The project at a glance
Lockers live in public places. For a while they often hold some of the most personal and intimate fragments of people’s lives.
I found my locker forgotten in an old shed when I moved out of the city and into the Fens. It was lonely and discarded, but it was not empty. It held wrappers, rulers, stickers, notes and names scratched onto the walls. So many echoes of people who had left their mark over time. I cleaned it up, gave it a lick of paint and a new purpose.
I also made a folded mini zine explaining what the Art Locker is, which was given out to promote the locker.
The Art Locker travels to shared places where community lives and people can gather. Created to disrupt loneliness by offering us small traces of other people to connect with. Inside are notes, gifts, art and marks of care.
So go on. Maybe take something out. Maybe put something in. Or just have a look.
The first phase of the Art Locker was supported by Metal through The Unlonely City, travelling across community venues in Peterborough with public workshops.
Update: where the Art Locker is now and what’s next
Following its first phase with Metal, the Art Locker is now living in the café at Peterborough Museum, where you can visit it, open it up and leave something of your own. It will be moving on to its next home sometime in the new year.
The Art Locker is not finished. Next, I would love to invite artists to take over the lockers for small mini residencies, with each locker becoming a tiny exhibition space for a mini show of their own.
I am currently looking for funding and partners to make this happen. If you are an artist, a venue or a funder and would like to be part of the next chapter, get in touch at rose@rose-croft.co.uk.
Story of the Art Locker
Lockers are strange things. They sometimes hold the most personal objects and yet stand anonymous in public places. They live in corridors and changing rooms, in train stations and schools. In places we pass through without settling. They hold space and time for us until we are ready to move on, or until we have to.
They are numbered. Lined up. Identical. Metal doors. Small vents. A key that turns and locks something away. For a while they carry what we cannot. A spare jumper that smells like home. A packed lunch. A note folded small enough to hide. Things that make an unfamiliar place more bearable.
No one lingers in front of a locker. They are not destinations. They are pauses.
When I found my locker, it was in my shed. I had just left the city and moved into the Fens, still circling the question of what home meant here, still not fully sunk into the flatness and sky. And there it was, pressed against the wall of a leaky shed in my garden. I am not sure how it got there. It smelled bad. Animals had sheltered inside it. Dust and grime and old muck clung to every hinge. Cobwebs decorated the locker like tiny Christmas dioramas and I was slightly afraid to pull it forward in case something living claimed it back. But all the keys were still in the doors which felt like an unexpected win.
Years passed. A global pandemic. Political chaos. A whirlwind of a creative freelancer developing herself as an artist. I even cut off all my dreadlocks. Life rearranged itself more than once.
In January 2026, I pulled the locker out into the light to clean them. One of my neighbours told me it came from a school somewhere. When? Who knows? I expected to find a lot of rust and a lot of dirt.
But I found People.
I found a Freddo wrapper in the top left locker first, and we all know a Freddo can place us precisely in time by how much it cost (a shame the price part was ripped away). An empty sandwich bag beneath it, with a hardened drip that had leaked through into the bottom locker too, from something saved for later, much later. A green shatterproof school ruler of the exact type we recognise from maths lessons, the kind that is too big to fit in your pencil case. A smiley face token wedged down the back as if it had slipped from a locker above and never been rescued. Sweatshop jar stickers on the outside of one door, bleached almost colourless, just pale blue lines on a ghostly silhouette where brightness used to be. On the inside of one door, a thick red permanent marker penned heart, slightly wonky. On another, a bobbled label that read “Nell’s locker and HANS LOCKER”, both crossed out. There were strange alien outlines on the doors where stickers had once been, the residue preserving a slightly less faded paint beneath it. And lastly, after all was clean and ready for paint, I found “Georgina” scratched hurriedly in the back of the Freddo locker: Georgina was ere 77, 94-95. So I had a date in time after all.
These are the marks of humanity.
So what do you do when you find history sitting in your shed? I make Art :)
This is my Art Locker now.
This Locker stands no longer hidden and empty, but open and in use. It travels to shared places where community lives and people can gather. Created to disrupt loneliness by offering us small traces of other people to connect with.
The compartments still carry the faint ghosts of Georgina and Nell and whoever ate the Freddo and meant to come back for their sandwich, but now they carry us too.
The lockers are not assigned to one person with one key. No longer sealed containers of a single life. It is unlocked. Available. Participatory.
Inside it are small offerings. Notes, Gifts, Art, marks of care. Objects made in workshops by hands that may never meet. We are not made to move through this world alone. We are part of something more than us. We need each other.
It no longer holds just belongings. The Art Locker holds exchanges. It holds connection. It holds the possibility that there are echoes of others standing here with you.
