Advocacy

I am a passionate advocate for outdoor artists and their artistry – those who work in public space, who engage with the widest cross section of people who live in our communities and encourage those people to connect together. I’m not put off by the weather or the ability of audiences to walk away. I’m still excited by the challenges and the possibilities to innovate with technique and form (unhindered by the formal settings of theatres and galleries), to create experiences that can instil a sense of shared ownership of public spaces and to offer varied and immediate ways for the public to take part.

I have been a member of the Artists Advisory Board for Without Walls outdoor arts consortium since 2022, feeding back on their communications with and support for artists within their commissioning programmes. I value this space as voices of artists and in particular freelancers are often missing from strategic industry conversations. Beyond the handful of artists who run National Portfolio Organisations, the people around the table at strategic sector conversations are generally festival directors, arts officers or people in similar, managerial roles. Here is a blogpost on the subject.

I was chair of National Association of Street Artists for 6 years, a membership organisation run by artists for artists. During this time, the organisation shifted towards a focus on supporting professional development of outdoor artists, offering Lab style learning opportunities, promoting discussions around critical evaluation and mentoring and hosting the regular and increasingly popular annual event – For The Love Of It! The organisation’s value is in its shared know-how (some members have been creating outdoor work for up to 40 years) and NASA-UK continues to highlight the wealth of this resource.

Images from For the Love of It! by Garth Williams

It’s important that artists and freelancers are more consistently present in strategic conversations, for fairer representation and to ensure broader perspectives in strategy building. Given that we operate outside buildings and lack the kind of infrastructure in our organisations that generally offers visibility, I’m not going to hold my breath. But I remain optimistic that we can build the kinds of organisations that present artists in leadership roles.