Arts for Health
I started out as a museum and artist educator. As an arts for health practitioner and community worker have worked with a wide range of vulnerable adults but my focus for the last 6 years has been on working within LGBTQ+ community. I produce work engaging the senses and interoception skills. As someone with lived experience of chronic pain I developed a research and image based project about my experience of pain and sound which was featured in arts festivals and conferences. I also created a drawing project about smiles and empathy which I delivered at public festivals and events.
Sensory Nature Boxes
I was artist in residence at Brighton Festival in 2024. My initial brief was to make a sensory space for SEND children who use the soft play area at Hangleton Community Centre, with a focus on developing content for children who may have been overstimulated by that area.
Caretaking and custodianship of nature is a theme in my work, children emerge engaged and curious about the more than human so I wanted to make a sensory space that reflected that. I saw the words ‘world of wonder’ in the brochure for the festival and decided to make a cabinet of curiosities, full of the wonders of the living world.
I worked closely with SEND professionals and peers and tested content with SEND schools and families to ensure it was a resource which would support people visiting the centre.
Interoception has featured in many of my sensory art projects over the years. Somatic Experiencing training has deepened my understanding and practise in this area and given me tools to explore this more directly. This resource was to be self-facilitated so I produced written resources and guides in each drawer which encouraged participants via sensory exploration to explore interoception.
I have since created small sensory nature boxes to be used by community groups, therapists and for wellbeing purposes. You can find them for sale here (Etsy link). I also run workshops online and in person with these boxes (or train you to do so) around touch, interoception and intimacy with nature, you can find out more about workshops here (link to workshop page).
Dementia
I ran the dementia service at Switchboard, an LGBTQ+ helpline and charity in Brighton, where I worked both strategically as an advocate and educator to highlight the specific struggles faced by the LGBTQ community in relation to their experience of dementia and as the group facilitator. Drop-in sessions were held at Plot 22 allotments in Hove and at Phoenix Gallery with a mixture of gardening, hands on art sessions and exhibition discussion and experiences. I also helped establish the dementia day and developed sensory sessions at the Hop Stop community centre in Hove.
Switchboard archive
Switchboard contracted me to research their call log archives to celebrate their 45 anniversary. This private and largely untouched archive (Switchboard are custodians) holds anonymised call logs, handwritten notes by volunteers documenting calls and notes from an early befriending service dating back to the late 1970s. As a community worker my attention was drawn to the culture of care and interactions amongst volunteers and the community they supported. There is also rich documentation of significant LGBTQ moments in history held within these personal stories and it was an honour to sit amongst the papers quietly, absorb content and share some of these with our community at a talk in 2020 for Queer in Brighton “Brighton LGBTQ+ History Club: The Lavender Line. Switchboard: 45 years of listening”.
Chronic pain
I have fibromyalgia and chronic pain, a couple of Somatic Experiencing sessions in 2012 led me to start exploring my pain as sensation with a focus on my perception and experience via sound (link), specifically how sound feeds into my experience of pain (it both soothes and activates it). I used the visual arts as a medium for communicating this experience bringing in concepts from psychology and neuroscience to contextualise my lived experience within cognitive science frameworks. I presented my findings and explorations at Brighton Digital Festival, “Encountering Pain” conference at UCL London, “Multisensory Aesthetics” at Plymouth University and “Electronic Visualisation and the Arts” conference.
Collecting smiles
I continued my exploration into sensory data with a project called “Collecting Smiles” (link) a drawing and postcard project about the value of a smile and empathy. I collected smile samples and encouraged others to do the same by either going out and observing and collecting smiles or sitting opposite each other drawing their partners smile. This was delivered at a family festival, community centre, an activity for data scientists and as a queer speed date. I presented this project both as a practical workshop and talk at “DRIVA arts DRIVA: Experiencing Data: Sensory Data Mapping” organised by Brighton University. (Insta link?)
Museum education
I ran the first Lifelong Learning programme for adults at the National Maritime Museum which gave me a hugely rich and varied grounding for working with community groups, access provision, exhibition interpretation and object handling. My role involved organising the public education programme of talks and workshops for adults, access provision for deaf and visually impaired visitors, co-creating course content with universities and local colleges and bespoke visits for adult groups and students. All this has fed into my multifaceted approach to sensory engagement with objects, historical content and the importance of personal stories and the senses for engaging people.