Artist Statement

I use the familiarity of domestic textiles to explore emotions connected to feeling safe, vulnerable and unsafe. I use my childhood toys, fairytales, fables and myths, artefacts and histories found in archives and collections to make protective blankets and vessels.  I question our inherited responses to danger and safety – the real, the false and the exaggerated narratives used by families, communities, and nations to “keep us safe” and how we respond to these.

I am a member of Ten Obstructions and Immaterial Collective.

My freelance employment is community based, working mainly with older people and adults who have learning disabilities, autism and/or are profoundly deaf. I am passionate that art should be accessible to everyone however they communicate.  I was awarded a DYCP grant in 2021 to develop work on the knitting machine that is both conceptual and still accessible for people who communicate differently. This is an ongoing theme.

I run community classes in creativity, textile art, mixed media and basic printmaking, designed to develop confidence and joy in creating, and to reduce the fear of the imperfect!

Bio

In 2015, having picked up bits and pieces of arts education at night school, I joined Islington Mill Art Academy – a peer led experiment into alternative art education. During my three and a half years in the Academy I participated in two residencies that had a profound effect on my practice, and learnt printmaking skills on a year long course at Hotbed Press. I have an in-depth knowledge of textile processes, having explored, played with and studied the craft of textiles since childhood. I am currently researching the emotions connected to the word wary. Wary is the threshold between safe and unsafe, fight or flight.

Previously I worked for Salford City Council in social care and community development roles, often using craft and art as a means to bring people together to develop social and advocacy skills. In 2010, I became a self-employed community facilitator and gradually this morphed into a community art practice based around group celebration and development, particularly in the field of diversity and inclusion.

CV

Freelance Employment

July 2010 – present: Freelance Community Artist.

I use art for group celebration and development. I run the DIY Theatre Company Visual Art class at Salford Museum and Art Gallery for adults who have learning disabilities, and have been involved in many projects and commissions with DIY over the last 15 years.

Over the years I have worked with many organisations, mainly Salford based including Inspiring Communities Together, DIY Theatre Company, Eccles Community Art Gallery, START in Salford, START 50+, Imagine, Act Succeed (IAS), Oasis Academy, Salford Community Leisure, City West Housing Trust, Salford Health Improvement Service, Ordsall Community Arts and Tandem Theatre Company.

I am a Discover/Explore/Bronze and Silver Arts Award Advisor

Grants and Bursaries

Art Council England Developing Your Creative Practice Grant
– Emotional inheritance & the knitting machine
6th September 2021 to 6th February 2022

Castlefield Gallery/GMCVO (Greater Manchester Combined Authority)
– bOlder artist talent development programme and bursary for older artists aged 50+
December 2019 to September 2020

Community commissions and projects

Close Knit: DIY Theatre Company, Salford – project and commissioned textile piece – Heritage Lottery Fund November 2023 to June 2024

Back Together: DIY Theatre Company, Salford – post lockdown project and commission to make a sister textile piece to Together In Our Separateness June – September 2021

Together In Our Separateness – DIY Theatre Company, Salford – lockdown commissioned textile piece – June 2020

Game Changers:Tandem Theatre Company, Greater Manchester Suffragist project and banner -Heritage Lottery Fund 12th January to 13th March 2019

Poppy Project: Ordsall Hall Tudor Manor House – project and commissioned textile piece – Heritage Lottery Fund April – August 2015

Celebrating Diversity Wedding Project: St. Clement’s Church & Ordsall Community Arts, Salford – project – Heritage Lottery Fund June – August 2014

Picking Up The Threads: DIY Theatre Company, Salford – project and commissioned textile piece – Heritage Lottery Fund April to Novenber 2013

Islington Mill Art Academy, Creative and Community Education