LATEST NEWS

winter 2024

We Roar to tour England

After a hugely impactful tour of UK prisons and the US Ann Arbor Art Fair, the We Roar exhibition of artworks and poetry by 40 people in UK and US prisons has been successful in securing support from Arts Council England to tour public libraries through 2025 and 2026. Impacts of the project (presented at an international symposium at the Warwick Arts Centre in November) show how much has been achieved since the first ground-breaking We Bear project with key partners Novus, PCAP and the University of Warwick. Feedback for exhibitors can also still be submitted via the feedback form.

In progress: Four Seasons

Production is underway to create new sculptures for the parkland at National Trust Croome, co-designed in engagement workshops with four community groups. The resulting outdoor artworks, responding to the site and the themes of the Four Seasons, will reflect collaboration with the groups, including looked after children, men at HMP Hewell, women supported by JOY in Malvern and National Trust volunteers. Installation of the resulting sculptures is planned for spring 2025.

Now a book: Hidden Stories

A new book and exhibition of extraordinary photography and texts has launched, created in collaboration with military spouses on a secure base and care leavers entering adulthood. Both groups co-created new artworks around themes of belonging and identity inspired by Warwickshire archives.

The exhibition has now closed but the book is available for loan from all Warwickshire libraries and mobile libraries. It can also be downloaded from the Hidden Stories page.

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.

See the Creeq website and socials to follow more project news.