Though the PlaceMaking work has taken something of a back seat to the The Serenity Series of recent months, I have also been invited back to Hulme History Society to re run the I Remember workshop I first delivered to them in 2011. As they have many new members who were not involved in the original session, they have asked me back to work with them again in sharing some new perspectives on the local area. This will take place in a couple of weeks, on August 14th and I shall look forward to sharing the resulting photos soon!

Just a quick one; a couple of little updates!

It’s been refreshing to get back into painting, especially as I have come up against a couple of rather frustrating dead ends in pursuing other areas of my recent practice, so while this may be the first painting I have made for a while, I have a feeling it probably won’t be the last!

Despite having to fight a rather unsympathetic brick wall, it was largely a pleasurable experience hanging the Peaceful Places prints at the Earth Café yesterday. As much of my work recently has been focussed on participatory events, the documentation of which is displayed mostly online, I had almost forgotten just how enjoyable it can be to get work out physically into a public display. In the short time I was in the café hanging the work, I received very enthusiastic and positive feedback on the photographs from four separate customers and it is always very gratifying to see people derive genuine pleasure from your work.

Though the Peaceful Places series has been something of a tangent from my recent practice, I have enjoyed working with the images so much I had already begun to consider developing some painting work from them and having experienced this response at the café, my intentions in that area have been somewhat galvanised! I think it is important to keep things fresh and dynamic anyway, and we’re still just about near enough the front end of the year to be thinking about changes in direction for 2014! Who knows, perhaps this tangent can end up being a new and as yet undiscovered path! 

A selection of ten prints from the Peaceful Places collection, are now on display at The Earth Café underneath the Manchester Buddhist Centre in the Northern Quarter, and you can view these as well as placing orders for copies, which can be collected or delivered.

Though we're almost one twelfth of the way through 2014 already, I've been easing gently into the new year with one of my first ventures in a contribution to project two thousand and fourteen. This is an artist led initiative in which each day of the year, a different visual practitioner submits a new 2D outcome based on a main news story for that date. The idea is to finish the year with a visual record of the main issues and events. Having agreed to submit a piece on January the 13th, I chose to respond to the funeral of Ariel Sharon because I felt his death was quite important globally and no one had yet recorded it in the project. It was quite a challenge as I know very little about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and so don't feel informed enough to have a particular opinion on it. The thing that jumped out at me the most about this figure however, was just how divisive he was both in terms of opinion and physicality with the construction of the wall in Gaza, so I have tried to record that instead of leaning towards any political bias.

Seeing this as a good opportunity for some student involvement too, I worked with the project organisers to agree January the 22nd as a date to submit the outcome of a collaborative response from a one day intensive workshop run with second year National Diploma students at Tameside College. The group gelled well on the day and worked hard to generate this outcome based on the Syrian peace talks in Geneva.

One project that has been on a back burner for some time is the cryptically titled Cupcake Karma venture and January 2014 has also seen the first physical realisation of this. As it had been no more than ideas on paper for so long, it seemed the ideal candidate to trial as part of the second CRITgroup collaboration, Crafting by Committee. The collaboration is interested in identifying the contrasts between different artistic practices and so I was required to pursue the project with some specific instructions from my peers in response to an initial proposal. The Cupcake Karma project is especially concerned with the concept of trust and aims to harness the power of cake to facilitate positive interactions between strangers in the city, in this case, the residents of the other apartments on my floor, who I very rarely see, let alone speak to. The instructions I was given by the CRITgroup committee included the constraint that I was not allowed to make verbal contact with my selected recipients and that I had to include sound recording in my documentation of the results. As such, I approached the whole thing in a slightly different way than I might otherwise have done (which is exactly the point!) and produced a video diary to record the outcomes. It’s about fifteen minutes and you can watch it on the main project page. Though the work  has been live online for a couple of weeks now, I will present it at the concluding Crafting by Committee session on the 29th as part of my project summary presentation and I’m really looking forward to seeing what the group thinks of it!

Next up on the Glittermouse mission is the exhibition of prints from the Peaceful Places collection, which will be on display from February 17th at The Earth Café in the Manchester Buddhist Centre. These are now printed, mounted and ready to hang so I’m looking forward to getting them out to a new audience!




In other areas, having enjoyed the success of my first ever race raising money for Venture Arts last May in the Bupa Great Manchester Run , I am now in training to complete the ASICS Manchester Marathon in April. As much of my time will be taken up with training, there might not be any huge leaps forward on the arts front for a little while but I will still be raising cash for an arts related cause, asking for donations to Imagine Mental Health who work locally in Salford. One of the benefits of working with such a small charity, as well as being more locally focussed, is that I get to be involved in exactly what happens to the money raised and in this case it will be put towards delivering arts workshops to those using the service. So far, so good, and I managed to run 19 miles out to Ashton-Under-Lyne and back last weekend so I’m sure those last 7.2 will be just a doddle; Not! Better stop rambling out this blog post and get my trainers on! Whoosh..!

