2023 – What a year!
2023 was a big year for me career-wise; it the first year I have been able to do full-time as a freelance creative practitioner.
I was seeing other 2023 freelance recap posts all over Instagram and wasn’t sure I’d even done enough to justify one, but then I started flicking through my calendar and camera roll and realised…I’ve done loads!
So here is a recap of my 2023:
This Year I Produced 10 poetry events and assisted the production of 2 more.
I produced 10 Out of Your Head! Poetry events in 2023, all with different themes. The themes covered included ‘Pride and Protest’, ‘A Collection of Recollections’ and ‘Love in Action’.
This year has been a big one for Out of Your Head! In general, with the average audience increasing from around 30 to over 50 per event, and the Instagram reaching nearly 800 followers!
I also assisted the production of 2 more events in my work with Poet in the City (more on this later on).
I Created and produced the Queer Joy Captured project with amazing photographer Thom Robson.
In April, Thom Robson approached me with an idea – to create, capture and share Queer joy via free photoshoots for the local Trans and Queer community. I was so excited about the project and very quickly made a logo and social media pages.
As the producer of QJC, I’m in charge of most of the organising / social media side of the project.
So far, We have shared photos from 2 solo shoots, a new kit photoshoot with the Newcastle Ravens (Queer-inclusive local rugby team) and a Halloween walk-in pay-as-you-feel day at Artful Barber (Queer owned, Queer inclusive local hairdressers/barbers).
We have so many shoots coming up in 2024 and photos from our most exciting shoot yet, soon to be uploaded.
The goal is to make even a small amount of positive change for the local queer community in such tumultuous times.
I Facilitated 54 sessions all together
I facilitated 54 different sessions this year, across 3 organisations.
I Facilitated 14 writing sessions for New Writing North’s Young Writers’ groups, including a session in Berwick, a couple in Cramlington and some in Gateshead, South Shields and Newcastle too. These sessions ranged in practice from protest poetry to monologues to world building.
I Facilitated 16 event production sessions for Poet in the City’s Producers Programme. These sessions were built around the producer participants creating their own event at the end of the programme, celebrating the West End of Newcastle. I, as the facilitator, alongside the Producer of the programme, Donald Jenkins, walked the participants through how to make an event happen, step by step.
They assisted in the production of Born Lippy’s Newcastle Poetry Festival Open Mic, booking Becksy Becks and Zia Ahmed to perform as special guests and assisting on the night.
Their final event was a success. It was called West-Start, West-Middle, West-End, and included poetry from Tahmina Ali, a group performance from students of Excelsior Academy working with New Writing North and music from Black Moss.
I facilitated arts and crafts, poetry, music sessions and more, 24 times with Curious Arts in 2023.
10 of these sessions were youth groups – I have worked with the Newcastle Queer Youth Arts Group, Newcastle Queer Youth Music Group and Middlesborough Queer Youth Arts Group this year, leading activities ranging from spoken word poetry and lino printing to rehearsing songs for a Northern Pride performance.
12 of these sessions were all-day events in the form of Mini Pride days, where a team of us travel to a venue across the North and deliver a day of arts and crafts and fun for young families. During these days, I facilitated 2 main activities : ‘Proud People’ making and crown making. I also, on 4 occasions, collected lines of poetry from the families and staff of events and turned it into a big group poem to celebrate the day. Some of which can be found here.
I also facilitated on 2 Creative Youth Challenge days, which are for older young people and consist of different sessions or activities led by multiple facilitators. 1 of these was at the TCR Hub in Barnard Castle, where I facilitated a group poem workshop, and the other was in Seaham, where we collected sea glass, discussed Queer utopias, created art and mixed with different youth groups from the North-East.
I won a poetry slam and performed a poetry set at Born Lippy
I took part in a poetry slam at a Born Lippy event, produced by Donald Jenkins, earlier this year, and won. The prize was a paid poetry set at a following Born Lippy event.
The set I performed was in April and was part of the Born Lippy pop-up event at Magic Hat cafe. I was on the line-up alongside some really amazing talent including Kema Kay and Kate Fox, and performed poetry about nostalgia, chronic pain, politics and… how much I hate oranges!
I Performed a poetry set at Born Lippy’s second Palestine Aid fundraiser
The current genocide in Palstine has been on a lot of our minds this year. It seems that nobody in power is doing anything about it, and so Donald Jenkins produced 2 fundraisers – the event I performed at had performances from artists such as Ken Masters and Nicholas Cairns to raise money for action (with Shut Down Rafael Newcastle) and Aid going straight into Palestine.
