Doing Emotional Heritage with people in Darlington
Emotional Heritage is the phrase I use for folk, punk, DIY creativity people develop to navigate, alter and document the ‘inheritance of feelings’ in their communities.
• Collaborative, creative experiments- thinking, making and doing. Working with local communities through in person and online workshops, events, mentoring, games and customs
• Gathering support to share what develops from these collaborations as ambitious new public artwork
Through ongoing research into American artist Gordon Matta-Clarks social & physical art approaches, look at parallels between social circumstances of 70s New York and NorthEast now. Particularly the inability of the built environment to meet social and structural needs of it’s people& effects of this on Emotional Heritage.
Example use of funding:
My Fees (£300PD x 18) £5,400
Mentor(s) £500 (Jessamyn Fiore, Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark)
The White Pube (or similar) review £600
Travel £200
Access costs for people attending workshops (travel, childcare bursaries, BSL etc) £300
My access costs (£160 PD x 8) £ 1,280
Materials: £820
Documentation: £400
Contingency: £500
Move practice forward:
Proof of concept- my socially engaged Emotional Heritage research can translate into locally relivant& nationally recognised public artwork
Challenge myself by integrating sculptural photography into installation work- developing this material language +research how it might be acquired by collections
Through mentoring/Prize team support create strategic plan for sharing work including:
• Document & promote via portfolio including images, contextual info, audio interview & testimonials from prize team & local coauthors
• Agreeing schedule with partner organisations to share work for maximum exposure forging connections with potential future collaborators / commissioners, including in USA
Achieve:
More long-term, creatively satisfying, materially ambitious, well connected practice through:
• Relationships & collaborations with Darlington people& organisations, Jessamyn& Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark
• Framework for communities to explore Emotional Heritage. Enabling me to hone& share this work adding skills I can offer communities& commissioners
• Tools, skills, strategies to manage and advocate for exhibition, & collection of, my sculptural photography
• Continue developing robust approach to, and track record of, working on public art commissions
In my experience, the most effective, authentic, long-lasting, way to raise profile of creative arts in an area is to facilitate opportunities for local people to explore, share and celebrate their own creativity. Delivering access-centred, locally rooted activity, with national and international awareness and ambition.
I feel it’d be dead important for this community-centric approach to be complimented by strategies including:
• Celebrate local people involved through high quality opportunities to share work with their friends, families & wider creative ecosystems
• Reaching out regionally and nationally to contemporary art networks (my own& those of Dover Prize partners) to attend events
• Working with press, local & art specific, for duration of prize period, building awareness, recognition, excitement (like commissioning review of work from The White Pube)
• Considering options for extending/ deepening prize activity with additional grants / awards (like ACE, NLHF) and potential cross over into other projects &commissions I’m working on
• 121 mentoring sessions by myself for young people / early career artists to develop their own work, networks, profile
• Submit work funded by the prize for local, regional and national cultural and community prizes and awards to raise the reputation of creative arts in the area and increase local pride and awareness
I’m Kitt, a sculptor & drag king. I call the way I work “Mess Making As Social Glue”. I’m insatiably curious about:
The social functions of art- How people connect to each other, nature, heritage & mischief through creativity. How these connections can lead us to more equitable, less environmental disastrous, ways of doing stuff. The work I make includes:
• Large scale, vibrant, interactive installations / sites for exchange / “Shrines” using recycled paper, reused fabric, old plastic shopping bags, raw clay
• Chaotic, multisensory adventures (like cooperative sandwich making, travelling recipe archives & giant origami boat races)