Blog posts must be like buses… There I was just a week ago thinking I hadn’t had much to share for a while and suddenly two updates seem justifiable in the space of less than a fortnight!

Last time I mentioned the Peaceful Places series of photographs, some highlights of which will be exhibited at The Earth Café in the Manchester Buddhist Centre. I now have a date confirmed for that and will be hanging the prints on the 17th of February. I am not yet sure of the details of any opening event but will of course publicise any details as soon as they are agreed! As well as being able to purchase the full set of 35 images in book format, it will also be possible to order 30x30cm photographic prints from the exhibition. These are also available now for postal order.

In addition to that good news, I was even more excited to receive a package from China through the post at the end of last week, contained within which were some new submissions to the This Place Is project! These are now all uploaded on their own gallery page which has pride of place at the top of the contributions!

It must just be a generally arty week; CRITgroup meets tomorrow evening and I am looking forward to hearing what everyone has been up to as well as seeing the progress people have made as part of our second collaboration; Crafting by Committee! I hope the group finds my own contributions appetising!

It feels like an age since my last update; two whole months already!? Whilst it would be fair to say I have been enjoying some kind of down time on the arts front I have also been in ‘facilitation’ phase for a couple of projects which means all background work and not yet much to show for it!

The most currently developed of these is a bit of a tangent from my ‘main’ practice; following my summer travels, I realised that many of the photographs I had taken, whilst not being directly involved in the PlaceMaking project work, still referenced my instinctive interest in place. As some of my travelling was work related anyway, much of the time I spent whilst not engaged in these activities was concerned with the pursuit of relaxation (not an unusual thing to say about the summer!) and this was equally reflected in the photographs I took.

I have since selected a series of these that are now available in self-published format under the title Peaceful Places. The highlights from this collection will also be on display in February at The Earth Café in the Manchester Buddhist Centre, where it will be possible to purchase individual prints. I will be posting more specific details on that in the near future.

CRITgroup has also picked up again after the summer and following the September talk I gave on my work in China, October saw the start of the second collaboration in our ongoing research project into the differences between ‘arts’ and ‘crafts’ practices. CRITlaboration 2; Crafting by Committee runs until the end of the year and involves individual practitioners responding to each other’s project proposals with the aim of identifying and challenging ‘personality traits’ in the practices of respective disciplines.

You can find out more and see details of my own (delicious) proposals in the CRITgroup pages of this site.

On a less creatively self-indulgent front, I have been taking the first steps in setting up a virtual exchange following reflections on and recommendations for the future of the PlaceMaking project work. I have been in conversation with HomeShop, an artists’ initiative in Beijing, and am now looking for participants to become involved. If you are interested, check out the full specifications and drop me a message!

That’s all for now; it just remains to enjoy the last few bites of 2013 whilst leaving plenty of room for all that the new year holds! Eat up!

For the last few years, especially while studying, the summers have ended up being an extended period of time to ‘get more done’ rather than anything much of a break, however, this year I have finally managed to schedule a bit of an adventure. Next week I shall be leaving the UK (whatever the weather!) and going on a mission that sees me spreading myself across a couple of continents until mid-August! I’m keeping an open mind about what I might come back with but I should certainly have some interesting new inspirations in relation to public spaces and how different countries and cultures manage them. With any luck, I may even have one or two new contributions to my current projects, depending on who I bump into while exploring!

A couple of quick points before it all goes quiet though; bad news first, the UK PlaceMaking exhibition at the Chinese Arts Centre has had to be cut short and will now only be running until September 14th. The opening event will still be held on Thursday 12th but it will all be coming down a bit quicker as they have some exciting new building works that have been moved forward.

On a more positive note, if you happen to be in Manchester at any point between now and August 11th, you could pop in to Nexus Art Café on Dale Street (Northern Quarter) to see their Happiness exhibition, in which I have four paintings!

Have a great Summer… Now where’s that Passport…?

One of the features of May was the first showing of work by members of CRITgroup, which marked the end of the first of a series of collaborative projects seeking to investigate the perceived differences between ‘art’ and ‘craft’. As this has been a feature of our conversations in several meetings, we started the collaborative projects to question how the apparent need to ‘label’ oneself as a particular kind of practitioner (a ‘photographer’, a ‘craft worker’, etc.) affects individual practices and how those descriptions of discipline relate to differing methods of producing work. The May CRITshow event was the culmination of the Creative Whispers group project, in which each collaborator began by producing an item intended to represent their practice. These were brought along to each meeting (beginning December 2013) and passed on to a new artist. The task was to respond to each piece and bring it back the following month. This pattern repeated for 5 responses, with the intention being to discuss and review the outcomes in order to research the characteristics of practice, though we also knew we would have some interesting pieces in their own right.


