Artist in residence, culture vultures, sefrou, morocco (2016-2018)

I began my residency with Culture Vultures in Sefrou, Morocco in 2016 via the Changing Lives Programme at Coventry University, UK. Founded in 2009, Culture Vultures’ mission is to celebrate and facilitate local, national and international arts and offer immersive cross-cultural experiences. Coventry University’s Changing Lives Programme often collaborates with Culture Vultures as the programme is designed to take students on 10-day cross-cultural exchange trips abroad. In 2016 Brendan StJohn (then an employee at CU) and myself took twenty students to Sefrou where we involved local communities in a wide range of artistic projects, from painting walls of Sefrou to working with disabled and displaced individuals and communities. Since then I have been returning to Morroco co continue working on Allah Is a Stranger film and photographic exhibition as part of my Communities of Archives project. My latest residency was in 2016 with filmmakers Sam Jury and Tiffany Jackson and a mixed-media artist Autumn Pearson. For more details on the outcomes of my residency, see Allah Is a Stranger and an ongoing Communities of Archives project.

I met photographer Cat Wilson, who lives between South East Coast Australia and Casablanca, Morocco, during my first visit to Sefrou. Cat began her creative life in the theatre working as a freelance director and dramaturg. In the last ten years she has shifted from live performance into video, new media and traditional alternative photography using cyanotype chemistry with hand drawn negatives.