ArtsLab

I produced and presented radio programme ArtsLab for RedShift Radio from the end of 2015 to spring 2018. At the same time, my collaborations with Sabine Kussmaul led to an interest in live performance and video work, so I began to try these things out for the first time. My paintings began to be influenced by music. My artwork began to be more considered, informed by Sabine's more academic approach to art.

In 2016, I started to assist Sabine with a monthly live art event in a small bar, Mash Guru, in Macclesfield. These events involved video projection, music performances, spoken word, and other elements in a dada-style cabaret. These led to a new experience of performing live music. I'd played a little keyboard music as a child, and always had a keyboard of some sort to compliment the music I'd written for my computer games, but I'd never seriously practiced piano playing or performed live. These events became the start of my live music performance training.

From 2017 onwards, I decided to focus the radio programme on broadcasting new audio work, created by audio artists (or any listener who wanted to create something). This made the show more creative and more popular.

I had no regular art group, so my contact with visual artists declined. Over time, the radio work, though enjoyable and in a medium I loved, began to feel isolating, more like an unpaid job than a social group.