S5, E9 Jane Thakoordin | Creativity and mental health specialist and participatory artist

In this episode, we meet Jane Thakoordin -a Birmingham-based participatory artist of British and Guyanese heritage whose textile practice weaves together mental health, social justice, and co-production. Using repurposed materials and collaborative making, Jane creates powerful works that challenge systems and celebrate resilience.

Founder of Birmingham Artivistas and member of the MIXED RAGE Collective, Jane’s projects - including the Grenfell Memorial Quilt, Sewing Solidarity, and Library of the Brain - blend craft with political commentary and emotional depth. With a background in visual arts and social work, she bridges creativity and care through trauma-informed, intergenerational practice.

Tune in to explore how textiles become tools for activism, healing, and community connection.

Episode recorded on 18 July 2025

Website: www.janethakoordin.com
Instagram: @janethakoordin_ | @mixedrage

Podcast details:
Podcast email: artiststalespodcast@gmail.com
Website: www.artiststales.net
Instagram: @artists_tales_podcast
Threads: @artists_tales_podcast

Transcript

Welcome to Artist Tales, the podcast that features and celebrates artists from different walks of life. I'm your host Heather Martin, and in this episode I'm joined with Jane Thakoordin. Jane is a Birmingham based, participatory artist of British and Guyanese heritage, whose work in textile weaves together threads of activism, mental health, and community care.

Her practice is rooted in co-production. Whether she's repurposing fabric or facilitating spaces for healing, Jane centers collaboration, resilience, and radical tenderness. From the Greenfield Memorial quilt to sowing solidarity, her banners and installations speak volumes, stitching, memory, meaning, and protest as a qualified social worker and a visiting lecturer, Janet's approach is shaped by lift, experience and grounded in trauma-informed practice.

Social justice and deep cultural insight. Her art holds space, challenges, systems and Sparks connection. And in this episode, she shares her journey. Welcome, Jane. Thank you very much, Heather. What a lovely, um, introduction. It's gorgeous. Well, you're such a wonderful person. I mean, it's, it's the least I could say actually.

Wow. Thank you. So to start off, I know I, I've given a bit of an introduction, but tell us a bit about yourself in your own words. Yeah. Okay, then that, that's lovely. So thank you f First of all, thank you very much, very much for inviting me onto your, onto your fantastic podcast. My journey, I suppose, started, oh gosh, a long time ago.

I, I did a degree in visual arts a long time ago at Lancaster University, and because I come from a migrant family, my, my parents. Heritage. My dad's Guyanese from Indian, Guyanese from Guyana, and my mum is from London and that, and we very much are from a, from a kind of migrant family. I wasn't allowed to do a full art degree.

I had to do something else that had an element of career prospects associated with it attached to it. So I did a kind of combined art, visual arts and social policy degree, which I thought was gonna be really dulled and really disinteresting, and it was just purely to please my dad, to be honest. But actually it really sparked something in me, the connection between social justice, social policy, and creativity.

I didn't necessarily know it at the time when I was a 19-year-old, you know, emerging visual artist and, and radical, you know, self-proclaimed radical thinking I was about to change the world. But it came to me really as my career kind of developed through my. Twenties and thirties, then obviously later into my, my, um, later life and later career.

So that's where I started. Um, back in, oh my goodness, 19, uh, 89 or something awful like that. And then I worked, uh, for a period of time as an arts officer in a. Actually quite a rural area and I managed to survive that for about three or four years. And I worked incredibly hard and I worked long hours and, and the idea, the concept and the idea of time off in loo never even crossed my mind.

So looking back now, I think that I was the perfect choice for that job. 'cause they, I was full of energy and beings and enthusiasm and knew no difference. So I worked my socks off. Then I moved into social work. I made a kind of conscious decision, uh, nearly 35 years ago, uh, to move into social work. And that was sparked by, um, having a very short but really intense placement in a psychiatric hospital as part of my degree, my undergraduate degree.

And I was really, really moved, but really taken with the, the power of art therapy in such a. Restricted kind of context if you like. So a lot of the people that I saw when I was on placement were in the in locked wards in a psychiatric hospital. And to witness the creative outlet and their, the means of communication and expression in a creative therapeutic space was really kind of quite revelatory to me.

