I am currently established in Madrid and since arriving I got in touch with a fantastic organisation, Fundación Amigos de los Mayores, who work with isolated older people in Spain.
I had the enormous pleasure of curating a party for them as part of their Corporate Social Responsibility program with Telefonica. We hosted a fantastic party for over 80 people, most of the care home reidents attended, celebrating the Autumn. We shared lots of really lovely anecdotes and memories and made an autumnal life size memory tree; decorated masks with laminated leaves and generally chatted and enjoye each others company for a couple of hours.
It was a truly uplifting event and the elders enjoyed it immensely, as one put it: ” This has made me feel so happy, I had been down for a few days and this is the best thing that could have happened to me! Thank you”
I hope to continue working on small projects with older people and interesting charities in Madrid so watch this space!
I launched Cocktails in Care Homeswhilst at Magic Me in 2010 as a small pilot project. The concept is simple: volunteers attend a monthly, evening cocktail party in a care home to have a chat and drink with the residents. The project soon caught the publics attention after featuring in the Evening Standard and we were flooded with volunteer requests. We responded to this growing interest by developing the project and rolling it out across East, North and Southeast London over three years with a development grant from the Henry Smith Charity. In 2014 we developed a large three year growth plan.
One of the things that makes the project so successful is the corporate sponsorship deals I brokered:
John Lewis design and donate decorations, working with the Stratford Visual Merchandise team and the Oxford Street Haberdashers.
Floral Angels donate bespoke floral arrangements left over from corporate events and weddings.
Clifford Chance LLP bring volunteers to the parties, host quarterly craft clubs with staff and make decorations and organise quarterly tea parties at their offices for residents of all homes we work with.
The projects I have worked on in recent years have focused on developing creative events and workshops within care settings. Working for small organisations has enabled me to develop extensive skills and I have overseen and delivered all the organisational aspects of my projects: from fundraising, to project management and partnership development (including corporate support), to training volunteers and marketing and press liason.
With Cocktails in Care Homes I have developed an extensive knowledge of working with people suffering from dementia, stroke and speech and hearing impediments. With The Mildmay Collective, I worked intensively in a care home for artists with physical disabilities like MS and spina bifida, as an artist in residence.
For four years I ran a passion project with an arts collective, Silently Revolting, running non profit parties with a twist: each party was themed on a financial crisis and the bar was run with a live stock market with drinks fluctuating in price according to demand. The parties had an immersive quality to them with theatrical backdrops, performances and lots of interactive playful elements.
I also have experience with Tate Modern and Serpentine Gallery of delivering arts education workshops in museum settings.
I am a social entrepreneur with 14 years experience in culture programming and education. I started my career working with Tate Modern’s youth club Raw Canvas and then went on to produce World Music Festivals with Cultural Co-operation and manage their network of diaspora artists and radio show on Resonance FM.
I have worked with arts charity Magic Me for 8 years as Volunteer and Development Manager, managing and setting up arts projects and events, overseeing corporate partnerships, devising fundraising strategies, managing a network of 300+ volunteers and developing and leading on the communications and social media strategy for the company. In 2010 I launched the award winning and internationally renowned Cocktails in Care Homes, a volunteer led programme. Since its launch, I have developed a dementia based curriculum to train and prepare volunteers for the project and have overseen the fundraising, sponsorship and corporate support, as well as the press and media relationships.
I was honoured to be named one of Britain’s New Radicals in 2014 by Nesta for my work with Cocktails in Care Homes. Later that year I was chosen by Uniqlo to face their Selfless Selfie Christmas Campaign, which saw five individuals being picked from each country where they had stores.
In 2014/15 I developed an ambitious and groundbreaking programme of artistic residencies in care homes which will see Punchdrunk, Duckie, Upswing and Lois Weaver develop a body of work within four Anchor Trust care homes in London. This project reflects my passion and ambition to bring high quality, contemporary arts practice into isolated spaces and to individuals who don’t have access to it.
Recently I got an Arts Council award to deliver my own project as an artist working with Amy Pennington. The Mildmay Collective was a year long artistic residency at No 6 Mildmay, Notting Hill Housing. A working studio encouraged residents to get creative and develop skills. The work we made was showcased in a public exhibition at the Printhouse Gallery in Dalston.
As well as delivering community arts projects I have curated immersive art parties with collective Silently Revolting.
