A summer programme of free workshops and events for children and adults has been announced at Helston's arts centre CAST.

All activities and screenings will involve ‘journeys of the imagination’ in CAST’s 'black box' projection space at its home in Penrose Road.

The first of these workshops begins on Tuesday (July 30), when artists Lucy Grant and Kate Turner will lead children on an adventure back in time, following in the footsteps of botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker to discover the story of the rhododendron from its original habitat in the Himalayas to the gardens of Cornwall.

Other workshops - ‘Forbidden Planets’, ‘The Land of the Arachnids’ and ‘The Time Machine’ - will run over the following three Tuesdays, until August 20, available to drop in to at any time between 10am and 4pm.

Meanwhile a film by internationally celebrated artist Melanie Smith will invite viewers to immerse themselves in a very different landscape - the arid environment of the Atacama Desert in Chile, where saltpetre is blasted and extracted in a town called Maria Elena.

Shown to great acclaim at the Liverpool Biennial last year, the film is described as a "stunning sensory experience" and will be shown on a loop from now until Friday, August 2, meaning people can view it at any time between 10am and 4pm Wednesday to Sunday, or until 9pm Friday and Saturday.

Over the summer visitors will also be able to try their hand at portraiture with the camera obscura, a DIY portrait machine that will be installed on the CAST Café terrace from August 6 to 20, with two ‘Saturday Specials’ taking place - a Magical Musical Summer

Parade led by actor musician Seamas Carey on August 3 and a Big Data day on August 10.

See the CAST website c-a-s-t.org.uk and Facebook page CASTcornwall for further details.