I am an artist-practitioner developing programme, policy and practice at In-Situ. I am interested in questions of instituting, alternative organising structures, collective voices and art as a way of being. I am also documenting and sharing how bringing artistic thinking and art encounters into everyday life can enable us to reframe relations, value and agency. 

I joined In-Situ in 2018 when it became an NPO and was moving into being an organisation with employees rather than a group of artists and practitioners working in place. My role has grown over time, with the invitation / permission to respond to the challenge of reflecting and reflecting on In-Situ’s way of working in its continually evolving state. I am a Co-Director along with other core team members and work on Critical Engagement. 

I have established Thinking Out Loud to collectively explore and shape our ways of working through reflective processes (events, writing, films and conversations) that enable us to ask questions of our work, wider systems and structures and the role of art in our everyday lives.

As part of this I have been facilitating and documenting the co-development / collective instituting / constituting (?) of the flat organisational structure at In-Situ, creating feedback loops into policy and sharing our work in progress with peers. I have produced a series of films called Fluid Structures that surfaces the possibility, joys and challenges of this way of working and the complexities surrounding equitability and inclusivity within a diverse organisation.  

Other strands we are collectively exploring through Thinking Out Loud are Hold. Extend_; talking about connections between poly crises, inequality, values, faith and spirituality,  Kill Your Desires, looking at female experience, the body, responsibility, imagination and intuition, and Art is Life! exploring the value of art in everyday life; where we find it, do we know it when we see it, and an art of relationships through our embedded practice. 

I also lead the development of Climate Lab Pendle; an exploratory and educational climate engagement programme underpinned by climate psychology and active hope. This work centres diversity of leadership to explore barriers to individual climate action and to systems change, connecting it to broader themes of inequality and mis and dis-information and working at across the community at various levels of structural agency and leverage. The opportunity to work on this came about initially by chance, and has developed with the support of others on the team to enable me and us to keep going with it!

As an artist, I work mainly through writing and performance as process-led, embodied research. My practice is self-taught and initially developed out of motherhood as a creative context. My work is anchored by experiences of autism and religious trauma, navigated through the post-industrial landscapes of the east coast where I grew up and the steep-sided valley where I currently live with my husband and three teenage children.