That really sparked something, uh, within my, within my, um, my social work practice initially. And then later on as I became more able to have time and space to continue my creative practice, was I then able to bring the two things together. And I sit now, I think in a really. Privileged, but beautiful space anchored equally between social work and, and professional social work, social justice, and participatory arts.

So that in a, in a very, very quick, um, snapshot was my, is my artist career. And what draws you to that participatory kind of work? My heritage and my background and my upbringing I think really have really formed me. I come from a really political family. My parents were, when we were, when we were younger, myself and my brother, we were brought up in a communist household, which was an unusual experience looking back, fantastic experience.

But my mom and dad, both staunch communist. And had a real sense of, of supporting other people that you know, and, and supporting people in a practical way. They were always, always engaged politically, but their doors were always open for people. We had Chilean asylum seekers in our house. We had numerous people over the years that, that were staying with us when we were younger.

We were never entirely sure why they were there, but they were there for a bit of sanctuary. So the concept of, of working alongside other people and sharing space and a kind of socialist principle, I suppose, is rooted in my heritage. And so as an artist, I, I don't, I cannot conceive for myself of working in any other way other than with other people.

You know, featuring in, in all aspects of, of my practice. Yeah, I can see how it, you know, that sort of upbringing and that sort of experience really influenced you from kind of reading a bit about you. Your work is also very based or the, the art is very based on kind of textiles and that sort of thing.

And I have come across, I guess more recently or become more aware of kind of more. Whether it's, you know, call it participatory or perhaps I was thinking at the time where community or ultimately community, it often can be that kind of fabric based or textile based art. Because I know recently, like I, I visited the tape Modern, there was the, you know, AIDS quilts and you know, I'm, there's others and I've mentioned the GR Phil Quilt that you've worked on as well.

And it just makes me think that people are using what's around them. You know, it's very organic, it's very, you know, it's, you don't necessarily have to have. The best of the best. You just use what's there? Is that something that you know, you observed or as you were drawn to, or is it just something I'm kind of assuming perhaps?

Uh, no, no. You make a really good, you make a really, really good kind of observation. I think textiles are, for me, they are so accessible, uh, sustainable, and are easily available for people. Which I think is really crucial and also can be manipulated in any way that an individual chooses to. So they're very much a kind of baseline material that can.

Be the, the beginnings of something sculptural, uh, two dimensional text-based. It could be, you know, absolutely, you know, absolutely anything. You can do so many things with textiles. So that's one of the reasons why I think I'm drawn to that, to, to using textiles. Of course. The other thing is the history of quart making and use, and the use of textiles in, in history.

You know, from bio tapestry to the Chilean women making the amazing. Protest quilts of the disappeared of their families, the collage, the collages that they've made. American deep South American black women making amazing quilts that are threaded with the history of slavery. All of those ways of creating and using textiles.

Are in, are a beautiful and multisensory way of, of embedding history and I feel, I feel that textiles lends itself so much to that because it's the tactile nature of, of ch making the choices of types of materials we're gonna work with, the colors, the patterns. It lends itself so much to an infinite amounts of choices of which none are wrong, and that that's, I think that's the thing that really draws me.

So there's nothing, nothing gives me more pleasure than maybe working with a, with a group of people and opening up a bag or a case or a box full of different t types of fabrics, embellishments off cuts of sari material. You know, metallic gold, all sorts of stuff that I've collected, you know, over the, over the time.

Beautiful. Sequined material, silks, all sorts. And just letting people get their hands in it and, and feel it and touch it and hold it and, and activate it and, and then work together. Selecting, choosing, taking risks, experimenting, and then ultimately creating something really. Beautiful. That just gives me so much pleasure and makes me, um, yeah, that's the kind of stuff that makes my heart sing really.

I love that kind of imagery of, you know, everything is unique and it's nothing's wrong, and it's very tactile, you know, because I'm just conscious that, you know, we're now in, you know, what some call a digital age where it's all digital, all online or potentially all online. You know, we now have AI coming in.