Performed a poetry set for Northern Pride
This year, Curious Arts asked me to perform a set on their stage at Northern pride! The weather was, however, not on our side, so the set was done as an online livestream, but it was such a wonderful opportunity and I got to perform my poetry for some of the people I’ve been working with for 3 years now at Curious for the first time!
I Had my short play ‘Bombing’ performed at Durham Fringe with ‘’Best of’ Four New Plays’ and Squiggle Productions
In July, Squiggle Productions took ‘‘Best of’ Four New Plays’ to Durham Fringe, and selected my short play, ‘Bombing’ (previously produced by them in 2022), to be featured in the line-up. The play was directed by Rachel Stockdale and featured actors Elijah Young and Ben Gettins.
I Judged the Customs House ‘Terry Kelly Poetry Prize’
I was asked to judge the Terry Kelly Poetry Prize in 2023, which was really exciting for me as I have entered and was shortlisted for the prize twice myself previously. I judged alongside Tahmina Ali, Donald Jenkins and Tom Kelly, and got to work with Quinn Clark, who was the producer of the competition. We judged all entries and chose winners for each category, as well as some highly commended entries.
I was commissioned for the Curious Arts Trans joy commissions and illustrated my ‘Nowt as Queer as Folk’ postcard
Curious Arts commissioned me to create an illustration to be turned into a postcard, along with 7 other artists. The idea was that, amongst a challenging climate for our trans and non-binary communities, a moment of joy is needed, so artists were commissioned to create a visual representation of Trans Joy that spread happiness, hope and positivity.
My art is called ‘Nowt as Queer as Folk’, playing on the Geordie phrase that I heard a lot as a kid (and some of you probably did too) – it was always meant to mean strange/weird and I’ve found a fondness to the phrase over the last year or so, so it’s like a reclamation. The postcard, and other pieces of art from the commission, can be bought here.
I was commissioned to create a poetry video for the Apples and Snakes 40 Voices commission
I was commissioned to create a one-minute poetry video about the North by Apples and Snakes, the national board for spoken word poetry, as part of their 40 year celebrations. The commission included attending some online sessions with successful industry professionals in poetry and filmmaking, and I worked under the Northern branch, organised by Young Identity.
The video will be coming out some time after mid-January alongside 39 others, all celebrating ‘home’, wherever that may and whatever that might mean.
I was granted a DYCP from the Arts Council to work on my poetry practice
This year, I applied for a much needed year to focus on my writing, and received a Develop Your Creative Practice (DYCP) grant from the Arts Council.
This funding has (and will continue to) allow me to access so much that I have needed to help in my journey including mentoring and access support and equipment.
The DYCP has allowed me to prioritise my creative practice rather than constantly taking on any and all work to pay the bills.
Part of me thought I’d never get something like this, I’d had so many project rejections just before I was offered the funding, and was questioning whether I could make freelancing work for me long-term. When I received the offer letter, I had never, in my life, felt such relief
I have to thank Kym Deyn for all of their help with the application process, and for agreeing to be my mentor over the course of the project.
Performed at Happy New Quee-Year 2024-D
I ended 2023 doing what I loved, sharing my words. I was on the bill of Mack Sproates and Rhianne Bowes’ ‘Happy New Quee-year 2024-D’ at Alphabetti Theatre. I performed alongside Shevek Fodor, Holly Readshaw and Vick the Prick, and of course Mack and Rhianne, to a sold-out audience.
I celebrated the turning of the year surrounded by wonderful people- However, more than ever this year I’m aware that it’s a privilege to be celebrating new years, or anything at all, when there’s such awful things happening in this country and the world – this country has record breaking levels of poverty, there are constant attacks on people’s rights and, in the wider world (though sanctioned and supported by our government) there is a literal genocide happening right now; I wanted to acknowledge both hope and horror in my set.
I performed a bucket-list poem, which has these ending lines:
“I want to write about war and genocide like its a thing off the past.
I want to write about peace like I know it will last.
I want to write about the future like it’s a given that remains.
I want to write about my words like they have a currency, made up in change.
I want to write about family.
I want to write about love.
I want to write about power redistributed
to those below from those above.
I want to write about power
Like its only electrical.
I want to write about blood.
like it’s only ever ventricle.
I want to write about freedom.
I want to write about rights.
I want to write about action, now
By protest and by strike.
I want to write about everything,
Or maybe nothing at all.
I want to write because I can write,
not because I’m documenting the fall.”
I ended my 2023 with this sentiment, and I wish to end this blog post the same way – I write because I hope, even in some small way, my words can have “currency, made up in change”.