There’s a clock ticking and it’s getting louder. The inevitable alarm that is the end of my degree stirs equal amounts of apprehension and excitement at the moment. The word ‘last’ has come into play in recent weeks, acting as a daily reminder that time is slipping away. There’s a time looming when our work will have to evolve without daily conversation with each other and, worse than that, we won’t be living a ten minute walk apart anymore. But bursting through the anticipation of sadness, uncertainty and potentially difficult times ahead is this absolute love for the work I’m currently making and an overwhelming readiness to take what I’ve got out into the world.


Leeds has become home over the last three years, and the social basis of the work I make lends itself to staying here, utilising the networks I’ve spent time building and adding to them as I go. When Joseph Beuys said ‘every man is an artist’, I’m not sure I agree. But as an artist, I do believe it’s part of my role to make art accessible and facilitate a role within it for ‘every man’. The idea of making people part of something, a community who have shared an experience, has long been at the centre of what I do, but it’s taken me in really varied directions. I’ve made installations to be ‘activated’ by the viewer, handed out questionnaires leading to conversations and printed books of the replies, worked with artists in other countries over the internet, led fictional guided tours and even danced in public like Gillian Wearing, just to add myself to the worldwide community who did it before me. Along the way, I’ve become really involved in collaborative ways of working. Before you realise, you have something on your hands that’s far more than the sum of its parts, and for me that’s the most exciting way to work.


Jeanne Van Heeswijk takes the concept of collaboration further and speaks of a ‘collaboration of experts’, a way of working by which you seek out the most appropriate experts for the job, across disciplines, and by virtue of the combination, magic will happen. I’ve involved myself in lots of projects that feel like they work on this basis. That’s not to say that the combination is always right, natural and easy, but with a common goal a compromise can always be found. Two projects are currently particularly prominent due to the fast approach of a few large-scale events. For more information, and to understand why I’m quite so excited, keep up to date with these two sites…


dwf.uk.com


www.recreativeuk.com/project/recreative-live
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With degree show on the horizon, it feels time to be the person doing the recruiting. I’ve got big plans and I know I can’t make them happen alone: To be honest, I wouldn’t want to. I see as much art and aesthetic interest in the planning, negotiation and organisation of my interventions as in the events themselves. I relish the process.

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This year, I will be spending Valentine’s Day, not with my boyfriend, but on a bus to London, in time to attend ‘The Politics of the Social in Contemporary Art’ at Tate Modern. To have such an established and influential gallery make space to facilitate discussion in this area not only gives me a little confidence that I’m not completely barking up the wrong tree, but really makes me feel a part of something. Funny that being motivated to work with communities has led to me being part of a whole new one myself.