All About Hope! 1 Year of Being a Local Councillor.

In 1 week’s time, I’ll have been officially a councillor for 1 whole year. WILD. I still can’t quite believe it. The time has gone so fast and yet slow at the same time. SO much has happened and achieved, and so little at the same time. These juxtapositions are normal, I think? Adjusting to

Every Where Is Some Where

Every Where Is Some Where Throughout our lives, we will come to find ourselves in a lot of different places a lot of different rooms a lot of different corners a lot of different wheres This week will be the 17th year of being in our council house – our home after experiencing months of

Community and Spaces

After this weekend, where my community – often a bit hard to bring together and engage – came out 350++ people in full force. Absolutely blown away. I was SO nervous, I barely slept the night before that I’d got all these people together, and barely anyone would turn up. But they did. And BUCKET

Permission to Imagine: Thoughts on Art Practice as a Councillor

I finally updated my LinkedIn profile this week to include that I’m a councillor now. I dunno if this means I have made it official in my own head.  When I added it,  LinkedIn calculated how long i’ve been in this position for, and it came up with 11 months! I couldn’t quite believe it. 

Somethings Take Time To See

It was around the end of 2011 when my super good friend, and great artist & writer, Paul Harrison and I got together in a Cafe Nero in Doncaster (The only place to get a decent chai-tea latte in the area at the time… maybe it still is) and we talked about how we thought

Holding space.

This date – the 24th May – in more normal times – seems to be the day of amazing things as Facebook memories reminds me today. 6 years ago I started my proper rehabilitation from the first wave of being super sick and not having any energy outside of going to work & doing the

Happy SMIZZmas: my holiday message to you

It’s the annual Smizz Christmas card!! I couldn’t decide which one to share, so I’m sharing them as a collection. As we celebrate the holidays, and enter into a new year – let’s remind ourselves that love is trust, empathy, humanity, mutual aid, and care. A society built on such love is a strong society—probably

3,500 miles, 14 states, 2 provinces, lessons learnt: We are not built to do big things alone, we are built to do them together

Today’s been my last full day in NYC, and in America. And I’m a bit sad about it. This nearly month trip has been a blast and an inspiration. It’s been a frank reminder that our time is too valuable to let a moment go to waste. We need steal as much life as we

Where wonder reigns and hope exists

Where wonder reigns and hope exists… Every day I woke up on the train with a desire to feel the Sun. Instead, the day offered gray sky with hints of a snowstorm. The peaks of mountains were hidden, the distance made blurry by snow blowing hard outside but I felt irresistibly drawn to its other

gifts and choices

In my procrastination of trying to write up my methods section for RF2 (my next PhD barrier) I came across Jeff Bezos’s commencement speech from 2010. (Not super sure how I reached  it in my click-a-thon). But I found it to be incredibly important. After my life got shook up when I fell sick, I