I am an artist-curator based in Birmingham who has been devising socially engaged projects in galleries and the public sphere for over 10 years. My work emerges from the social and cultural context within which they are produced and I adopt a spectrum of collaborative strategies and methods of enquiry.  My ways of working span  from responding to a social or spatial context and making an ‘authored’ work that sets out to invoke curiosity and questioning about the given situation through to taking approaches whereby the work is defined by the interests and concerns of the group I am working with and nurturing their creative ventures.

For me ‘context’ always means involving people as collaborators and active agents in the making of the work and the ‘making of meaning’. Although my practice is fundamentally that of an artist I work as a curator, commissioner and a researcher dependent on the nature of the ‘role’ I take within the dynamic of the project.

I’m interested in making work that:

• makes the connections between art and society
• explores relationships between projects in the public sphere and the gallery
• values participants and audiences as intrinsic and active collaborators
• raises questions about notions of ‘authorship’
• encourages openness and transparency in planning and actions
• situates art in everyday life and situations
• draws on personal experiences

In 2007 I founded POD Projects as a platform for my collaborative ventures with artists, organisations and publics and I am currently working with:

• VIVID on Sleeve Notes, an enquiry into underground scenes that emerged in Birmingham during to the 70s and 80s and 1956 an installation that will animate The Garage during March 2012

• mac birmingham on anticurate, in association with mac I  devised the project as an open exhibition that creates a platform to explore democratic and collective approaches to exhibition curating.

• Rheghed Gallery on WOW, an exhibition co-curated  with Rachael Matthews that explores the cultural and economic importance of sheep farming and wool in Cumbria.

• Artist Stewart Easton who I am mentoring through the process of organising his first solo exhibition after completing his MA; Four Tragic Tales will be presenting at mac birmngham in December 2011.