So go on… Maybe take something out. Maybe put something in. Maybe just have a look.
Unlock The Art Locker. Unlock Community.
A visit from Zack Polanski
While the Art Locker was at The Green Backyard, Zack Polanski, Leader of the Green Party, visited and I got to tell him all about it.
The Art Locker Residency
This was the first funded phase of a travelling installation that will continue to move beyond this programme. This stage was supported through the Unlonely City programme by Metal Culture, which supports creative projects that explore connection, community and belonging within urban spaces, and aims to disrupt loneliness through shared cultural experiences.
As part of this residency, the lockers travelled across three community venues in Peterborough, each hosting a two week stay with public workshops.
The project began at Peterborough Museum as part of the International Women’s Day event. This first session was a public launch where the lockers were shown for the first time and filled. From there, the lockers were installed at The Green Backyard, a community garden and environmental charity, where they were open and active from day one. They then travelled to Roots and Rise, a wellbeing café and social enterprise space, where artist Rowland Burt hosted me in his shop, and finally to Gladstone Connect, a neighbourhood community centre supporting local residents.
Just before the lockers went to Gladstone Connect, they spent an afternoon at The Beeches Primary School, where the children wrote questions for the people who come to the OAP lunch at Gladstone Connect. See their questions and the answers they got back.
I chose these venues because each holds a different energy within the city: shared growing space, café culture centred on wellbeing and everyday neighbourhood support. As the lockers moved between them, they stepped into varied settings and communities, expanding the circle of exchange each time.
Each residency unfolded over two weeks. In the first week, I hosted an outreach workshop in a nearby public place, introducing the project and signposting people to visit the lockers at the community venue. In the second week, I hosted an in-house unlocking session that celebrated the venue itself, inviting people to open the lockers, explore what others had left behind and add something of their own.
At the end of the project, the Art Locker went to the Peterborough Celebrates festival at Nene Park for a day.
The Art Locker creates space for small acts of exchange, encouraging curiosity, generosity and connection across the city.
About The Unlonely City
The Unlonely City is an arts programme disrupting loneliness, nurturing moments of solidarity, surprise and laughter. Through a series of artistic commissions, citizens assemblies, parties and public conversations, The Unlonely City takes place across Liverpool, Peterborough and Southend, where Metal is based, to imagine what an ‘unlonely’ city could be.
In Autumn 2025, artists submitted their creative project ideas as part of The Unlonely City. Since then, and even before then, we’ve been thinking about how we can create unlonely cities through creativity, curiosity and just the right amount of chaos. You can find out more about what’s happening in Peterborough here.
The Unlonely City programme is funded by Paul Hamlyn Foundation as part of the Arts Award.
Support information
This is the support information that is available at the Art Locker for people to take if they need it.
Information you can take if you need it. You do not have to be in crisis to take this information. You do not need to explain why you are taking it.
Art Locker invites people to share real experiences. Some messages may be emotional or difficult. Support information is available so people can choose to seek help if they want to. Taking this information does not mean anything is wrong. It is here for anyone who needs it.
Someone to talk to now
Samaritans
Free, confidential listening support, 24 hours a day. Call 116 123. www.samaritans.org
For anyone feeling overwhelmed, distressed or in need of someone to listen.
Shout
24 hour text support. Text SHOUT to 85258. giveusashout.org
A text based service if talking on the phone feels difficult.
Mental health support
NHS Talking Therapies
Free talking therapies for anxiety, depression and stress. Self referral available. Find NHS Talking Therapies
Mind
Mental health information, advice and support. Infoline 0300 123 3393. www.mind.org.uk
Includes information on managing feelings, finding local support and understanding mental health.
Cambridgeshire and Peterborough support
CPSL Mind
Local mental health charity supporting people across Cambridgeshire and Peterborough. www.cpslmind.org.uk
Offers support services, groups and information.
NHS Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Talking Therapies
NHS talking therapies service for Cambridgeshire and Peterborough. Self referral available. www.cpft.nhs.uk/talkingtherapies
Rethink Mental Illness Peterborough and Cambridgeshire
Support for people living with mental illness and their carers. www.rethink.org
Local services may include community support and advocacy.
LGBTQIA+ support
Switchboard LGBT+ Helpline
Listening support and signposting. Call 0300 330 0630. switchboard.lgbt
The Kite Trust
Supporting LGBTQ+ young people in Cambridgeshire and surrounding areas. www.thekitetrust.org.uk
If you are worried about someone
If you are concerned about someone’s immediate safety, contact emergency services.
If you are supporting someone emotionally and need guidance, organisations such as Samaritans and Mind also offer advice for supporters.