It was a successful day with lots of discussion and plenty of time for further collaboration. We also discussed our next project; Crafting by Committee. You can see a full account of the day with photos and find details of the new project on the CRITblog post.

That’s the main update for now, though as ever there are a few bits and pieces in the pipeline! Next weekend I shall be running Placemaking workshops at the Magpie Thunder Bureau Pop Up in Macclesfield, running as part of the Barnaby Festival. In a slightly new approach, the morning will comprise of a walkabout with the Placemaking Boards before returning to the venue in the afternoon for a second session of completing This Place Is booklets. It is hoped that this will be an opportunity for local residents in the area to creatively voice their concerns relating to major changes to the high street and commercial areas in the vicinity. There will of course be an update soon after!

I have also now confirmed dates for the UK Placemaking exhibition at the Chinese Arts Centre. Photographs from the recent workshops will be showing from the 13th to the 21st of September.

Finally, I should like to thank all the sponsors who supported me in running the Bupa Great Manchester Run on the 26th of May. I completed the 10 km course in 45:31 and raised a total of £360 for Venture Arts, whose participants I have worked with in the initial stages of the Placemaking workshops. They will be using the cash towards a new gallery space in their venue and it’s not too late to add a few extra pennies to that total on the fundraising page!

So September did not disappoint in its characteristic tendency to be one of the busiest months of the year! To be perfectly honest, the last few weeks have been something of a difficult time with a strange mix of both personal and professional highs and lows. However, concentrating on the professional, the lows (a couple of rejected applications) do not negate the highs and so it is on those that I am pleased to focus.

On the 15th of September I returned to Wythenshawe for my second year at the Garden City Festival and the second incarnation of the developed crafts workshop The Best Thing About My City Is. I first ran this at the Wythenshawe Games Festival in July this year, however it is based on my contribution to Wythenshawe Garden City Festival 2011; My City Would Be Better With. I’m pleased to report that this year was just as popular as last (in fact it felt even busier!) and you can see the contributions from both the Best Thing… workshops here.

Hot on the heels of that event, I was glad to revisit some old friends at Venture Arts and took along some This Place Is booklets for one of the groups to have a look at. I visited for a total of four hours across a period of two weeks and really appreciated their thoughtful and careful input to the project which gives a completely different (and generally far less local) perspective on the project. You can see their contributions in the dedicated Venture Arts; This Place Is gallery.

Upcoming events include not just the on-going CRITgroup gatherings (last month we had an excellent speaker in Hannah Mosley and look forward to welcoming Jo Scorah in October) but a couple of other dates for the October diary.

On Sunday October 28th I will be running a new Placemaking workshop as part of Nexus Art Café’s SketchCrawl programme. The session will be an opportunity to use the Placemaking Boards as seen in the recent Hulme Workshops in Manchester’s Northern Quarter. The workshop will begin at 3pm and take a leisurely meander through the streets around Nexus before arriving back at 4.30 for refreshments and a discussion of the afternoon. The session costs £4, the price of which includes coffee and cake as well as PDF copies of your contributions and your work displayed online at www.glittermouse.co.uk. Sounds like a bargain for any aspiring urban artists to me!

If you fancy getting involved in the project but can’t make the 28th, there’s another opportunity to use the Placemaking Boards on the afternoon of the 31st (that’s a Wednesday) when MidConversation collective will be taking their recent contribution to the Free For Arts Festival out of the gallery space and into an as yet undisclosed location for a bit of urban intervention. The Placemaking boards will again make an appearance as a tool for facilitating conversation and photographically recording the event in the streets of the Northern Quarter. I’ll publicise more information about that as soon as I have it.

A couple of miscellaneous things to leave you on, firstly, this rather charming picture of a particularly chuffed Julian Birtwell, who informally commissioned me to brighten up some glass for displaying his wood turned bottle holders at various events around the Greater Manchester area. I’ve not done any glass painting myself for such a long time that it was rather refreshing to have a reason to dig the paints out outside of workshop times!

Secondly, returning to the aforementioned personal and far sadder note, I have dug out this silly digital illustration that I submitted to the Newschool Graphics competition at Sundown 2010. It was a hasty reworking of a Halloween party invite and aside from being something of an ‘insider joke’, features portraits of a couple of my very best friends including (second from the front) the irreplaceable Giles Constant.

I met Giles in 2002 whilst doing a boring office job less than a year after leaving Uni. I used to sit on the front desk, drawing whilst failing to hide my disinterest in office workers’ holiday allowances, however being an incredibly inclusive person, he soon invited me to the pub and quickly became one of my best friends. His social and intellectual enrichment of my life ever since through introductions to various concepts such as the demoscene and the idea that maths could in fact be beautiful, has made a real and meaningful impact on the person I am today.

He died suddenly last week and I don’t believe I have yet even begun to deal with it. I don’t normally include personal reflections on this site but this seems of sufficient gravity to justify it.

My world, and those of the many other lives he influenced, will simply never be quite the same again.