What's new 2025

Hello! This is a bit of writing about what I'm working on + whats going on in the old brain box start of 2025:

This year I will be diving back into Climate Grief Karaoke project (building forward from ACE funded development 2023) with the aid of brilliant producer Roxanne Carney (which I am really excited about!). This is after I took a break from this project to re connect with why I make performance and to think about what it is I am investigating in this piece of work. Stepping away from actively 'trying to make something' has opened up some brilliant experiences and learning opportunities that have grounded me in where I stand now as an artist. This has included:

forming a long term open practice session with artist Tamara Micner working out of performance cooperative Actors East Space in east london, being accepted onto Gob Squads workshop at Biennale College Teatro in Venice with some exceptional artists from around the world, attending Arts Admin's What Shall We Build Here festival and developing live art cabaret pieces for DELVE Festival Lemon Tree Aberdeen/The Rio Cinema Wild Gardening + opening up new collaborations with artists such as Howl Yuan from conversation and meeting points in 2024.

ahhh its crazy making performance, and trying to do it as almost a solo entity, in 2025, with the state of the world, with all small and big arts organisations struggling, with the cost of living crisis, with things feeling so high risk, with fragmentation/exhaustion and disintegration in community, with trying to keep all the plates spinning etc etc etc, in a sparse post pandemic landscape that has left things changed and frazzled. Its all a bit much (!!). But I'm still here, I'm still passionate about making work and I'm still really excited about CGK project + other new works and what I can discover next in my practice. I still believe that performance offers a unique and hopeful way to live life and make sense of the world..

Which brings me to CGK, whats going on with this and where is it now? Myself and Roxanne are mapping steps forward for 2025 which will include in depth research and development into exploring my/collaborators relationship to these three distinct words: Climate, Grief and Karaoke. A process will be investigated for each of these areas. For example in the area of climate, what is my + collaborating artists connection to place/landscapes/nature/identity/topography? How is nature crisis personal to us? in what ways do we experience this in the world/investigate our personal relationship to this in the live performance space? What is the function of this live performance, what form will it need to take and what is it that performance can do which feels hopeful and illuminating to do with ecological discourse now?

I'm thinking about the saying 'grief is the price we pay for love', I think this very much applies to where we sit with ecological crisis (especially in the context of the western world). How can we grieve something we don't know? For example, the majority of the UK population grow up in urban areas with little or no awareness of when and where various foods are produced (this includes me too), 72% of UK land is managed for agriculture and 8% is built upon. How do we know what it is that we're missing out on? I'm fascinated on this process how to re learn to love, know or understand these ecological systems and how we are a part of them. In what humble ways can we do this and can this help us find hope in our current planetary predicament? I'm excited to re embark on this process and I hope to see you along the way..stay tuned!

'In conversation with a London Plane Tree', Victoria Park, February 2025