Installation

Making Sense

A fun, messy and engaging exploration of the senses and neurodiversity, this installation fits any room, any ages and any abilities. It currently features: a sandpit on wheels with hidden treasures, a paddling pool full of pompoms, mindful drawing and colouring, scented playdoh, slime customising, a fabric textures wall, a dark tent full of different lights and projections, spinny walls and a cozy carpet and blanket space. Coming soon are: fidget board, worldwide musical instruments, water beads play, shape and colour sorting, wooden car races and a floor maze.

Making Sense has featured at festivals and community groups and we'd love to come to your event and make a mess too (we promise to tidy up afterwards)!

Making Sense at Z Arts Haphazard Festival 2023 Video Credit: Catherine Shaw

Where Have You Slept?

Created as part of British Art Show 9's Art Agents programme with HOME gallery, I worked with homelessness experienced participants from Our Room Manchester and drew on my own experiences of homelessness to expose the injustice of the Vagrancy Act. I created the five fundamental questions of homelessness, Where do you sleep?, Do you feel safe at home?, Can you have a bath?, Can you use the toilet? And When did you last eat? with the knowledge of how difficult these questions can be to answer for some, whilst being easy to answer for others. I embroidered the participants' answers to these into the tent and invited members of the public to climb inside, sit on the hard ground with nothing but a thin sleeping bag under a railway bridge and feel the weight of the words above their heads, an act that would be illegal if they were actually homeless. I also worked with Office of Craig to create an accompanying poster campaign. The installation has since been exhibited in the Turnpike Gallery and has been taken to schools and galleries with an accompanying protest badges workshop for young people.

Photo Credit: Liza Mortimer, TT News

Hostile Interior Design

I created this combined installation and performance exposing hostile architecture whilst on the Arts and Homelessness International Associate Leadership programme with the support of Theatre Deli Sheffield. As both a physically disabled and homelessness experienced person I sought to raise awareness of the every day behaviour modification that takes place everywhere we go. The main behaviour that sloped seats, bars on benches, uneven flooring, blue lights, discordant noises and spikes are attempting to curb is bedding down of unhouse folks. Sleep is a human right and stopping someone from sleeping is literally torture. These things also make navigating the world very difficult for physically disabled people. During my one-week residency, we constructed the non-living room from once used and loved furniture and devised an excruciating performance in which the audience are forced to watch on as I tried to complete everyday tasks in an environment that was designed to hurt and restrict.