3. Where shall we begin?

The work began in 1989, when I wrote to Margaret Thatcher to ask her to stop a road being built over some common land behind my estate and took part in a walk along the route with other members of my community.

This work began in 1993, when I did an Integrated Humanities project on the destruction of  rainforests and explored the connections between the loss of biodiversity and the destruction of indigenous people.

The work began in 1995, when I left the small town I was born and grew up in, because that’s what you did to be successful. And because I had to escape and explore.

The work began in 1998, when I moved onto a farm in mid-Wales, surrounded by off-grid communities close to the Centre for Alternative Technology. Living off the grid and working with horses, land and artists.

The work began in 2009 at the Almeida Theatre, when I led a large project that enabled over a thousand young people to develop their creative skills to explore the climate crisis.

The work began again and again each time I visited the permaculture garden at Glastonbury Festival.  

The work began in 2017, when I spent a year and half working with the same group of women to make a piece of theatre about belonging. 

The work began in a workshop in 2018, when I sat on an imagined porch with Lois Weaver and Peggy Shaw and realised that this was also the work.

The work began in 2018, when I read The Road to Somewhere and recognised my own experience.

The work began at The Wild Conference in 2019, when Ann Marie Culhane led a workshop on permaculture and arts practice.

The work began in 2019, when I had a Twitter conversation with Dr Elizabeth Swain (@bethswain) and then read Thinking in Systems: A Primer by Donella H. Meadows.

The work began in Edinburgh in 2019, when I sat and talked with strangers, held by Jo Fong and Sonia Hughes, as part of Neither Here nor There, and thought more about process as art.

The work began in 2019, when I saw the Pull Up a Chairresidency advertised and interviewed through Zoom in the middle of the night from the other side of the world.

The work began in February 2020, when I submitted a DYCP application to Arts Council England, to expand on a rare residency offer and when I was brimming with possibility and confidence and the certainty that 2020 would bring a sea change after years of poor health. 

The work began in 2020, when I listened to Arlene Goldbard and Francios Mattarasso talk about ethics in community art on Zoom.

The work began in 2021, when I sort of finally completed the Quiet Down There, Pull Up a Chair residency in Gravesend in LV21. On the phone, in person, online.

The work began when I submitted a DYCP application in May 2021, because I had big dreams but I wasn’t sure how else I might keep making work. 

The work began in 2022, when I supported Walking Forest and an extraordinary group of women to carry a felled tree through a city.

The work began in 2022, when I sat in Galgeal and heard Alistair McIntosh invite us to consider what it might be to become indigenous where we touched the land, while world leaders struck poor bargains over the Lagan. 

The work began in 2022 in a small room in Shoreditch Town Hall, with a back pain that turned out to be a crack through my core. 

The work began again when I fractured my pelvis, got Covid, when my caring responsibilities increased, when I got lost and wasn’t sure that I was, or wanted to be, or knew how to be, an artist. 

I’m reminded that it’s all just beginning, again and again. And that there is rarely a neat start or finish - no matter how much I would like that to be the case. This project has its roots in so, so many places and experiences and chance encounters. 

Plants will grow towards the light. And with hindsight I look back on the choices I made and the directions that I’ve grown in, and it all seems so connected and logical and obvious that I should come to this place. And be wrestling with these questions about who I am as an artist and how I want to make work. But it often seems surprising and fragile and riddled with uncertainty. Thinking about beginnings has given me courage as I recognise how deep the roots of this project are. Somewhere/Anywhere is one flowering possibility of a much larger, deeper and connected web of ideas, experiences and skills. And that recognition gives me courage.