It's almost, in some ways a bit subversive to have, I mean, people might think, oh, it's old school, but it's also lending itself to that subversiveness because I think quite often a quilt is a quilt. You know, the function of a quilt is to keep people warm. But as we've kind of mentioned, it's, you know, it can be used for a protest.

It can be used to kind of that community that. Narrative of a community. As you've mentioned, you know, the black women in the south of the States, and I've seen it elsewhere, where different communities take these things very tactile and it's a form of protest or subversiveness, which. You wouldn't necessarily think, oh, it's just textiles is clothing.

Well, actually that can be used, you know, that can be something quite subversive and or used as a protest. Yes, absolutely. And, and sometimes the more subtle, the more powerful as well. So one of the recent, uh, projects I've, I've just completed is working with a group of people who are seeking asylum and who are from, um, who are refugees and, and seek and asylum seekers from all over the world who are gay.

Trans and have come to our city to try and start a new life because they're persecuted in their home country. And we've made some amazingly beautiful capes, very beautiful glittery capes, A bit like Liberace, if anybody remembers. Liberace, beautiful capes. And on the back of those capes are really strong messages, defiant messages, things like Gay till I die.

Love as rebellion, things like this, that really, really strong statements that will hit people quite hard when they see those capes war maybe at pride or another um, event or an or an activist event, for example. And that's really important to me because I think. Getting the messages across in a creative way, sometimes subtle, um, I think is really, really powerful.

Banners are wonderful. Banners are are a brilliant way of bringing people together, bringing community together, marching, walking, whatever. Under, under their slogan, under something that, that represents them and tells the world about, this is who we are. This is what we believe in. We are defiant, and we're holding this space, and we're taking up this space.

Yeah. It gives me masses of pleasure to work with people to create banners during a process that involves people really digging deep about their own value base or digging deep about what really matters to them. So my capes for, or the capes, for example, are a result of. A series of conversations with people who, the group of people that I was talking about, who generally speaking, and I think people may, who, who maybe work alongside asylum seekers may resonate with this, that generally speaking, don't, don't want to rock the boat, obviously don't want to protest because they don't, they don't, they don't seek attention.

They're here too. Live a quieter life as possible and go through the asiding processes quietly and as straightforwardly as they want to. As they as they can. Sorry, but also with the gentle conversations, recognizing that they absolutely have a right to say and speak up and tell people what life is really like.

Sadly, educate, educate people about what it is like to be an asylum seeker who is gay in this country. Being unable to even contemplate going back to their, their, their home country. No matter how much they love it, no matter how much they miss their loved ones, it's something that they just can't do. So, you know, that kind of, that kind of way of using text and textiles and clothing.

Something that I've been exploring quite a lot recently, and I think that project is very timely as well because, you know, certainly in, in the UK and elsewhere, not, it's not just a, a UK kind of discussion, if you can call it that. You know, migration is a thing, you know, many countries are. Really struggling with migration.

You know, there's, you know, potentially backlash, you know, some of the politicians that we're hearing, and I'm not gonna name any, but, you know, you're hearing kind of a narrative that's quite negative towards migration, you know, and it's, it's not easy being a migrant, it's not easy, as you've mentioned, to leave countries, you know, particularly for your own safety when you're leaving for your own safety.

It, it's, you know, and it's scary to go somewhere completely different, particularly if you've never been there before. So I think it's really a quite timely sort of topic just, but with the political landscape, yes, absolutely It is. Sadly it, it is. And it's becoming more and more so, isn't it? Yeah, no, definitely.

You know, you've mentioned some of your projects, and I've mentioned a couple in my introduction as well. When is the Grenfell Memorial quilt? And I'm really mindful about Grenfell because I know this year, so Grenfell happened in 2017, we're now 2025, so it's eight years after Grenfell. And I know there's been some discussion about taking down the building because it's seen as deemed as unsafe.

So when I read that you had the memorial quilt, you know, Grandville Memorial Quilt, you know, I found that quite interesting. So could you tell us a bit more about that? That's a, I mean, that's just an amazing, an amazing project and quite transformational for my practice as well, to be honest with you. So the Grenfell Memorial Quilt Project itself has been going since late 2017.

