In 2025, I was awarded a small creative bursary from First Light CIC successfully awarded from an open call-out. I thought it would be straightforward and obvious what I’d do with the fund – to simply try to ‘get back’ to where I was with my career before my Acquired Brain Injury disabled me and halted my life as I knew it. Being given a little budget and space for reflection, piloting and making attempts was hugely helpful and came at just the right time. I ended up utilising the last bit of my bursary to working with multi-media artist Helen Wells, again chosen through an open call, to support me in creating new moving image artwork, learning the basics of stop motion and reflecting on recent health experiences through images. My ambition was to create art that was alive and informed by the realities of my surgery, injury and rehabilitation experience but which could be appreciated with audiences beyond the neurological health world.
I’m really looking forward to eventually sharing the final work – plans tbc and I’m hoping to create more chances to build upon this new foundation of development. I couldn’t have envisioned this change coming from this bursary support, but it was as much entwined with my neuro rehabilitation as it is with my career or identity as an artist – which I’m delighted to say is still very much alive!
Ahead of publicly sharing the moving image outcomes of my time and creative collaboration with Helen, I’m sharing some of the stills captured from the video artwork to give a flavour of the piece!
