Concepts - Talks with an array of artists and creatives about their process, business practices, and journeys in terms of art and creativity. Assessment will be in the form of an ACE proposal which conceptually backs up your project in Praxis. Presentation (20%) with essay to go into more detail about project, funding, ideas, etc...

Make something out of nothing. One hour. Go.

While playing around and grabbing crap from the props cupboards, we began to find things that made interesting noises such as the typewriter, the bed frame, a broken mop handle on a table leg... We were just making noise, and then Gracy and Meg started throwing this massive disco ball around to the clanging. Harry was sampling and creating noises while I was moving the lights around, and we settled on pink. I still don't know how we got onto the subject of pigs but Harry sampled Meg and Rowan oinking, which led to a weird Animal Farm slash ACAB slash murder-y romance-esque performance from everyone. Rowan had a mannequin that she was dragging around, I was clattering away, Meg and Gracy were playing catch.. It was chaos but it was so so fun!

Some of the feedback we got:

• Time

• Duration as a playground

• The past is the future

• Rowan's weird love affair with the doll... Intriguing.

• Sci-fi and mechanical - dystopic

• Cohesive and connected

• Factory-like

• Immersion of task-based theatre

• No concern for meaning

• Self-reflective of today's world

While I didn't feel like this session was something I benefited from, it was still interesting to learn about Alex's career and current business strategies!

Like flies to dead things,

student landlords thrive

in clean white offices,

selling mouldy greyscale dives

Eight hundred pounds per month,

Six beds, one bath,

and a tiny lounge-kitchen

with mice in the gaff.

Report any problems

on our super simple app!

Oh your ceiling is caving in?

Sorry about that.

We'll send someone 'round

between four and four-o-one,

with a lick of paint and gaffer tape.

Look at that! Job done.

We had found an old Overhead Projector and wanted to use it to create the visuals. We gathered some twigs and leaves to make a house, and I drew a simplistic house on a piece of clear plastic to layer over it. I gently removed each piece of wood from the picture and slowly removed the image afterwards. I'm sad that we didn't get a video!

I had traced a few scenes from the documentary, including one where the biohazard team are cleaning her flat up for the next tenants. I found this image to be quite striking and did some freewriting about the flat. I then used this freewriting in the session to create a sound piece with Harry, which was further developed after Sharon encouraged Meg and me to work together. We elected to become the biohazard cleaners, inspired by the image and the idea of satisfying rug cleaning videos washing away the memories and dirt. We created a durational piece, emphasising the big picture with Meg's use of larger tools versus the small details with my use of a toothbrush.

It was really enjoyable to collaborate with Meg, her ideas are fantastic and I hope we can work together on something in the future.

Okay, we didn't just make soup.. We had a session based on GobSquad's performance Handle With Care, which is about community cooking and growing together.

We had some lovely discussions with the MA Arts Health and Wellbeing cohort about what art means to us, our practices and their practices, and how they're finding their degree so far.. All the while preparing ingredients for the soup! It was a very warm and casual environment, but we also had some in-depth discussions about our feelings, emotional and physical health, and what they both mean to us. It was fascinating to get to know everyone more. Afterwards, we danced and laughed and chatted.

From this freewriting, we partnered up and began to develop some art from it. Myself and Meg were together. We read our pieces back to each other and then decided to draw things based on our writing (inspired by my projections from my project). Since our freewriting was so similar, we read both out and showed our art on the projector when appropriate!

Rowan and Caitlin did an exercise that I later took inspiration from where they gave each other words based on their writing and drew how they felt upon reading/hearing the word. For example, Caitlin wrote 'crossroads' and Rowan drew a post with signs going in different directions. Rowan wrote 'tree' and Caitlin drew a forest.

Kay and Harry worked together as well. Harry scored Kay's freewriting, where she spoke a lot about self-confidence and self-assurance. On a day when we all felt so disheartened about the future of The Quad and the Arts at Marjon, it was reaffirming to hear someone talk so positively about themselves.

I love working on my own, but it's also important that I am able to step back and realise when I've gotten too attached to what I've made. Art, for me, is about creating something personal yet relatable and meaningful.

This project has really sparked something in me where I feel so motivated to continue with it after university, which is why I have put myself forward to partake in a performance festival with the University of Plymouth - MayFest 2024.

The one I am showing in this photograph is of Anubis, an ancient Egyptian God of the human body after death. It is believed that he was the inventor of embalming and mummification and that he was by their loved ones' sides throughout their passing and journey to the afterlife.

I've been listening to and reading this book by death practitioner Caitlin Doughty called Smoke Gets In Your Eyes & Other Lessons from the Crematory, which I highly recommend if you have a morbid fascination with this kind of thing!

Her work has been inspiring throughout this journey and I take comfort in knowing that there are people in the death industry who are of a similar mindset to me in terms of what I want to do with my body after death, and that it's likely these wishes will be accounted for or granted.

I read this freewriting, as well as some other pieces I had written previously, with Harry accompanying me with music. It was nice to have someone improvising sound over my words, but I'm not sure it fit the tone I was going for. Because of this, I was unable to do my projections at the same time, though this meant I was able to get feedback on just the writing.

This session pushed me to confirm my place in the MayFest 2024 festival.

I also showed some of the images I had been working on, which have since been scrapped for being too on the nose. (Joyce's body outline, worms in the ground, rats, etc)

By combing these three pieces, I've been able to start to piece together a story about grief which is reflective of my journey and experiences with grief throughout my life. Having spoken to others, it feels reflective of their processes too.

I like the idea of my piece resonating with people, even if it's just a little sentence that makes someone feel connected and seen. I'd like the audience to recognise that grief is non-linear and that we are able to forge our own path through death and how we deal with it.

The thing about grief is that life gets in the way of processing it, but that's part of the process too. Learning to move on but look back fondly is important, and I feel as if I can help people understand this better with my work.

Being able to explain the reasoning behind my work is something I find exciting, and I enjoy it a lot. I love being able to share my process with people and I highly encourage people to magpie it, as it's how we all get to where we are as artists! Nothing is original!

The night before, I had watched a documentary called 'The Bridge' which is about the Golden Gate Bridge in Chicago, the number one suicide spot in the world. Below are the notes I took during the documentary.