LATEST NEWS

spring 2025

We Roar tour 2025-26

The We Roar exhibition of artworks and poetry by 40 people in UK and US prisons is touring public libraries in England, starting with Redditch Library 1-30 April, then Stafford Library until 2 June. Throughout the summer, it'll also be at the National Justice Museum, before continuing on tour into April 2026 (see full dates here). Every library and museum on the tour is hosting free engagement events, so please join us where you can. Supported by Arts Council England, this extends the success of last year's tour of UK prisons and the US Ann Arbor Art Fair, with key partners Novus and PCAP.

National Trust: Four Seasons

Production is underway to create new sculptures for the parkland at National Trust Croome, co-designed with four community groups. The resulting outdoor artworks respond to the site and the Four Seasons theme and reflect collaboration with the groups, including looked after children, men at HMP Hewell, women supported by JOY in Malvern and National Trust volunteers. The launch date for the sculptures and exhibition will be announced soon and in the meantime I’m working with young people at Oasis Community Hub Warndon to ensure we also have innovative family engagement activities to offer, supported by Arts Council England.

British Library exhibition

Travelling from a closed women's prison to the world's largest library, the artwork on the left is being exhibited as part of Unearthed a major new show at the British Library 2 May-10 August 2025. The image was made at HMP Send in a collaborative project with RHS Wisely, creating the Plants, Prisons and Potential programme. I'm incredibly proud of everyone who took part and the supporting staff and am delighted we'll be adding contemporary prison horticulture/wellbeing into the national conversation.

Near Belonging

Near Belonging toured four Warwickshire venues 2022-23 and was screened within the Commonwealth Games CultureFest. The project evolved with residents using a discovery of lost portraits to explore belonging in many forms, including asylum, prejudice, family and refuge. It's captured in a project summary film and blog posts.

I See You Anew

A publication from my New Art Gallery Walsall lockdown residency has been acquired for the gallery's permanent collection. I asked children being home-schooled by parent artists to make a response to their parents' work. These consider parent-child home-work relationships challenged through lockdown and provide valuable new perspectives on wider issues of social and personal inheritance.

PROJECT LEGACIES ONLINE

A number of recent projects can now be accessed online, sharing project legacies in various ways:

Room for the Soul

Room for the Soul was co-created for the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) with the Forest of Hearts Green Therapy Group, exploring participants’ personal memories of people and nature in a series of workshops. The online book now ensures a legacy for the project journey of building trust and confidence to encourage creativity.

Listening To The Land

The Listening To The Land webpage is now live, showcasing the portraits and recordings I gathered about the present and future of a SSSI area of the Shropshire Hills. It explores many of the rewards and challenges faced in farming, conservation, tourism and leisure and is also available as a publication (more details here).

Plants, Prisons & Potential

First devised for the Royal Horticultural Society with HMP Send, I developed Plants, Prison & Potential with HMP Hewell, delivering a programme around gardening, the build environment and wellbeing in incarceration. This resulted in a number of artworks, including meadow mural paintings shown in this project film. The original project with HMP Send is also available as a moving RHS online exhibition.

This commission is being delivered via my not-for-profit company Creeq.

Hidden Stories

A book and exhibition of extraordinary photography and texts around themes of belonging and identity, created in collaboration with military spouses on a secure base and care leavers entering adulthood. The book of co-created artworks inspired by Warwickshire archives is available for loan from all Warwickshire libraries and can be downloaded from the Hidden Stories page.

Prisoner art PhD research

I'm delighted to have secured a Midlands4Cities scholarship to research the layered impacts of artworks made in prisons being exhibited anonymously. I'm going to be a part time PGR for a long time at the University of Warwick, with further support from the University of Birmingham, so if you have a story to share about your engagement with visual art in prison, please get in touch.