I applied to Arts Council England for a Developing Your Creative Practice grant mid 2025. It was unsuccessful.
Undeterred, I resubmitted it under the project grant scheme. I was notified of being successful just before Christmas 2025.
Practicing Creative Fugitivity is its name, and it involves researching fugitive practice. It also involves reading in community Fugitive Feminism by Akwugo Emejulu.
A study circle of women of the global majority.
When did you first learn that you were a non-human?
The question that opens the first chapter of the text Fugitive Feminism.
A question that hits me in my gut with its open, blatant honesty and curiosity.
A question which niggles at a truth that I’ve not wanted to face up to as it would mean that I’ve spent a lifetime trying to demonstrate, prove, live up to an unattainable category of being human.
Human as a category was never created to include someone like me within it.
Human = Whiteness
Human v Non-Human
You can’t have the light without the dark.
All constructs to create hierarchies. A hierarchy where white, EuroAmerican, able bodied, middle class, cis-gendered, college educated and suburban men reign supreme. Superior.
Conceptual Other. No Humans Involved. The Lack of the Human.
Black women. Outside. Out Outside.
Our exclusion determines the borders/ boundaries of the human.
But consider this …
If Black women were free, it would mean that everyone else would have to be free since our freedom would necessitate the destruction of all systems of oppression.
Combahee River Collective
Where the excitement lies for me and others, is once we realise that Black women cannot be human, then with the support of this book in community, let’s consider what if ‘human’ cannot and should not be reclaimed?
Speculate. Speculation. Speculative.
How might we divest from the human?
That the non-human Other actually decentres the human. Move beyond human to something otherwise.
Something else.
Becoming ( something else).
Thinking of how to be/ how to live beyond the binary of human v non-human could produce the means of improving our community/society/our planet.
Centring the human ( v non-human/ othering all else) has got us into the shit we’re facing now in terms of ecological disaster.
Finding a way to decentre the human, divest from what this concept / construction means and how it operates has to be the way forward.
Fugitive Feminism is the doorway into another way of being. A portal into an alternative world built upon the Black Feminist politics of liberation.
The path ahead is not clear or defined. It’s slippery and ambiguous. It’s experiential and experimental. Yet full of possibilities. Caring not harmful possibilities.
Speculative. Suggestive. Spacious.
And it starts and continues with the act of refusal. Refusal of the way things are right now.
Refusal of being defined by others to fit into their definition of humanity ( whiteness).
Refusal of being extracted and exploited for the benefits of a few.
Refusal of being non-human.
Refusal of being outside of humanity.
Refusal of the whole concept of human/whiteness/ fascist.
Refusal of these limitations when i, we, i and i can be something else beyond humans.
I go to my local probably about once a week if not more. I was brought up next to a library, in Bradford and in Newburn. They were places I could go to for some sense of freedom and adventure.
The librarians knew me and would recommend books to me and events. They wouldn’t rush me, I was welcome to stay as long as I wanted.
Today, I love to pop in to see the book sales at my local libraries. As I have a few on my doorstep now. I flit between them, collecting worn and torn books that I repurpose.
I was brought up to know it was ‘wrong’ to write in books. They were sacred in our home. Probably because we were poor and if we bought books, usually from the indoor market in town, we knew it was money we couldn’t afford to spend on books. But my parents spent it anyway, as they valued books, learning and education. It was our way out of poverty.
I wonder what they would say now, if they saw what I did to books?
10p is all I pay for big, colourful children’s books, withdrawn from library stock. I have to feel the paper first though before I buy them. Even if only 10p, too shiny the page and the paint won’t grip it as well. The paint just swirls around and doesn’t stick.
I like my pages rough and matt finished. Ready to absorb whatever I put down on it.
This sketchbook was my side hustle for the last month. Side hustle to my main creative sketchbook. Here I just lay down colour and see what happens.
I like when what’s underneath the paint bleeds through. I like when the different layers of paint and pencil and pen bleeds through to the surface too.
It’s like a palimpsest. The marks beneath is the feeling I’m after. The haunting, the trace, the evidence of time and the passage of time. The archive is present now.
Yesterday marked 50 days of my creative sketchbook practice. 50 days of consistently turning up to the page to play and experiment.
What I’m learning is that I can trust myself to turn up for myself. I’m learning that my practice muscles can be strengthened. I’m learning that I love creating colour fields. It like what I create with visual journaling but different.
