Woman Up‪!‬ Amy Dignam and Susan Merrick

This is our last Woman Up! On Tour episode for 2023. 

We would like to take this opportunity to send a massive thanks to all organizations that worked with us this year and all the amazing artists that shared their work with us, reminding us of what's possible to create and achieve even when challenged. 

Thanks to Jess Gell for her amazing video skills and acegrams for making it all possible. 

And lastly THANK YOU! Thank you to all our incredible listeners, you've been an amazing support and we appreciate you all for taking the time to hear us out!

We wish you all a peaceful and happy transition into the new year

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In this episode we talk to wonderful artist Rosy Martin.

Rosy Martin (born London 1946) is an artist-photographer, psychological-therapist, workshop leader, lecturer and writer. She explores the relationships between photography, memory, identities and unconscious processes using self-portraiture, still life photography and video.
Starting in 1983, working with the late Jo Spence, she evolved and developed a new photographic practice- phototherapy - incorporating re-enactments. Through embodiment, they explored the psychic and social construction of identities within the drama of the everyday. My ‘therapeutic gaze’ provided a safe space for exploring one’s own stories in profoundly innovative ways.
Exhibiting Internationally and publishing widely since 1985, she has investigated issues including gender, sexualities, ageing, class, location, shame and family dynamics. Her photographic practice is grounded in research, the subjects arise from personal lived experiences, yet communicate to a broad audience. For example in ‘Transforming the suit: what does a lesbian look like?’ 1987 she played with different historical and contemporary stereotypes to challenge simplistic assumptions.

She used still life and video in ‘Too close to home?’ to explore the experiences of pre-bereavement, loss, grief and reparation by focusing upon her childhood home as a metaphor/metonym for both her father and mother, anticipating and mourning their deaths. She researched working-class suburban life inspired by this semi-detached house, almost unchanged since the 1930s. In ‘The end of the line’ she photographed through tears a soft and melancholy goodbye to her roots.
 
On turning fifty, her focus became contesting the dominant representations of ageing women, a subject she has returned to in her seventies. Using humour, play and parody the ageing body is reconfigured as present, joyous and defiant.
 
Martin has run intensive experiential phototherapy workshops and given lectures in Universities and Galleries throughout Britain, the USA, Canada, Eire and Finland. She also ran workshops in community settings, including a women's prison, projects with survivors of sexual abuse and school-based projects on digital identities. 

In this episode we are in Margate at Liminal Gallery  talking to founder and curator Louise Fitzjohn and Margate based artists Mercedes Workmen and Catherine Chinatree. 
Liminal Gallery represents contemporary artists working across the UK and Ireland. Its main ethos is to present an all-round snapshot of what is happening right now in contemporary art, showcasing artists at all stages of their careers working across all mediums. 
Mercedes is a self-taught artist; predominantly working in ceramics but also other areas of sculpture, painting and drawing.
After her mum died in January 2020 she decided to make some tiles for a splash back in her kitchen and it grew to be huge project; she created enough tiles for 3 bathrooms, a utility room and her whole kitchen.
Her work is a response to her overactive mind. She has ADHD and work fast and determinedly. Themes that recur in her work are relationships and interactions, perceptions, judgements, idiosyncrasies, cliches. Most usually around womanhood, motherhood and identity
Catherine is a multidisciplinary artist, with a strong focus on large scale paintings, both indoors and outside. The work can be described as both figurative and socially surreal. She also work with sound and moving image in a collage type of way, connecting footage/sound at random. 
Most of her inspiration comes from the events of everyday life, of symbolism and rituals and the people she meets. Often complex layers of history, social anthropology and Cultural displacement become part of the work, as she investigate the notion of the constructed self and human behaviour. Being of Welsh, Caribbean and Irish descent, She is deeply rooted in hybrid culture, and the idea of a shared reality. Not only between us as humans, but also everything that makes up our natural/supernatural world, and how we balance between the two. 

In this episode we are at Friction Arts in Birmingham talking to Sandra Hall Artistic Director and co-founder of Friction Arts (alongside Lee Griffiths) and artists Natalie Mason and Savhanha Small Wyn.


For 30 years, Friction has produced an ambitious programme of creative work, often in partnership or collaboration with artists from all kinds of disciplines; currently it includes Birmingham’s only free visual art club for young people delivered by professional artists, a ground-breaking multicultural music programme in schools and community settings, our Culture Club for young people, A Word From the Wise – a programme celebrating the work of elders and older artists, currently through our ‘Home’ project, Walking Over Coals, with an artist development programme for emerging, emerged and submerging artists and an ever-evolving series of site-specific performances and interventions in a variety of settings like their between-lockdown show ‘Quiet Carnival’.


Natalie Mason is a performer-composer, facilitator and researcher.Natalie has been directing the Multicultural Music Making project (MMM) she created in partnership with Friction Arts. As a multi-instrumentalist, Natalie has performed and recorded internationally at the BBC Proms, FIFA World Cup, Symphony Hall and Real World Studios. She has been commissioned as a composer by Surge Orchestra, Flatpack Film Festival and Dorcha, with her music played on BBC Radio 3. She is a member of avant-pop experimental duo Kamura Obscura, co-curates alternative music night Club Integral Midlands Branch and recently completed a national tour with The Nightingales.


