BLINK!

Emergency Exit Arts | Ideas Test | National Tour across UK | 2019

BLINK! was the culmination of Paper Peace, a national arts and heritage programme exploring the UK’s peace history and asking how we build peace in fractured times.

As part of the Young Producers Programme, I led work on the Isle of Sheppey exploring the river and sea as routes of migration, refuge and exchange. In a county increasingly shaped by new arrivals and growing polarisation, we asked how empathy might be built through shared experience.

Drawing on research at the Huguenot Museum and Medway Archives Centre, we uncovered stories of migration through the Thames Estuary - of people who arrived by water seeking safety, opportunity and belonging. These histories resonated strongly with contemporary conversations around refugees and social cohesion in Kent.

Through workshops and public engagement, participants were invited to imagine what it means to leave home. In small groups, they built symbolic boats using objects they would choose to carry with them — the things they could not bear to leave behind. The act of making became a way to consider loss, hope, risk and responsibility.

The resulting installation formed part of BLINK’s immersive “eye” structures, presented at Beachfields, Sheerness during the town’s lantern parade and lights switch-on. Visitors journeyed through participatory artworks that invited reflection on peace-building not as abstraction, but as everyday action rooted in care and understanding.

My role included:
– Heritage research and narrative development
– Artist commissioning and creative direction
– Community facilitation
– Event production and local partnership coordination

BLINK on Sheppey became a space where histories of migration met present realities — where the sea was both boundary and bridge, and where empathy could be practised collectively.