PUBLIC REALM
Some of my favourite projects have taken place in the public realm, where many different signs and symbols (both curated and uncurated) compete for attention and influence the way we feel and behave. I love working with an unsuspecting public to challenge what public spaces are and what they could be. I also love working with community members who are already striving to do things differently.
In the past I have used several methods of embedding to conduct enquiries into public spaces and produce work.
Street residency
This involves embedded collaboration with street users and businesses to conduct experimental curation; testing different uses, inviting different users, realising latent potential and identifying things that need to change.
Agora residency
This is similar to the street residency, except I work with a group of people already engaged with a space- such as people creating a community garden, or reviving a street market, for example. Embedding creative enquiry into this context can help people to think critically and creatively, and to be more playful and imaginative in their actions.
Creative walking
Using collective walking as a tool to feel, understand, notice and exchange information with one another. This is particularly good for inspiring creative writing and visual art in response to place, and works particularly well in heritage contexts, nature spaces and prior to development. This is useful for helping to understand how places affect people. I define walking to include wheelchairs and any other mobility aids necessary to move around.
Interventions have involved temporary artworks/installations, happenings, exhibitions, curated walks, performance and producing products and tools.
Example projects
2015- Counterplay- Winstanley & Nadin
A project in which Sarah Nadin and I took up residence on Piccadilly in Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent, to interrogate what is meant by the title ‘Cultural Quarter’ and to co-produce interventions with street users. This project had many outcomes including Piccadilly Picnic, Peregrine Watch and Looky Bag (a monthy bag-zine that grew into a further 4 quarterly issues reaching 13000 copies)
2019- Creative Community Walk- Winstanley & Morgan
This was a creative walk curated by myself and Dr Ceri Morgan in the wake of an embedded research project ‘Adapt the Nothing’ in Middleport, Stoke-on-Trent. This is an area that has undergone substantial change and development over the past few decades, some good and some bad. The walk was an opportunity for city residents to experience and articulate the different atmospheres created by several campaigns of development, and to co-create an exhibition that could be altered and added to by the local community for several weeks after.
2019- The Burslem Angel Descends to Establish a New Town Hall- Winstanley
This project was part of a research Masters I completed in 2019 on Socially Engaged Art and Regeneration. After several weeks occupying a market stall at the newly revived Burslem Market to find out what the market meant to the town, I appeared as The Burslem Angel (A gold figure of Nike that adorned the top of the former town hall- now occupied by a college) to establish the market as Burslem’s new Town Hall. The market’s stallholders and visitors chose how the town hall would function, elected a town crier, and established it as ‘Burslem Community Market’, erecting a gazebo at the centre where local councillors were invited to run surgeries and social/craft activities were hosted. The market ceased in 2022 after the city council refused to renew their license.
My work in the public realm is informed and inspired by several years working as a permanent public artist, working in collaboration with the work's audiences. Here is a selection of past work.