Savhanha Small Wyn, a poet, writer and mum to two under two of Vietnamese-Jamaican-British heritage. Savhanha is a poet and writer and has been published in the Visual Verse with my poem 'Pieces', and have since had three more published on their site ('A Knight's Tale', 'Firewatch', and 'Spring'), along with a piece published on Spare Parts Lit and another on Halu Halo Journal, and two more pieces to be published during 2023. Since having her children Savhanha has realised the difficulties of freelancing and childcare which inspired her to launch an Arts zine online called RECESSES, a multi-media zine that focuses on work that's been rejected, forgotten, or is new and experimental.

In this Woman Up! On Tour episode we went to Brighton and spent time at the incredible Quiet Down There studio talking to thee inspiring women Lucy Jeffries, AFLO.the poet  and Alina Hazadeh. 
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Quiet Down There offers people routes to expressing and developing their own creativity – outside of the traditional structures of the arts. They work in markets, charity shops, laundrettes and other spaces where people already are. They are ambitious for the communities that they collaborate with and work alongside artists to hone and develop their socially engaged practice.
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AFLO. the poet is an award-winning Brighton-based spoken word artist, activist and academic who embraces creative expression to disrupt the status quo and inspire social change. AFLO. uses poetry as a vehicle to address hard-hitting topics, particularly racism and mental health, primarily speaking from her lived experiences. AFLO. has performed at various protests, festivals and events. AFLO. is one of Brighton Dome's in-house artists for 23/24 and is a significant force directing change in Brighton's creative scenes.
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Lucy is an intersectional feminist, mum, producer, law student & cocktail drinker. She grew up in Bristol where she formed her community-organising roots and have lived in Brighton for the last 20 years. She co-founded Quiet Down There in 2016.
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Alinah is an artist, writer, performer and cultural activist of British Iranian heritage. She uses text, textile, audio, and live practices to create poetic narratives that activate spaces, amplifying untold or overlooked stories. She is inaugural writer-in-residence at Seven Sisters Country Park & Sussex Heritage Coast, commissioned by the South Downs National Park Authority, and led We See You Now (2019–22), a decolonial landscape and literature programme which has produced We Hear You Now, a new spoken word audio series on Listening Points across the landscape and online until 2028.

In this episode recorded at Artlink in Hull we spoke to Jemma Brown, Sam Metz and Lydia Shearsmith.
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Jemma is a creative producer and a specialist working with diverse communities to plan and produce current, relevant, and inclusive artwork to engage and enlighten. She holds a First Class BA Honours in Contemporary Fine Art Practice, is an Arts and Graphics Teacher (QTLS status),  and Freelance Artist.
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Sam is an artist who researches, creates and reflects on the concept of what they refer to as choreographic objects. Sam has collaborated with the performance artist David Clarkson to create body-based live art, and has been a member of Guerrilla Art Lab, a queer, feminist, live art, performance collective since 2016.
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Lydia is an artist who is primarily concerned with exploring photography as a medium and as a subject matter. Her varied processes allow her to expand image-making into physical space, challenging common definitions of photography.
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 Artlink is an arts and educational charity working with under-represented people to improve prospects and deliver positive social impacts. They do this through participatory arts projects, exhibitions, events, and learning programmes - working with a range of communities. Since 1982, Artlink Hull has been involved in the development of community, participatory and socially-engaged work.

Sangini is a Black and minorities women led community arts project that is committed to ending gender based violence. They seek to improve the quality of Black and minoritised and socially excluded women's lives by increasing their physical, mental and spiritual health through artistic, heritage, crafts and social activities that helps women recover from experiences of gender based violence whilst promoting cultural diversity.
Sangini seek to reach BME, disadvantaged and excluded women in innovative and creative ways whilst providing opportunities for tackling inequalities. Their previous projects have had a positive impact in encouraging women from different communities to engage in educational, creative and participatory activities by providing support and encouragement thereby removing the social and cultural barriers.
https://www.sangini.co.uk/about

Padma Rao, Director, Sangini is based in the North East of England, is also a contemporary visual artist practicing painting and contemporary drawing, a visiting lecturer, arts facilitator and a published poet. 
 Padma has over 20 years’ experience in the arts, heritage, community development, equalities and women’s issues. Padma has an art studio Makaan in South Shields, UK where she has shown works of art by artists based locally, nationally and internationally. A published poet, Padma has a background of working in the radio both at the BBC Radio Newcastle, as well as in India. 
 In her role at Sangini, Padma leads on the strategic development of Sangini’s programme of work that includes developing partnerships and sustainability and representation of Black women’s voices at local, regional and national networks.   
 Padma is passionate about the role and status of marginalised women in our current society and by exploring these issues through her work, both as an artist as well as in her role at Sangini, she aims to create a platform for the wider discussions around creativity, equality, feminism, identity and displacement of Black women. 

Nasim Akhtar is an artist living near Durham. She loves the textures of different fabrics and make textile art and patchwork quilts. She's been sewing since she was very young. She uses watercolours and acrylics to make abstract images as well as using digital manipulation to finish a piece of art. Her art work is displayed at EDAN Art Gallery in Seaham. Art ran alongside a 30 year career in Probation Services, in particular working to develop on services for women who commit crime. Writing poems and short stories helped her to record reflections and events. She has a manuscript inspired by her father’s journey to the UK which shaped his family, including her. Nasim is also a member of Easignton Writers and a  local book club.