Um, same year obviously as the fire. And it was instigated by an amazing person called Tuesday Greenage who. Just inspirational. Her and her team of people based in North Kensington have been working diligently away all of these years making sewing, creating beautiful quilts. Now, their their aspiration, and I've got no doubt that they will achieve this, and their aspiration is to make quilts or have quilts made that are, as long as the tower was tall.

So the aspiration is to have a quilt that's gonna be 220 meters long. And it'll happen because they're just amazing at, at, at mobilizing other people. So all over the world, people are making sections of the quilt. I've taken a, I took a section, a 12 foot square section. The, the back fabrics of the quilt is a Jo Roll.

So a Jo Roll is a series of strips of fabric all sewn together, and the fabric created by Tuesday and her team in North Kensington Library. The fabric that make that makes up the Jo Roll is all from fabrics and clothes that weren't able to be used, but were donated at the time of the fire. I remember, because I remember driving down, uh, to London at the time with car, with a car load full of.

Of clothes and food and all sorts, because I think at the time people felt so desperately wanting to offer some practical support to what was going on. So lots of people did that. They had an abundance of clothes, materials, all sorts of things, some of which they weren't able to use. So rather than just discard it to of Tuesday and her team, they turned them into these beautiful pieces of jelly Roll fabric, 12 foot square.

I took a square and, and I had, I had an idea in my head, a tiny little seed of an idea in my head, and I just kind of put it out there into the social media universe. Asked for people to create something, sign up to create something with me, and it happened. And the process of sending, sending the call out, out into the world and waiting for things to return was the most amazingly.

Affirming belief in the power of humanity because people did what they said they would do, which sounds really silly and really simple, but actually it was just beautiful because 72 people passed in the fire and 68 artists, 'cause some people made 2 68 artists came back to me with beautifully, beautifully creative birds.

What was so powerful was I used the, the biographies that were printed in The Guardian about each of the 72 people and sent each of the artists who, who responded to my call out, sent them a named person and a little bit of the biography to, to them, and asked them to create a bird. These are the dimensions, material, you know, there's no rules other than, you know, the obvious ones.

These are the dimensions. Off you go, you know, fill your boots. And the, the work that came back was just absolutely beautiful, so stunning. And what also was so beautiful was the wor were the words that people sent back in relation to the process of creating their bird, and also in relation to. Developing a sense of knowing or understanding of the person they were creating the bird for.

So, and it just, it, I mean, I know I've always known that art is transformational. I, I kind of know that, but, but to see it and feel it in all those senses was just beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. So the piece that, that we made is called, um, DEC Caged Birds Dream of Flying. That to me was a kind of metaphor in a sense of thinking about those, those people that perished on the horrendous, um, date in June, 2017, and the concept of just, you know, being able to fly, fly away.

So that was, that was the theme and Yeah, so the, the piece itself now as, as, um, as we record this in July is in Milan as part with seven other pan pieces of the panel. Of the Buffalo Memorial Quilt and it's on display in the In the Trani Milano, which is just an amazing exhibition. That has a theme of inequalities.

So looks at housing, architecture, creativity, culture. It's, it is an amazing kind of ex, is it exposition? Is that the right word? Where, you know, like a big event where all sorts of things come together. Yeah. So what an amazing privilege to see the pieces hung up so beautifully in Milan. Yeah. So that's the kind of story of the, of the quilt.

So the transformation for me in my practice was this idea that you send, you send things out into the world. And if it comes back, bonus, if it doesn't come back, it's okay. There's always a plan B. But the fact that that everything came back and it came back so beautifully and some of the words I say, some of the words were so touching, I managed to spend, find some time to catalog all of the birds so that people can get a lovely closeup look of each of the individual birds made and the name of the person obviously, that the bird is dedicated to, and the artist who created it.

And then. The, the, the vast majority of people that created, wrote a paragraph for me as well about, about the process, and people talked about, you know, the privilege of being involved and not expecting to feel quite as emotional as they did when they started the process of sitting and thinking and creating with a person in mind.

