I have worked for many years with charities, museums, and galleries, doing work with communities. I love to work with diverse participants, and spend time behind the scenes planning for great cultural experiences. I am passionate about making the arts and culture accessible to all, and talking about the topics that matter to people. Some of the themes that appear in my practice are home, identity, belonging, decolonialism, diaspora, and the climate crisis.
Below you can have a look at some of my previous projects in museums and charities.
Library of Sanctuary
I had the pleasure of working with many talented artists and fantastic participants as a project manager for a collaboration between Kettle’s Yard, Arbury Court Library of Sanctuary, artist Issam Kourbaj, and local residents. Together we developed artwork for the acoustic panels that now hang in the library, a set of postcards showcasing the objects that participants chose to represent ‘home’, and a soundscape with their touching oral histories of what home means to them.
It’s the debt that you owe: Colonialism - Debt - Resistance
I curated and produced this exhibition with Debt Justice. We comissioned new work by contemporary artists working in various disciplines, who addressed the issue of debt and colonialism from personal experience and their unique creative practices. As someone who grew up in a country crippled by external debt, this was a really important project for me to be part of.
DYCP: Directing Diaspora R&D
After receiving my Develop Your Creative Practice (DYCP) grant, I worked with a group of migrant artists to develop directing skills to talk about the topic of identity in the context of migration. We worked mixing text, visual arts, and performance. After a fruitful R&D, I am working on turning some of the findings into community workshops.
Read about it here.
Family Identity Labels
With a group of over 30 families, we talked about all the different labels we come across in everyday life, and their functions and designs. Museum, food, clothes, event plant care labels were part of the conversation. Families were then invited to create their own family label about their identity, or about ways in which they felt others perceived them as a family group. The labels became part of a big mixed media mural that was a testament to the wonderful diversity of families everywhere.
Home is Where the Heart Is
This was a series of sessions I ran with migrant families at the Fitzwilliam Museum. We explored what it takes to make a home in the context of displacement. After sessions of sharing, reflecting, and exploring personal and collection objects, families worked to create concertinas to tell about their lived experiences of movement across cultures and countries, and share what 'home' means to them.
I developed and facilitated this participatory project in 2021, where I worked with North Cambridge residents to research and creatively re-interpret a colonial object in the Museum of Cambridge. With the participants, we co-produced an online resource page about the project, a new onsite display, and gave talks on the learning and outcomes.
Image by Kirsten Huffer
Arbury Carnival Exhibition
A freelance project where I worked closely with 2 local organisaitons to develop and produce the Arbury Carnival Exhibition, in summer of 2022. This included researching the topic, designing the exhibition and audience engagement methods, as well as coordinating and facilitating a community workshop to make an artwork to be displayed in the exhibiton at Museum of Cambridge.
Weaving our Stories
In collaboration with artists Cathy Dunbar and Jill Eastland, we created an ephimeral wool and thread installation outside the Museum of Cambridge, and invited women from the Corona House Group to weave their stories into it, by embroidering, writing, or drawing.
I am very proud of having taken part in this touching project in 2020, in the role of co-curator and producer. In tandem with artist Rebecca Lindum Green, we developed an online exhibition about people with lived experience of the Criminal Justice System, which was explored through their own art and words. I also hosted a series of live online talks where participants shared their journeys and discussed with other artists and professionals working in the field.
Witches Bottles: a magic family workshop
I researched, designed and delivered an outdoor family workshop, where participants learnt about their local heritage and history, and had a go at foraging and spell-writing by creating their own spell bottle. Witches bottles were used to protect homes, and families and I talked about what makes our homes special and how we may protect them. We related this to the planet as our home and ways to look after it.
Groundwork London: fuel poverty programme
I worked closely with underserved communities at risk of fuel poverty, to coordiante and deliver a programme of Fuel Poverty Awareness sessions, chatting with people about how to save and manage their bills, how to stay safe during winter, listening to concerns, and signposting to other services.
Flyers by Citizens Advice
Orleans House Gallery: Grottos Talks
I had the pleasure of researching, designing, and delivering a series of 3 talks for an adult audience, on the topic of grottos for Orleans House Gallery, in the summer of 2019.
National Gallery Tours
I researched the displays, and designed a comprehensive tour, adaptable to all ages and levels, on the history of Western European Painting. I use engagement techniques in my tours, such as VTS (Visual Thinking Strategies)