I am an artist, researcher and skateboarder based in Leeds, UK who likes to initiate projects that through inclusion, participation and co-production seeks to reclaim and reappropriate civic space for all. From municipal art galleries, universities, city centres to remote locations, my socially engaged and situated artistic practice aims to question not just the structures of power within society but of artistic production itself.
In recent years, I’ve become interested in the idea of supplanting the role of artist for wider public inclusion and festival making as a strategy for civic engagement. I have been focusing on long-term projects in two key locations: Leeds and Rochdale, both in the North of England. In Leeds, I have been working closely with the female and marginalised gender skateboard community to address issues of safety and access to public urban space by forming mutually beneficial relationships with the arts organisations and cultural institutions that find themselves being popular skate spots. In Rochdale, I have been working directly with Touchstones to explore and expand the role a municipal art gallery can have. This first began with attempting to exhibit their entire collection in a single exhibition whilst producing a docuseries following such an impossible task, to developing a new kind of exhibition where anyone living in the Borough could freely use the gallery however they wanted, to now being in the early stages of establishing a new city-wide festival working side-by-side with many of the charities, organisations, community groups and creative practitioners in the borough to address issues of isolation and loneliness.