A stranger in mind as well. So that's just, yeah, just a lovely kind of affirming project and I want to do more of those. Yeah, no, it's, it sounds really app affirming and, and really positive and, you know, just reflecting on what you've, you've been saying about Grenville and, and you know, some of the other projects.

You know, what, what occurs to me about this type of art is it's really kind of capturing. People's history that could quite possibly and quite easily be smoothed over, not talked about, not spoken about. Because often you look at history and I, I say you, I often look at history and you know, and think, well, whose stories are not being told?

You know? And it can be quite easy that you know, people in the margins, people who you know, are pushed to the fringes. Whether they're kind of immigrants, whether they're kind of in a, you know, poor, the poor or you know, the people are not perhaps having as much money or whoever that group is, you know, whether it's the LGBT community, you know, things like this, like the banners or the quilts.

It's just that kind of memory, a story of and protest voice of we're actually, we do exist. We here. Absolutely. Yeah. It's that classic thing is that history is written by the winners, isn't it? That phrase? Yeah. It's of course, it's, and you, you kind of alluded to there, going to Tate and looking at the AIDS quilts, I mean, that is like, uh, the most amazing example, isn't it, of, of emotion history.

Unspoken, unsaid, grief expressed so beautifully by, by people. And I suppose that element of making sure that people are included. So that's the kind of difference. I think people, some people who don't necessarily, aren't necessarily familiar with the kind of part term participatory arts might get slightly confused with community arts versus participatory arts.

And in my mind, it might be just quite useful for me just to kind of give my version of, of kind of the difference. This is what I think is the difference anyway. Community arts is wonderful. Community arts is an egal for me, is an egalitarian process where everybody contributes whatever they choose. And whatever is the result is the example of the process.

And it's wonderful. And quite often it's not edited, it's not necessarily curated, but it's a, it's a chance for everybody to work together in an egalitarian way and produce something wonderful. That's great. From my point of view, participatory arts is more about a relationship between an artist and or artists and a set of other people, many of whom might also be artists, but don't really regard themselves as artists, but a set of people who collaborate together to co-create something.

Now that what I mean by that, that sounds a bit kind of. Jargony maybe. But what I mean by that is that the, the discussion, the planning, the, the kind of like, uh, risk taking and the experimenting, trying things out together is all part of the process. The culling and the curating is part of the process as well.

And maybe the aesthetic designing as part of the process, and then what the, what may end that may end with a product, whether that's a, a banner piece of textile. A set of prints, it could be anything. Really for me, a successful participatory project means that everybody that participated in that period of time can see themselves or or their efforts reflected in the piece, at least.

Everybody, everybody, somewhere. That doesn't mean that every single person's work gets put on a piece. So not, it's not like, let's, let's chuck everything on we've done, everything's chuck it all on. There's an element of editing, curating, selecting, rejecting, uh, you know, all of those things. That's part of the process of us, of artists and artists, participants participating together to co-create something.

Hope that doesn't sound like gobbledygook, but I think, I think I know what I'm talking about there. No, that, that is really helpful actually, and it, it's given me a bit of clarity between the two, so Thank you. In researching you, I've, I've come across that you're the founder of the Birmingham Viss and also a member of the Mixed Rage Collective.

Could you tell me a little bit about those? Yeah, so, so the Birmingham Mar Vista. Uh, is a, is a collection of, of artists and interested creatives that came together probably all about 10 years ago. I think I kind of discovered Craftivism about 15 years ago, and I realized that I was probably a craftivism long before I discovered the word craftivism actually existed.

And I loved it. And we did, uh, I brought, I brought initially brought some friends together, and then we opened it up for anybody, any like-minded creatives. We began to meet monthly in Birmingham and started doing all sorts of creative campaigning, raising awareness of particular issues. So some of the early, early, uh, work we did was we all, we made a set.

I remember it was fantastic. We made a set of anatomically correct hearts, textile heart. To gift to the board of trustees for the British Heart Foundation based in Birmingham. 'cause we worked out, we found out that people that were transporting bags of blood across Birmingham were on a zero hour contract, which, uh, horrified us because it made us think about lowest paid workers doing the most important job, carrying the most, the most important, uh, product.

