Pea Arts About

Sunrise in Newcastle upon Tyne What a beautiful day for me to get started. I woke up around 4am, which is quite usual for me. Rather than risking dozing off again I got up as I needed to leave home at around 5.10am to catch the 6.10am Megabus to Leeds. I know the train is quicker, but money is tight and I have the good fortune to not get travel sick and can work satisfactorily while on the road. I am taking my 10 residency days in 3 blocks to minimise the amount of times I must undertake the 100-mile journey. My priority for this first leg was attending the engagement work at the Urban House Initial Accommodation Centre in Wakefield on Thursday 16 May. I am a volunteer teaching assistant at Action Language , a charity in Newcastle and Sunderland that offers free ESOL classes to asylum-seekers, refugees and migrants. Ensuring that people who are displaced from their homes are treated well is important to me, so the work being done with Urban House residents is a big draw. T

In April 2019 I was delighted to learn that I was successful in becoming the writer in residence attached to the engagement programme for Yorkshire Sculpture International in partnership with Corridor8 . Based largely in Leeds and Wakefield, my residency involves participating in engagement events and designing and writing a response to these. The events include workshops led by the engagement artists with community and school groups. I am also working with an established writer, Jen Boyd , who is acting as my mentor-collaborator. The publication(s) we produce is/are due for online release in September. Beginning from a conventional baseline of a 2500-word essay each, we are being encouraged and supported to produce something more challenging with an objective of being accessible and possibly collaborative. We are so far keen on ideas around 'laying process bare' and finding ways of showing the stages of our drafting, planning and conversations as we construct (a) finished