ROSIE PRIEST

I would describe my early life as “chaotic and complicated”, to borrow a term a young person I was working with once used. I was queer and neurodivergent growing up in a single-parent hippy household with very little money in rural Cumbria. But my childhood was filled with art and creativity. My happiest memories were at my grandparents in Bolton, with grandpa who stepped in to care for me when Cumbrian life was too chaotic or too complicated. He had two children, adopted two more, and fostered many others. Both of my grandparents had worked in children’s services trying to find those kids with complicated and chaotic lives homes. Their generosity, kindness and patience with young people it seems impossible to be patient with, would spur me on to work with young people many years later.

My childhood encouraged me to explore art, and I gained an MA (hons) in History of Art from the University of Glasgow in 2009. I fell in love with exploring other people’s worlds and voices through their art and for the first time I reflected on queerness and my place in a queer community. There is something incredible about exploring a world you want to be part of through art. And because of this, throughout university I began to support other people to create, make and explore as a freelance facilitator at arts organisations across Glasgow.

Glasgow gave me a love of live music, my chosen family and tinnitus from working late nights at the bar Nice ‘n’ Sleazy for half a decade. I picked up a lot of odd jobs in the arts during my Glasgow life; lugging inks and screens in a screen-printing workshop, illustrating copywriters flyers, cataloguing private art collections, giving public tours of galleries but the thing I loved the most was facilitating and exploring ways of making with other people.

I kept up the art facilitation when I moved to Vancouver for two years and worked at the Vancouver Art Gallery as a freelance artist. I fell in love with swimming in the sea, mountain walks and bear spotting whilst there.

When I came back to the UK I wanted to explore how to take my work supporting other peoples’ stories through art further, so I went back to university. I received an MA in Arts, Festival and Cultural Management and explored concepts of the social impacts of the arts within my dissertation, and then an MSc in Applied Social Research where I created an analysis of arts organisations policies and practices, focussing on their work with people typically absent from the arts. At the same time, I freelanced and worked at several organisations like the Edinburgh Art Festival and The Fruitmarket Gallery. For a few years I led on the creative learning approaches within Stellar Quines Theatre Company, offering a feminist perspective to my creative practices and for a few more I worked as Community Development Officer for The National Galleries of Scotland. I set up several projects with organisations and people typically absent from the arts, and my work became increasingly focussed on working with under-supported young people to share and support their stories. These few years really guided me in developing ideas about how I want to work, and who I want to work with.

Which brings me to where I am now. I am writing up my PhD thesis which explores collaborative visual art projects impacts on young people, whilst having the incredible opportunity to visit Malmö as part of an early career research award. My research is participatory and creatively focussed. It often centres young people with chaotic and complicated lives. I am also for the first time exploring my own stories and artistic enquiries.

Having the opportunity to work with tialt to support their people-centred approach to projects is incredibly exciting, and I hope my enthusiasm for listening to and learning from peoples’ stories can complement the brilliant work tialt are doing.