• Long term collaborations around ‘Emotional Heritage’- inheritance of feelings, especially, in marginalized communities I’m inspired by:
• The histories, community, activism & study of folkarts (I consider drag a queer folkart)
• The complex knot work & stories of Anglo-Saxon objects found in the North East, purported to repel bad magic My sculptural work includes luscious colours, sinuous ornamentation & rich undulating materials. I like the words ‘NeoRococo’ / ‘Neo-Folk-oco’ to describe this aesthetic. The way I work is as important as what I make. The ethical framework for my practice focuses on:
• Access
• Collaboration
• Environmental Care Recent / upcoming relevant exhibitions:
May 2025- Nov 2026 ‘Flood to Fade’, (working title) 16 month socially engaged project culminating in site-specific installation, God’s House Tower, Southampton, – exploring the inheritance of feelings in the God’s House Tower site. Jan2025- April 2026 ‘Lines of Legitimacy’ 16 month socially engaged project and site-specific installation, Hartlepool Art Gallery, – researching LGBTQIA+ histories of Hartlepool May- Sept 2025 ‘Stottie Exchange’, site-specific food and architecture rituals Documenting Emotional Heritages of east Durham communities, taking inspiration from the Gordon Matta Clark archive. Co-commissioned by Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark, USA and Now More Nowt, UK June 2024 ongoing, ‘sustain’ touring site responsive installation creating space for contemplation of Emotional Heritage : programmed as part of ‘Handmaids Tale’, Gallerie Du Nord (Amsterdam), ‘Queer Bloomsbury’, Charleston Trust, (Sussex), ‘MOTHEROTHER’ BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art (Gateshead) and TIMBER Festival (Leicestershire)
2024 Historic England Everyday Heritage Grant- working class histories of Drag in Newcastle
2023-24 ACE Project Grant Drag Declares Emergency
2023 VAMHN Research Network Bursary
2023 Without Walls professional development Bursary
2022-23 ACE Project Grant Justice Récitations
2021-22 Arts & Heritage “Meeting Point 4” Award
2020-21 ACE R&D Project Grant for “enSHRINE”
2020 Axisweb Research Award
2019 “Commission for Exchange Research Bursary”, Headway Arts
2019 “Making Bursary”, Bowes Centre for Art, Craft and Design
2018 “Queer Itch Bursary”, Curious Arts
2017-18 “Seedbed Fund” (for Making Manifesto)
2017 “Royal Society of Chemistry” art engagement bursary
2021- on founding member of ‘kin collective’ Disabled artist led art rabble, NECA winner “ Best Newcomer” 2022
2019-2022 co-founder and co-lead Social Art Network(SAN) North East. SAN is a UK based group of practitioners building agency for the field of social practice through 10 national hubs https://www.socialartnetwork.org/
2019 founding member of Disconsortia disabled artist led consortium, supporting and commissioning disabled artists https://www.disconsortia.co.uk/
2018- on running “Social Practice Surgery” providing “surgeries” advice/support/mentoring for socially engaged artists and organisations that work with them https://www.lladykitt.com/blank
2017-2020 co-founder of Nasty Women North East, Newcastle based group part of international art activism movement Nasty Women (projects include co-convening the 1st Nasty Women International Art Prize in 2018 and the founding Nasty Women Residency programme) https://www.nastywomennortheast.com/
Museum of Hartlepool (2025-6, site specific installation at Hartlepool Gallery)
Durham University (2023-4, socially engaged project ‘Craftivist Recipe Archive’ and installation at Durham Castle’
Brighton University (2022,“Reaching Out” Sculpture, Brighton Centre of Contemporary Art)
Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art (2021, limited edition print and public art work – flag)
Warwickshire Country Records Office 2021-22 (socially engaged project and paper sculpture installation)
Durham University 2020-21 (socially engaged project and paper sculpture installation)
Newcastle University 2020-2021 (Spaces of Consent, participatory digital artwork)
Chisenhale Studios, London (2020 “Enter, perused by a bear”, participatory performance)
The Tetley Leeds 2020 (2020: “#GenderPayGapRealness”, participatory performance)
Atlanta Contemporary (USA) 2019, (textiles based artwork “non-binary ruler”)
Bowes Museum 2019 (Untitled 10, socially engaged project and paper sculpture installation)
School of the Damned 2024-5
Constellations 2020-21 (UP Projects and Flat Time House)
Email: lady_kitt@lladykitt.com
Address: 5 Tosson Terrace, Newcastle upon Tyne, Tyne And Wear, NE6 5LX, GB
Local Authority: Newcastle City Council
