Artist Statement
Theatre Maker / Cultural Worker / Sound Artist
(They/them)
I am an artist, and cultural worker* specialising in theatre and sound design. My work centres around people-led justice. As a playwright I work with verbatim, song, visionary fiction. I am a sound designer and field recordist. As an interdisciplinary artist My practice also emcompasses Theatre of the Oppressed, public space interventions, and legal rights work.
The through line of my work is celebration and resistance.
My work is process led, participatory and embedded within and celebrates the context from which it comes. I work with professional and non professional performers, who’ve experienced the issues the work addresses.
Since 2020 my work has focused on themes of justice and transition on the north sea, particularly focused on the fishing industry. In 2021 I was awarded Arts Council England's Developing Your Creative Practice Grant to explore women workers and develop some theatre writing audio projects. This led to Following The Fish Workers and Guts Audio and Theatre work.
Through 2022 -2023 I've worked with Uplift on Oceans and Climate, working with North Sea groups and communities on Shetland, and Aberdeen on what a just transition from offshore oil and gas looks like.
As Co Artistic Director of You Should See The Other Guy Theatre Co. I am co-writer, director & producer for the critically acclaimed 'Land of The Three Towers Vol1' (2016) and LOTTT VOL II (2018). This verbatim musical and community workshop series toured London estates facing demolition, supported by Arts Council England, Network for Social Change and Edge Fund.
I am co-creator & co-director for ‘WOMB WITH A VIEW’, winner of ***Independent Association of Festivals 2017. My solo writing credits include 'DEPRESCOS' (2014) and 'A Riot Act: Mums Go To Iceland' (2013) written from extensive research into issues of exploitation.
I’m a former organiser with Focus E15 Campaign (East London) mother led resistance to housing injustice. I’ve been lucky enough to work as a Human Rights Organiser with Participation and the Practice of Rights: working with young people in Belfast on participatory housing justice and creative interventions such as a permanent mural on the international peace wall. I was Creative Lead for a the ‘Sunflower Week’ of action 2020 working with arts activists The Yes Men and PPR’s Build Homes Now: young people tackling homelessness in Belfast.
My practice as a theatre maker and facilitator focuses on using theatre as a transformative space : one of self expression and reflection, a place to unpick the claws of society and work through oppressions experienced in the outside world.
In the words of my mentor Ali Campbell, JFDI "Stop talking and Just F**king Do it".
*Cultural Worker :
I use the term Cultural Worker to define my practice. Devyn Springer explains the use of this really well:
"Cultural worker has a moral positioning embedded into it, as well as an inherent accountability. To call oneself a cultural worker, as opposed to a creative, is to essentially say that your labor, or at least a particular fraction of it, occurs with the intention to uphold a certain culture. It proposes that your labor as an artist, your work in art and literature, is accountable to the idea of culture. And, if we as organizers and anti-racists and socialists and communists and revolutionaries are committed to upholding a revolutionary culture, then our labor as cultural workers is accountable to the notion of working to uphold that revolutionary culture. "
https://medium.com/@DevynSpringer/cultural-worker-not-a-creative-4695ae8bfd2d
Theatre Maker / Cultural Worker / Sound Artist
(They/them)
I am an artist, and cultural worker* specialising in theatre and sound design. My work centres around people-led justice. As a playwright I work with verbatim, song, visionary fiction. I am a sound designer and field recordist. As an interdisciplinary artist My practice also emcompasses Theatre of the Oppressed, public space interventions, and legal rights work.
The through line of my work is celebration and resistance.
My work is process led, participatory and embedded within and celebrates the context from which it comes. I work with professional and non professional performers, who’ve experienced the issues the work addresses.
Since 2020 my work has focused on themes of justice and transition on the north sea, particularly focused on the fishing industry. In 2021 I was awarded Arts Council England's Developing Your Creative Practice Grant to explore women workers and develop some theatre writing audio projects. This led to Following The Fish Workers and Guts Audio and Theatre work.
Through 2022 -2023 I've worked with Uplift on Oceans and Climate, working with North Sea groups and communities on Shetland, and Aberdeen on what a just transition from offshore oil and gas looks like.
As Co Artistic Director of You Should See The Other Guy Theatre Co. I am co-writer, director & producer for the critically acclaimed 'Land of The Three Towers Vol1' (2016) and LOTTT VOL II (2018). This verbatim musical and community workshop series toured London estates facing demolition, supported by Arts Council England, Network for Social Change and Edge Fund.
I am co-creator & co-director for ‘WOMB WITH A VIEW’, winner of ***Independent Association of Festivals 2017. My solo writing credits include 'DEPRESCOS' (2014) and 'A Riot Act: Mums Go To Iceland' (2013) written from extensive research into issues of exploitation.
I’m a former organiser with Focus E15 Campaign (East London) mother led resistance to housing injustice. I’ve been lucky enough to work as a Human Rights Organiser with Participation and the Practice of Rights: working with young people in Belfast on participatory housing justice and creative interventions such as a permanent mural on the international peace wall. I was Creative Lead for a the ‘Sunflower Week’ of action 2020 working with arts activists The Yes Men and PPR’s Build Homes Now: young people tackling homelessness in Belfast.
My practice as a theatre maker and facilitator focuses on using theatre as a transformative space : one of self expression and reflection, a place to unpick the claws of society and work through oppressions experienced in the outside world.
In the words of my mentor Ali Campbell, JFDI "Stop talking and Just F**king Do it".
*Cultural Worker :
I use the term Cultural Worker to define my practice. Devyn Springer explains the use of this really well:
"Cultural worker has a moral positioning embedded into it, as well as an inherent accountability. To call oneself a cultural worker, as opposed to a creative, is to essentially say that your labor, or at least a particular fraction of it, occurs with the intention to uphold a certain culture. It proposes that your labor as an artist, your work in art and literature, is accountable to the idea of culture. And, if we as organizers and anti-racists and socialists and communists and revolutionaries are committed to upholding a revolutionary culture, then our labor as cultural workers is accountable to the notion of working to uphold that revolutionary culture. "
https://medium.com/@DevynSpringer/cultural-worker-not-a-creative-4695ae8bfd2d