So we decided to tackle that and raise awareness of thinking that was a real kind of social injustice. So rather than just kind of standing outside the offices of the, of the, uh, British Heart Foundation and, you know, shouting and screaming, we decided to do it in a creative way. That was the, was one of our first projects.

And over the years. We've worked on lots of wonderful things. We've done work with organizations around domestic violence, raising awareness, that kind of stuff now, and then we moved into, I'm, well, I, myself and a couple of other people started thinking about the notion of craft and kind of, we got a little bit, individually and personally, we got a little bit kind of cynical about the concept of the, the, the concept of craft being the quiet revolution and the kind of quiet protest.

Because we realized that we've been protesting. I'm, I'm 58 now. We've been protesting since, you know, since we were kids. You know, I was, I was on marches with mom and dad when I was five. Got all kinds of photographic evidence of all of us, you know, when we were little toddlers going on marches. So we've all, you know, we've been protesting and shouting and screaming all of our lives, really.

And I wasn't prepared to be a quiet activist. I wanted to be a noisy activist. So it made me start thinking about different ways in which we could take the fantastic concepts of Craftivism and morph them into a little bit more of a contemporary kinda arts perspective. So hence Artivists Artivist. So we went from Craftivism.

To Artivists to being a group of women and with women, female identifying. So we've got, we've got women who are trans. We've got women who are, who just identify as women, whoever they are, we, we accept and that we accept and encourage and celebrate all women. So we then became Artivists as to kind of feminize the, uh, the artivists, if you like.

So, yeah, Birmingham, Marist is still going strong. Still using creativity to raise awareness of, of particular issues. We had a wonderful project that looked at, that, looked at the sta the statistics of the number of kids that live in poverty in our city. So Birmingham is a, is a challenging city to be in if you're a young family.

And if you're a low income young family, it's a hard place. We've got a bankrupt city council. We've got real, a real dearth of social housing. It's a, you know, it's a hard place. It's a great place to live. It's a hard place to live though. The number of people, a number of kids that live in poverty now in our city is around about 95,000 people.

95,000. It's a hell of a lot of people. Young people, young people, young children. So we've got the, with this project where we, where we embroider these statistics in a very beautiful way, but we embroider them. We send them to the counselors to remind them, to remind them about, you know, what's happening in their city.

Just to keep them kind of minded and aware. Of course they're aware, but it's like just, just giving them that nudge. Letting them know that we're, you know, that we're not taking our eyes off of the, you know, the most kind of, uh, vulnerable people in the city. I suppose that's the kind of social work bit of me really that can't switch off, to be honest.

So that's the Artivist. And you mentioned the Mixed Rage Collective, which has just brought me so much joy and solidarity in the last few years. There's five members of the Mixed Rage Collective, and we're called Mixed Rage, RAGE, because we're all mixed parentage. All of us, we come from different heritages.

Really, some members of the collective have got such amazingly rich mixed heritages. So we are all, we're all, we're all artists in different ways. We've got a poet, we've got printmaker, myself as a textile artist, a filmmaker, and then we all dabble in lots of other things as well. And we've been together about five years now.

We've had several. Exhibitions of our work. We've published a set of zines as well. We do workshops, we conduct seminars, we do all sorts of stuff, and that is the most amazing and beautiful way of reminding myself of what it's like to be an artist. 'cause we support each other. We encourage each other. We challenge each other when we need to.

It's just a great space where we keep each other going from a creative point of view and sometimes from a personal point of view as well. So that's one of the things that I would always actually encourage artists to think about is forming collectives with other like-minded people doesn't have to be something that is.

You know, meets regularly. It could be something that, you know, there's a collective of people across different parts of the world. You know, you might meet online, you might share the same, I dunno, the same ideas of creativity or a value base or particular interest in certain types of creative practice.

That's definitely something I would encourage people to do. Having done it myself now when I'm feeling kind of demotivated or a little bit lost in my practice, the collective kind of holds me up and we've all agreed this, that we kind of, we do hold each other up when, when we need to. It's just, it's wonderful.

So we do, we do collective work together. We have an, we have a wonderful exhibition that toured called Unapologetically Other, where we kind of, we created different pieces of work that celebrate our mixedness and our otherness. And we talk, we talk to people about what it means to be. Mixed heritages, whatever that may be, doesn't mean it's not just as binary as being half black, half white, none of that.