Here with these colour fields, there’s layers built up and then stripped back. Marked into. Scratched away to leave textures I like to see and feel. This practice is definitely expanding my palimpsest exploration and obsession.
I’m learning that I want this my creativity to be the main focus of my day and everything else is the add on, not the priority. Not the main meal. My creativity is my life source/force.
I’m practicing taking my creative sketchbook practice into my life. The attitudes, the risk-taking, the consistency, the trust in self and my art-making, these values and practices I’m carrying with me throughout my day, no matter who I come into contact with.
This creative sketchbook practice keeps me centred and focused on my feelings of joy and abundance. This practice keeps me present and checked in with myself, moment to moment.
On top of my visual journaling practice, this safe space of play and to {BE} me, is enough. Is more than enough to fill my day with bliss and connection. A practice that I’m finding opens up doors inside and outside of me, for me and others.
I got out earlier than expected from my gig today. So I used the time to get to the library and pick up a book I’d spied
Black Panther: The Revolutionary Art of Emory Douglas.
I’ve seen the posters created by Emory Douglas as part of exhibitions such as in the Soul of the Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power (2017), but never before have I seen his extensive artwork all together.
This monograph edited and introduced by Sam Durant is a gem.
Along with my exploration of Paul Amos Kennedy Jr. last year (and continuing into this year too) and this dive into the artworks of Douglas gets me thinking that I might be feeling the need to create some social justice/ black power artworks myself.
Who knows. My interest has been caught and this book is feeding me with inspiration to the max.
While completing my visual journaling this morning, at my old wooden table moved in front of my bedroom bay window looking out onto my rainy, foggy street, I had the thought that I’ve lived most of my life already.
This year I’ll turn 55 in October and it just struck me how the majority of my life/ living is behind me.
Then it got me thinking about how many years do I have left. I played with the idea of thinking, what if I’m just reaching the mid-point of my life? What if I have another 55 years of living ahead of me?
How would I feel about that? What would I need to do now to make that happen? Do I want to live to 110 years?
It has been done. It can be done even though those ‘blue zones’ where the majority ofcentenarians live are shrinking.
I feel I’d have to change a few habits first to give it a good shot at living until 110.
I know I could have been looking after my body better up until this point. But it’s never too late right, to start using food as medicine and to stop punishing my body for being black fat and ageing.
There’s still time right? There’s still a lot of twists and turns and bumps in this road left of this journey, right?
Visual journaling in community is always time well spent.
Even if it’s their first rodeo, to witness the freedom, the mess, the expansion as paint meets paper meets card. Bliss. Magic. A gift.
Walking out with their own visual journals clutched close to their chests, promising to carry on the practice themselves, now they’ve got the power within their hands, hearts and soul.
A job well done any time the visual journaling practice is passed on.
I do believe it makes us better human beings. Better to each other and ourselves. Softer, caring and well-nourished.
A couple of days ago, I completed the 30 day sketchbook challenge, successfully. Not a day missed.
I’m really proud of this achievement as it proves to myself that I can turn up for my art-making consistently. That I can use my sketchbook as a place of play and wonder. A place to take risks, safely.
The importance I place on the creative sketchbook practice is immense but not to the point of paralysing myself and then not creating out of fear of failure.
The plan is to continue the practice. And I have been turning up each day since. I’ve been using my own prompts, following my curiosity, leaning into my own style. Listening to my voice.
The original course came with an additional 30 prompts. So I’ll start them when I run out of my own ideas. Then I can also restart the original course again and then explore a comparison between the creations and reflections of the first round with the second.
This is definitely, at the point, turning into an 100 days project, an just saying that as another milestone to meet and to keep myself accountable.
And again, I’ll keep the pages for my eyes only, not ready or even wanting/needing to share the pages I create or to move onto larger, external canvas or panels.
I do not feel the need or the call to create any formal work as yet or share. I’m happy exploring within my sketchbook and following where that takes me within the pages.
I realise that has been where I’ve gone wrong in the past. Skipping the sketchbook phase which I’m thinking is simply like the drafting stage of writing. The loose, trial and error phase, where we’re just playing. I’ve been missing out this phase and going straight to the big stuff, the art put into the world. The exhibitions, the judgments and appreciations.
And what I’ve produced mainly carried little meaning for me or messages for the viewer. I feel that it’s fallen flat and felt like a void. And I think this is because I wasn’t sure of my voice, my style, my meanings and messages.
