Image: They Live (1988) John Carpenter Art Network North East asked me to write an article, responding to a ‘cultural placemaking’ brief. My proposal would be to remove all advertising from a designated zone in the city and replace it with artworks and interventions made by local artists, which would enable us to reimagine the … Read More
Writing
Time or money? The potential of participatory arts practice to challenge complex societal problems and imagine alternative futures
This is the thesis I wrote for my practice-based PhD. It was undertaken in the Fine Art Department at Newcastle University (2017 – 2022) in partnership with Helix Arts. The thesis documents the practice-based research methods I developed and the participatory art projects I created to conduct the research. You can download a PDF here. … Read More
A World Without Music?
In 2021, I wrote a blog for the UBI Lab Network using Bill Drummond’s No Music Day project to frame an argument for Basic Income. You can read the article here. In 2022 I contacted Bill to let him know about the article. The next day he has added it to his website as a … Read More
How could we do things differently?
This article was written during the first UK lockdown in 2020 as a way to think about how the experience had changed our perceptions. At the time there was a lot of talk about learning from the pandemic and building back better. It was originally published in issue 2 of the Lockdown Gazette, a newspaper … Read More
UBI and Creativity
We’re all creative. If you don’t think you are, it’s probably because you haven’t had the chance to explore your ideas beyond daydreaming. The creative process takes time, space and energy. Trial-and-error is necessary to discover anything new, but this is a time-consuming luxury most of us can’t afford. Instead we’re forced to prioritise going … Read More
WORK
Work [wurk] noun 1. exertion or effort directed to produce or accomplish something; labour; toil. 2. productive or operative activity. 3. employment, as in some form of industry, especially as a means of earning one’s livelihood: to look for work. 4. one’s place of employment: Don’t phone him at work. adjective 6. of, for, … Read More
Universal Basic Income: A way to invest in society?
This article was published in The Eclipse tabloid newspaper, October 2017 Would you rather be paid a lot of money to do a job that you hate or earn a lot less for doing something that you love? For a growing number of people working 40 hours a week in return for a secure … Read More