What is at the core of keeping me here?
Peer support is the heart of what I do. I am a native Londoner, with the word written through me like a stick of seaside rock. Work I made anywhere else would still be inspired by my environment, but it would be as a tourist, not a peer: a newly enamoured lover, not a family member.
Staying in London does not really feel an active choice, more a passive one. Nobody asks a fish why they have not moved out of the sea. Many leave because they have to, or have different priorities. But I stay despite the shooting on our estate and the murder paces from my kids’ school gate last year, and because of the diverse community we live in. Perhaps the sense that everyone is always leaving (and new folk coming in) boosts the element of nostalgia in my work.
What does London offer that other places don’t?
London has much to offer that other places do not: an extraordinary wealth of cultural resources. I make little use of it, far less than I feel I should. Why? Because I have a family to raise, money and work to make: like many Londoners I am time-poor. I prefer a slower pace and enjoy the contrasting influence of breastfeeding and other meditative practices in my work. Maybe I relish the way London’s pace complements my natural (slow) rhythm.
How do I balance my practice/working/caring responsibilities?
I stay in London because it is where my family life is, although – because I make work about my transition to motherhood – you could say I stay for my art. But I believe that if I had never become a mum I would have moved out of London by now: it would feel easier to make a home, a living and a creative life, elsewhere. Although it would need to be another somewhere where you do not have to be a driver: I mainly use my two feet to get around, but the many buses are helpful as my ‘studio’ has to be a portable wheelie bag, especially since my shoulder froze up, which makes it hard to carry my materials any distance.
We live in a small flat, often literally tripping up over each other, and the one table we share for everything does not feel enough space for my making. I crave a space where I could lay things out and leave them, where my creations can be undisturbed and ferment happily while I am away. I would not be able to go there often – maybe two mornings a week – and I wonder if I can find a shared space: perhaps using Artquest to find some sharers? The idea of not having to pack away all the time, seeing my wares laid out, is a beautiful dream. Writing lives more easily in notebooks and laptop, but as my work is becoming more visual I crave a 3-D canvas to view its progress. I think I also crave more visibility for myself. As a mum I have been sneaking in my creative pursuits in the shadows for many years now; it might be time to come out.
The juggle of family life, earning, and making, has made me learn to use slivers of time, and I have adapted my practice to use this ‘time confetti’ that is the life of a working parent. I crave the long chunks of time that allow creative flow, but they are from a different life. This current one means journaling, poetry, not mounting shows or longer form writing. I began writing poems in the dark while breastfeeding, because I could hold a few words in my head, craft them and their punctuation, and crystalise them long enough to scrawl them with my unseen hand, and interpret my handwriting in the morning.
How does Mothers Who Make and Mothers Who Make a Living support my practice and life?
Talking to others about my creative work, and hearing about theirs, gives me permission to keep making it. I co-host the North London hub of Mothers Who Make, a grassroots network for peer support founded by Matilda Leyser when she could not find another place to be both a mother and a maker at the same time. In these talking circles both roles are valued equally. Sometimes I doubt myself as a maker but talking to others makes me see that the work I make is still worth doing even if I have to create it within certain limits; in fact all art gets created by limitations. I find it consoling and helpful to hear from others who are trying to make, (even in vastly different fields or circumstances,) while being a female or non-binary parent. We often experience guilt or frustration in combining these roles. None of us have the exact same challenges, or gifts, but there is a shared understanding and often a shorthand way of speaking. I appreciate the space for admitting the unspeakable, and have found that I meet fewer assumptions than elsewhere: Stay n Plays, work environments. I can see why there are so many accepted clichés about motherhood, working and art, but it is a great relief to find a place where these can be challenged and we can hear our own individual voices. As we always say at Mothers Who Make: “it is unusual to have a moment to speak uninterrupted!”
Last year I ran some Mothers Who Make A Living sessions, about combining financial survival with motherhood and creative pursuits: mutual peer support which did help. I am now working two part-time day-jobs in areas that fit well with the community and nurturing aspects of my creative work. It has taken me a long time, a lot of talking and listening, to get here. London has been the backdrop for this struggle: partly the problem and partly the solution.
This work has a