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Over the past few years I have used a variety of mediums for my work, from facilitating discussion groups and conversations (lots of them), performance, moving image work, photography, installation, print, text and film. However, performing to camera remains one of my favourite. It allows me to process the topics, issues or work that I have been doing. To channel some of my thoughts visually. To focus but sometimes to also play and have fun. As artists we often need this release, this freedom to play, to expereiment, in order for mistakes to happen, for things to become unstuck. This is what I love about performing to camera. It is not about the ability to edit the work. it is the freedom to screw up, and for that to potentially become the work.

With a National Lottery project grant from Arts Council England this arts project aims to collect storeis and experiences of lockdowns from across the town, whilst also sharing with the local community how art can be a powerful way to share experiences.

Working with: Artists Katherine Smith, Jill Kennedy McNeill, Annis Joslin, Amanda Holiday and Louise Jordan, community facilitator/collaborator Candice Camacho, and community organisations Safer Hampshire, West End Centre Aldershot, Rushmoor Voluntary Services and Chapel Arts Studios.

AIMS:

To develop communication strategies for sharing lesser heard stories, especially those of women, during lockdown. Working with a small group of women to creatively share some of these stories publicly. All of this work will become part of the wider archive of lockdown being collected by the local area.

To focus on exploring more mutually beneficially collaboration with communities and ideas of authorship, alongside considering how to work meaningfully with social engagement during a period of social distancing and isolation.

September 2021 Report: The group of women and artists involved in the project have formed a collaboration, the ‘CWA Collaboration group’. One of the aims of this project has been to explore authorship within socially engaged work and by forming a collaboration we have a group in which we can discuss the direction of the project and who/how to engage locally in an effective and locally relevant way. We have a mixture of artists and non artists in the group, I have taken the lead with the support of Candice Camacho, and with other artists involved when creating work, Annis Joslin, Amanda Holiday and Lousie Jordan, I was able to maintain a high level of artistic quality throughout, whilst also ensuring true collaboration with the participants. The non artist individuals involved have been and will be key to the direction of the engagement and they have been paid for their time. 

Alongside this work we have been promoting the project and sharing some photography and text work in the town with the support of Rushmoor Council and the West End Centre. We have had so much interest in the project that we decided to call out for more stories and experiences from people in the town. We have had a great response to this and have collected over 100 thoughts/experiences so far. Our aim was not to collect thousands of stories, but to have a qualitative archive of the town’s experiences of this pandemic. We eventually want to create a publication to record all of this, but first we want to ensure we have collected stories from across the town in an inclusive way which we aim to do in phase two funding permitting. This public engagement and response has allowed us to see how much more of the community would like to engage with art and can see it as a useful tool for sharing experiences and for community participation.

The group’s been brilliant; it’s good to see diversity and, most importantly, hear the voices of women, something which isn’t always done. I found myself looking forward to meeting with you all each week because it felt comforting to share our common expereinces and share in your thoughts about lockdown and the future’.

Sameea Jonnud, Collaboration Gorup

I didn;t know what I would be able to add to the group, but actually I’ve really enjoyed it and felt able to contribute and be heard. I thought everyone would be different to me, but we have loads of shared experiences through lockdown. Being disabled, having the remote sessions also made it easier for me to be involved

Melanie Chiwera, Collaboration Gorup

Follow the project via instagram at @conversations_with_aldershot or Facebook at @conversationswithaldershot

Podcasts vie image link above or below on itunes!

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/woman-up/id1451539991

Woman Up! is the podcast series that I co-create with Desperate Artwives (Artist Amy Dignam) and in association with the Woman’s Art Library, Special Collections, Goldsmiths University.

We record a mixture of remote and face-to-face interviews with women* who are creating change, inspiring others and rocking the status quo, mostly also while maintaining caring responsibilities. Most women Artists face a dramatic change in their art practice, and respresentation, once becoming parents. A change that still affects women far more than when Men become parents. Desperate Artwives offers a collaborative platform for this collective of women artists and also an opportunity for their voices to be heard.

These podcasts began as a chance for us to have conversations with these exciting women and their work, but also as a chance to democratise access to them for audiences. We have quickly realised that what we are also doing is providing a valuable resource of long-form content sharing about these women and their work. In March 2020 we were honoured that the Women’s Art Library installed the podcast as a ‘listening post’ for Women’s History Month, in June 2020 the ICA shared our podcast in their daily newsletter, Curatorspace gave us a small grant in 2019 and we have been lucky enough to interview a huge list of Women Artists including Bobby Baker, The Guerrilla Girls, Women Picturing revolution and more! The podcast is currently unfunded and remains free but we are always on the look out for appropriate funding in order to be able to pay our interviewees!

The podcast is a concept conceived of by Amy Dignam, founder of Desperate Artwives. My main roles within the podcast are: Presenter and Editor however as it is a collaborative project I am also involved in the curation and recruitment for the podcast alongside Amy.

To find the podcasts please visit the Desperate Artwives Website, or subscribe to us on itunes

*Including Trans Women ’trans women ought to be included in the feminist coalition because we share some experiences of misogyny with cis women, because we share liberatory goals with feminism, and because our exclusion makes feminism weaker’ Alyson Escalante

This film formed part of my exhibition response for the exhibition ‘Saturated Space’ with CAS Artists at Sandham Memorial Chapel, March 2020. We were invited to respond to the space, the chapel, and the work that sits within it by Stanley Spencer.

I wanted to link my current practice of performance investigations (to camera) in my home town of Aldershot, as Spencer’s work in the chapel was a memorial to WW1 and Aldershot is one of the oldest military towns of the UK (and remains a militrary town). The film combines footage of some of my investigations/reenactments, marching across the training land (which is still in use, and had an Army truck waiting to come onto the land whilst I was filming), packing and unpacking my own ‘kit bag’, laying out items of necessity akin to the kit bags of WW1, socks, water, soap, sewing kit, alongside items I packed as a woman and feminist artist – Tampons, sports bra, and instead of the bible, the feminist art book ‘Old Mistresses’.

The sound of the film combines a recording appropriated from a Podcast from Oxford University about ‘Surplus Women’ after the World Wars, and recordings of my own voice reading letters from the magazine House Wife from 1946.

I wanted to think about the women from this time. The many many women, who not only worked throughout the war to keep the nation running in both the public and domestic spheres, but who afterwards were forced back into homes, banned from workplaces or refused pay, encouraged to procreate to replace the many men lost, encouraged to emigrate in order to find husbands and so on. We know these stories but they are still seldom seen or memorialised. This film is a starting point. An attempt to begin an uncovering of some of the stories and voices of women post war. A remembering. A memorial.