armitage’s poem Freedom Road, exploring what freedom means to them.
Our Freedom: Then and Now
Our Freedom: Then and Now was a UK-wide, locally-led arts and creative programme which produced new pieces of work reflecting on what ‘Our Freedom’ meant to local people and their communities, following the 80th anniversary of VE/VJ Day in 2025.
Led by Future Arts Centres, 60 arts centres and libraries worked with commissioned artists and local communities to create special cultural events, exhibitions and performances that were meaningful to people living in these places and across the UK.
Here's a video of award-winning poet, playwright, musician and novelist Simon Armitage performing his poem, Freedom Road…
Emma Tominey
Emma is a Creative Producer and multimedia participatory artist and designer based in the North East of England. With a background in graphic design and communication, her practice spans co-creation, visual storytelling, and socially engaged design. She leads inclusive, cross-sector arts projects—often in collaboration with museums, libraries, schools, and health services—to explore memory, identity, literacy, and place. Working across mediums like printmaking, book arts, AR, and digital storytelling, Emma champions accessibility, community voice, and creativity as tools for social change.
Over four months, artist Emma Tominey worked with more than 120 participants from groups within the RAF Spadeadam community, using Simon Armitage's Freedom Road poem to spark conversations about what freedom means today.
The final artwork grew from those workshops, shaped by Emma and informed by the military base's location and the experiences of those who live, work, or are connected to it - honouring personal and shared histories through a contemporary lens.
Here's a look back at that journey...
"As a participatory artist and designer, I have worked with diverse audiences but I have never worked directly with the armed forces. This project was a great opportunity to develop my practice for and with this audience and helped me to shape ways of bringing creativity into a new context for both myself and the cadets, veterans, active service personnel and their families we worked with. This project also helped me to develop a greater understanding of and respect for the armed forces. I would now recommend the cadets programme to any young person."
Freedom: Reframed
Freedom: Reframed, an Augmented Reality (AR) exhibition of interactive artworks, was launched at a celebratory event at Queen's Hall in November 2025.
Community members who helped create the new AR exhibition came together with Emma Tominey, representatives from RAF Spadeadam, and the Queen’s Hall Arts team to reflect on the journey and be amongst the first to view the final artworks.
This video looks back at that special event...
"The project was outside my normal comfort zone, interacting with a different customer base than I was normally used to, dealing with military personnel can often be a different conversation than to civilians. I have never interviewed for an artist before however I also enjoyed acting as a host and showing individuals, the work and equipment used by the Royal Air Force on the camp, it was again, something which we do not often get the opportunity to do. Watching Emma work with such enthusiasm as she photographed the structures on the camp was very pleasing. One of the most significant takeaways was the sense of achievement and fulfilment I felt upon seeing the project reach this stage and the launch event. Sat in the audience and watching the tangible results of the efforts of Emma and the staff of Queen's Hall was incredibly satisfying, and I am keen to be involved in future challenges with the same enthusiasm."
If you want to start a conversation on working with Queen's Hall Arts on a similar project, email the Queen's Hall Box Office team and someone will be in touch!
The programme is delivered in partnership with Libraries Connected and Open Eye Gallery, supported using public funding by UK Government through Arts Council England.