It's not about that. It's about, you know, us as human beings, having, having real depth to our heritage and our ethnicity and our backgrounds and, and really kind of celebrating that. That sounds so positive and dynamic in all honesty. Sounds like there's a lot of energy in that group. My last question is, and hopefully it's not too, too difficult, one, what's next?

Where do you think you might be going or do you know where you're going? Well, well, I have a great question. Where am I going next? So what's next for me? I'm often in my studio, uh, which is my, my sanctuary, really. Just experimenting with pieces and experimenting with techniques. I'm always learning. I learn from my amazing colleagues that share studio spaces.

I learn from going to look at a gallery exhibitions and talk to other artists about how they're doing work, how they're producing work. I do lots and lots of research. Um, I'm, I'm often, um, in my studio researching. I've got a cu a couple of current projects that are just beautiful that I'm finishing off at the moment.

So I've just done a couple of really interesting creative research pieces with universities, two different universities. Working with academics who are producing work on specific themes. So working with King's College at the moment, who've done, um, a really interesting, disturbing but interesting study around sexual harassment and the student experience and I, I've been working with them on a kind of visual and embodied methodology where I've been embedded with their discussions listening to this, the discussions with the policy makers and change makers and students.

I'm creating a piece of work based on, on their work, on their words and their thinking. And I've, I also, as part of that project, worked alongside a poet who has now produced a piece of, of poetry and prose about that experience as well. So that's taken me into a really interesting world of. Listening, picking up key words, key, key phrases, and taking those and representing those in a creative way and representing those back to the, to those groups of people as a way of affirming their thoughts and their feelings on, on a particular subject.

So that's been, that's been really, really lovely and interesting. So bringing those, those pieces of work together at the moment. I will say, I think I'll just continue to get bigger and bigger. That's, I mean, I mean in terms, I don't mean that sounds, sounds, sounds, egoistical don't mean that. I mean in size in creating work that the Grenville Tower piece, you know, 12 foot square, which doesn't sound very much, but I would encourage somebody to pace out 12 feet.

It's enormous. That has opened up to me. The possibilities of, you know, you can just go as big as you possibly can. And I, I love that. And I'm, and I'm going big and I'm going as big as I can. And then when I've gone big, I'll go even bigger. So that's really opened up my, really opened up my, um, my practice, which is wonderful.

So yet lots of experimenting, lots of seeing how big I can possibly go. Certainly lots more working with strangers across, across the country and hopefully even across the world in relation to some of my, some of my collaborative and participatory pieces. And I suppose just really seeing where it takes me, really, I'm, I'm, I'm in a, you know, I'm, I'm very, I recognize that I'm a very, I'm in, I'm in a privilege position because I've got a space where I can think and work.

Test things out and I'm surrounded by other creative people that that keep me kind of going really. So I am very lucky in that respect. Wow. Yeah, it sounds like you have a lot on and, you know, some really good ideas. So I'm really, I'm, I'm gonna continue following you on, on Instagram and social media because I'd love to see where you're going.

Love to see some of your projects. Oh, yes, please do. That'd be lovely. Great. Thanks. It's been lovely speaking with you. Well, it's been amazing speaking with you and I really appreciate you, um, being a guest on, on this podcast. Thank you very much, Heather. It's been absolutely beautiful and uh, it's been wonderful being able to talk about my practice, and thank you very much for the great questions as well.

Thanks for some really insightful answers. Thanks for tuning into my conversation with Jane. Jane's work reminds us that creativity is not just a solitary pursuit, it's a shared language of resilience and connection. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to check out Jane's website and social media presence.

Links are in the show notes. If artist Tales is finding a place in your creative life, spread the [word. Share it with friends and fellow makers. In the next episode, I'll be speaking with Ailish Henderson, a textile artist, writer and educator whose work blends fine art techniques with deeply personal storytelling.

Ailish has stitch collages and mixed media pieces, explore themes of emotional repair, memory, and identity, who practices as much about transformation as it is about creation, and I can't wait to share her story with you.