About me

I’m an artist, writer, mother, critical thinker and creative leadership coach based in Bristol. Historically my practice has been sited in community, conversation and collaboration, with work developed over extended periods of time and shared in public spaces. More recently I’ve been using new, more playful ways to explore embodied practice through self-portraiture, dance and performance. I’m attempting to understand my identity as a woman in her 60s and my personal relationship with grief.

My practice, thinking and role as cultural worker has been shaped by the radical teaching I experienced around the politics of representation at the Polytechnic of Central London in the early 1980s. I studied for a BA (Hons) in Film, Video and Photographic Arts there before escaping London for Bristol in 1989 to join Fool Time Circus School (now Circomedia), fulfilling my dream of training as a trapeze artist. 

In the mid-1990s I completed my MA Design & Media Arts at the University of Westminster, expanding my practice through mixed media work and installation. Following brief stints in various studios I joined Bristol’s Spike Island studio community in 2008.

A significant part of my career has been working with young people, using arts and creativity to support their voice and agency in a society where they have such limited access to both. This culminated in founding and growing Rising Arts Agency, a Bristol based social enterprise led by young creative thinkers advocating, provoking and mobilising towards radical cultural change.

Since handing over the leadership of Rising at the end of 2021 I’ve had the joy of becoming a leadership coach, supporting individuals to step into their power. Simultaneously I’ve been rediscovering my own creative practice. This has resulted in returning to the overwhelming urge of 30 years earlier - to move, to stretch, to push boundaries with my own body. Through this moving body I’m attempting to explore and articulate loss, relationships, memory and vulnerability.