Silently Revolting
Because there is an alternative to party politics
Silently Revolting was a collective I co-founded in 2010 that specialised in organising not for profit parties that explored themes related to politics, social organisation, economics and having a good time. At a time when the world was on the brink of a large financial crisis it felt like a necessary debate to be had. The parties offered a platform to explore economic systems past and present in a creative and interactive way.
The concept of the parties was simple: they were strictly non profit events where the bar was run as live stock market, drinks would fluctuate in price according to demand. Gambling was encouraged to keep the currency alive and flowing as were informal and creative exchanges between the punters to pocket a few more revolutions ( the currency we traded in). Each party was curated with a financial crisis in mind and the space was designed in an immersive way with lots of visual materials and artworks inspired by the era. With each party we released a promotional video which gave the context and set the scene, see below for links.
Manifesto
The parties are strictly not for profit. The aim is to provide a space where people can come together, have fun, get critical and celebrate it, while paying the least possible amount for drinks. Silently Revolting aims to bring down the cost of drinks the more people join. Bring along 10 friends and the cost will go down as the shared cost of the party decreases, 10 more and the cost will go down further. While the drinks will never be free as the costs need recouping to buy drinks for the following party, the drinks can go down to the minimum cost price, which can be cheaper than the cost of buying at the shops.
Each party is run by adding up the costs of running the party and then selling shares in the party itself. These costs include venue hire (where applicable), drinks costs, staff costs. The aim is simply to make the cost as cheap as possible for everyone by encouraging people to bring friends along.
Every party is an exploration of a historic financial crisis. We treat the space as a set and and make and design bespoke pieces for each party, illustrating the themed era with film, exhibitions, murals with iconic imagery and performances. We held our last party in November 2012.
The Mildmay Collective aimed to challenge the quality and type of arts activities in care homes by establishing a working studio at Mildmay 6 where residents were actively involved in making and producing works for an exhibition at Printhouse Gallery in Dalston on 23 April 2015. The residency was active for just under a year, it launched in June 2014 and finished in May 2105. I co-led the project with Amy Pennington.
The motivation behind this project was that often we see arts practice in homes being dummed down for the residents, the quality suffers as it gets lumbered under the umbrella term “community arts”. We were keen to challenge this notion and produce pieces of the highest quality for a professional gallery show. Having developed numerous projects in care settings before this we both realised that a key aspect to ensuring quality was time. It was important that the project allowed enough time to produce artworks worthy of the exhibition, hence the extension of the residency from half a year to a year.
The Residency
The concept of the project was to have a living and thriving studio in a care home that would encourage a new perspective on what arts can be in these settings, working closely with residents, families and staff. In this sense the project was a resounding success. For a year we hosted a studio at Mildmay 6, Notting Hill Housing, where between us there was on average an artist there for 4/5 days a week. This, not only, gave residents something to look forward to, someone to talk to and a creative outlet but, importantly for the work, a chance to create real bonds between the artists and the residents. For a long time we would simply go in and chat to the residents to get to know them. This was a crucial step in the residency and one that continued throughout, in order to establish the necessary trust to broach personal and, at times, painful topics and discussions which fed into the work. We knew we did not want something superficial and that for that we would need time to develop these relationships. This was the reason we decided to extend the project. Just as the residents seemed to be getting so much out of the work we were nearing the end and it seemed a great shame to stop short when things were only just getting going.
As part of the residency we invited other artists (Lowri Evans, Arturo Roura and Gabriella de Gaetano) to come and deliver mini residencies. We also held regular themed evening parties with the residents.
Wheelin n Dealin Exhibition The final outcome of the project was a public, professional exhibition at the Printhouse Gallery in Dalston. The gallery is a fifteen minute walk from the home and this was key as we were keen to expose the work to the local community and within the existing arts scene. We presented a selection of work that had been developed throughout the residency. The work was up from 28 April to the 28 May. The opening was attended by residents of all three Mildmay homes, families, staff and the public. Articles in both the Islington Gazette and Tribune featured after the exhibition and in Tomorrow Cares.
One of the key artworks of the exhibition was a vending machine which housed a collection of smaller artworks for sale at an affordable price: branded t shirts and tote bags, memorabilia badges from the Southend trip, knitted scarves and dog coats and postcards amongst other things. We commissioned Eyup Digital to design an app to work with the machine which was displayed on a tablet so viewers could find out what each artwork was and the story behind it.
clea house 