Abstract
This interview examines The Joy of Feeling, an immersive textile installation created by HoLD Art Collective, Sarah Marsh and Stephanie Jefferies, for UNIQLO Tate Play at Tate Modern (London, UK) in February 2025. Inspired by Dorothea Tanning’s fabric sculpture Nue Couchée, the project transformed the concrete space of the South Tank into a soft, sensory landscape for children, families and carers. Through weighted, scented, wearable and huggable textile forms, the installation encouraged touch, rest, movement, play and emotional regulation. Drawing on Marsh and Jefferies’s experience with early years, SEND and neurodiverse audiences, the project foregrounded the therapeutic, aesthetic and relational potential of textiles. Visitor responses highlighted the installation’s calming atmosphere, long engagement times and accessibility for young children. The interview shows how beauty, abstraction and sensory design can reshape museum spaces into environments of care, creativity and shared embodied experience.