This is what I’m taking away from this sketchbook practice now. And I’m so enjoying the process and I’m open to what surfaces. But I’m also patient and loyal in terms of showing up and doing the work. I trust all will become clear and strong and full in the process.
I’ll tell you the truth, I heard about Keith Porter Jr. 1 day ago.
Keith Porter Jr., a 43 year old father of two girls. He loves fishing and spending time with his family. Laughing.
Keith fundraised for battered women’s shelters, supported street artists, advocated for health services. With real family and friends, real daughters and a real presence in his community, Keith Porter Jr. is no longer with us.
Rest in Power Keith.
On New Year’s Eve, in Northridge, Los Angeles, Keith was seeing in the new year with family and friends in his neighbourhood. Tradition was to fire a gun into the air in celebration.
An off duty ICE agent, heard the shots, and inserted himself into the situation. A situation he shouldn’t have been in as an ICE agent is supposedly trained in compliance, transportation, custody paperwork. Immigration.
ICE is not designed or trained in community engagement responses. community law enforcement.
It is argued that after a short verbal exchange, the ICE agent shot and killed Keith.
Official reports from federal agencies say the ICE agent was responding to an ‘active shooter situation’. The department of homeland security says Porter fired at the agent before he was killed (in cold blood).
Watch how they change the narrative. Remember Keith Porter Jr. the man laughing with his family, caring and empathetic will become the monster who deserves to be dead.
Family and community advocates dispute this claim, stating that there is no independent released video evidence showing Keith Porter Jr. posed an imminent threat or fired at the agent.
Rather than lethal force, this off duty ICE agent should have done his citizen’s duty and called local Police as this was not an immigration issue. This was not his jurisdiction, his authority.
Keith Porter Jr. became an imminent threat only when this ICE agent turned up.
ICE has no community engagement training. They might have authority but not in the community, they don’t have the judgement and empathy to be on the streets. But obviously this ICE agent, off duty, thought otherwise.
Nearly two weeks ago Keith Porter Jr. was shot and killed. And people, the average person, even those online are just starting to find out about this murder. Only after Renee Good’s cold bloodied murder.
There is selective outrage in America. As I wrote last week, I have no issue with the response to Renee Good – that’s how we should be respond in this situation.
But
#SayHisName
Keith Porter Jr.
His family had been struggling to get his story, his unlawful killing into the current media cycle. This just compounds what I’ve been saying about the lack of visibility in mainstream media of black people being unlawfully killed by law enforcement.
Be honest have you heard of Keith Porter Jr? But you’ve heard of Renee Good?
There are arguments we can put in place here . You might not have heard his name, Keith Porter Jr. because he was killed by an off duty ICE agent not on duty with a large crowd there. Might be because there’s little video evidence circulating around. But the main reason is because Keith Porter Jr. was a black man.
This is part of the reason for not using #SayHerName for Renee Good.
No one’s even heard of Keith Porter Jr. No national attention for his murder but within 24 hours everybody knew Renee Good’s name.
This is the very reason #SayHerName was created for the invisible black women and black men who are causalities of the state, of state terror.
And it’s only now that white people are waking up to this terror when black people have been enduring if for centuries. This is why I argue to consider the language used and to give credit and recognition for where it originated, why it was created in the first place.
And yet the same stories are being used to justify the unlawful killings of Renee Good and Keith Porter Jr. They were both pointing weapons at ICE agents, posed a threat and had to be eliminated.
I say
2 different people
2 different cities
but the same structural problem.
Later down the line this might get read as the one bad apple or one bad moment. But this is clearly a system which once hidden no longer neededs to remain hidden.
A system that is built without limits or accountability.
De facto special powers bestowed by the Trump administration on ICE that seem to supersede police powers. ICE is now inserting itself into everyday life and every day neighbourhoods. And as we are witnessing this very presence is killing people. Killing more and more people who weren’t even their targets.
But that no longer seems to matter.
As I’ve said before and I’ll say again, I don’t have an issue with the response to Renee Good – that’s how we should be responding in a situation like this. I just argue that the others, and there’s a long list that is growing of people who have been killed by ICE during this administration, deserve the same energy that is surrounding the murder of Renee Good.
As last time I checked, these are not animals, criminals or just talking points but human beings. Real human beings with grieving families. And this is something that gets forgotten in the media.
We need to continue to have these conversations and we need to keep fighting, on the small and large scale, against fascism near and far.
Living Wild Studios 