Pedagogy and Research
In 2013, I co-founded the free, independent art school and community space Open School East (in London, then Margate, East Kent), where I was a director until 2021. This engaged creating and sustaining a new type of organisation with art education, access, and cross-community encounters at its centre, and designing and overseeing a range of learning and development programmes for and with adult artists, young people, and audiences from further afield.
This real-time experience led me to enquire about the genealogy of spaces that combine the functions of school, community centre, and cultural space, and to research the histories of alternative, adult, and community education in the UK. My PhD – awarded by the School of Geography at the University of Nottingham in 2022 – unpacked the notion of the alternative in multi-public educational and cultural organisations since the late 19th century, in England and further afield.
My interest in learning extends to formal and early childhood education, and I am chair of the Governing Board at The Downs CE Primary School in Deal, Kent.
Gardening
I have completed a RHS Level 2 Practical Horticulture course, along with undertaking a Garden Design Diploma and a course on permaculture design. I have started designing small gardens, tailoring proposals for the desired uses of their stewards. In the process, I have developed a range of skills that I have gradually applied to my curatorial practice, which is increasingly oriented towards open spaces, landscaping, and experimenting with how art and design can support ecosystems, food growing efforts, and depollution. Some of the projects I am working on today are hybridised forms of functional, participatory, and critical landscape-making.
I have worked as associate curator at Lafayette Anticipations in Paris (2014-20), associate director of Bétonsalon – Centre for art and research, Paris (2011-12), curator at Gasworks, London (2007-10), and radio presenter on Resonance FM, London (2002-5). I was co-curator, with Lydia Yee, of British Art Show 8 in 2015-16 (Leeds, Edinburgh, Norwich and Southampton), and have curated exhibitions and projects at venues including CA2M, Móstoles/Madrid; Whitechapel Gallery, London; Victoria Gallery & Museum, Liverpool; Contemporary Image Collective, Cairo; GAM, Turin; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Guarene; La Synagogue de Delme, Delme; The Women’s Library, London; and The European Culture Congress, Wroclaw.
I have done residencies and held fellowships at LUMA, Arles; Centro Cultural Montehermoso, Vitoria-Gasteiz; FRAME – HIAP, Helsinki; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin; Contemporary Art Society, London; and La Maison populaire, Montreuil. Further to that, I have (co)-edited and written for a number of exhibition catalogues, readers and other types of publications.