My DYCP Grant: Bolder Endeavours for New Possibilities

In 2024, I received funding from Arts Council England in the form of a Developing Your Creative Practice (DYCP) Grant. I am only just writing about this now because I have had to have two extensions — one when I was told Dad was end of life, and then another after my Dad had died. I cared for my Dad for seven years, but the last two years were particularly difficult. It has been a very exhausting time, full of anticipatory grief, and culminating in severe carer burnout. It has been hard to find the space and energy to return to my creative practice. Finally, I feel I am now able to get back to the developments I originally proposed.

Caring for a family member is something that many more people are finding themselves doing, and it feels like an increasingly timely subject, particularly as families continue to navigate an overstretched and inadequate social care system in the UK. My own experience of caring has inevitably become part of how I see and make work, and the conversations, sounds and experiences I have recorded over the years feel increasingly important to revisit.

As part of my DYCP Grant, I am exploring new ways of presenting my work. My theme for my DYCP, Bolder Endeavours for New Possibilities, is about expanding my projects from stills only and experimenting with different modes of presentation. One of the areas I have really enjoyed focussing on is Audio Visual as a way of expanding a project and bringing together different elements of my practice.

I have always recorded conversations and sounds as I take photographs, and particularly during Covid, I recorded a lot of conversations between my father and Mary, as well as ambient sounds during the lockdowns and the news recordings that were constantly flooding our living rooms. These recordings have stayed with me, and through this development period I have started to think more about how they could sit alongside my photographic work, rather than simply being something that exists in the background.

Here is a time-lapse I made of my Dad’s empty room after his death, and the chair where he always sat. I will be adding a soundscape to this piece. It is part memorial and part meditation. The DYCP Grant is not about creating a final outcome, but about giving artists the time and space to experiment, learn and take their practice in new directions. I can already see where this experimentation could lead, and I will definitely be putting my new skills to good use as I continue to work towards a completed piece after my DYCP Grant period is over.

This website was also made possible by my DYCP funding, so a big thank you to Arts Council England for giving me the opportunity to explore, experiment and develop my practice in this way.