How can creativity create positive social change?

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Lisa: 00:02
Hello, hello, welcome. We are so excited to have Carrie Reichardt here. She’s a London-based artist who uses craft as a form of protest and care. So, Carrie, share with our audience a little bit about you and your work and movement.

Carrie: 00:19
Well, hi, like I said, like you introduced me, I’m Carrie. I’m an artist. I live in London. And um, I’m probably most well known for the fact that I’ve spent the last 20 years mosaic in the outside of my house. But I actually graduated in 1991 from Leeds Polytechnic with a degree in fine art sculpture. And you know, ever since then I’ve been creating and making stuff and crafting.

Lauren: 00:48
Yeah. Um, we’d love to discuss the question how can creativity create positive social change with you? Um, I think that you could probably speak to that pretty uh openly and non-knowledgeably.

Carrie: 01:04
Yes, I mean, from a very personal point of view, um it changed it was life-changing for me because I see it as a form of art therapy. I’ve, you know, I’m quite aware of the fact that I use art and especially craft as a way of um addressing a lot of mental health problems that I’ve had over the years. That’s why I called my house the treatment rooms. I stole that from the sign of a mental hospital. It was in a mental hospital and it said treatment rooms. And I thought, yeah, I’m gonna take that and put that on my studio because I I recognized then that that was me going into therapy, and so I think because of my own life journey and because art was so instrumental in me staying alive, literally staying alive, and uh being able to deal with a lot of my own personal problems and traumas, you know, I recognised that it was a great thing to do with other people, and so essentially from when I left college, me and my best friend from college, Karen Francesca and her older brother, who who’s an artist who goes by the name of ATM Street Art, we formed a group called Living Space Arts and we became a uh a community art collective. So, I mean, that was from ’98. So if you imagine, I’ve been working for ever since. So it’s what nearly 30 years. And most of the ethos of all of my work from that point has been about trying to use art as a way of bringing around social cohesion and agency because it healed me. So I went out in the world to try and heal the world with it. I love that.

Lisa: 02:47
So art has healed you, so you’re a testimony to that.

Carrie: 02:51
Yeah, yeah. I think it can changed me from a victim to a survivor. Most definitely, most definitely, art has just been able to communicate something that I cannot communicate in words. You know, it’s you have to get to my age, which is the crone stage, you have to be in the last stage of your life. That’s why you become an elder and a wise woman. It’s not because you’re necessarily wise, it’s just because you’ve got so much experience to draw upon, and you have to be able to look back at things. You know, you really have to look back at things because what happened to me was that when I was 21, I was chased down a street, chased down an alley, and I was hit to the ground and I was sexually assaulted. And and it, you know, that moment shattered me because from that moment I stopped being a confident young woman who thought, yeah, no one’s going to tell me where to walk down the street to someone who couldn’t be in my own flat. And so it was completely traumatizing. And I tried to cut my wrists, and at that moment, I just two months later, I was starting an art foundation course, one year art foundation course, where I’d gone because I’d previously dropped out of a filmmaking course and thought I want to go back to filmmaking. And I went to do an art foundation course, but I didn’t know, but I spent an entire year doing art therapy. You know, everything I did was processing this, but I didn’t know that. I got set a project that was design a poster for uh a local adventure playground. I didn’t even know until when they do a crit. You know, at the end of the year they look at all your work, they pull it all out, they pulled out my design poster, which was on a scaffolding with men lurking in the background. Do you know what I mean? It was just you know, I really just you know, I went there to do film and uh I ended up doing sculpture. I was the only sculpture student, so I used to be in a little Victorian house that was attached to the polytechnic, and I and I just spent a term making a man attacking a woman from behind in paper mache, and then I spent six months, six weeks making a film called Ode to Love, which might as well be called Ode to Violence. Do you know what I mean? But because it was very unregulated, I think it was brilliant in a way. There was no tutor looking at me, nobody saw what I was doing. Nobody. And one of them said, I think that’s the most misogynistic thing I’ve ever seen in my life. And one of them said, Do you know what? If we had the if I had the power, I’d destroy that. And then then the other one said, We’d never allow you to make such a film in our university.

Lauren: 05:43
Yeah, wow, there’s so many layers to this.

Carrie: 05:46
And so I sat there and I just wanted to cry. I, you know, I just like sportified, and never to this day I think were they playing devil’s advocate? You know, they could have just said that to see what I would say. Yeah, because now I would argue that film. I probably wouldn’t take it anymore because my vote, my, my view of even using that material’s changed. But I would be able to articulate and say, look, I’ve just been sexually assorted, right? Processing something, I’ve made this film for six weeks, you know. But I didn’t. I sat there and froze in the same way I froze when I was assorted. Yeah. I walked out of that um at that interview, and I and I had a portfolio of some other stuff, mainly you know, weird stuff that I’d done over the last year, and tried to throw it out the train, but luckily it was an A1 and it wouldn’t fit. And I went all the way home, I was so dejected. And I went back to university, and university said, Well, it’s polytechnic, then this is pre-or universities, it’s when they put people in places where they’d be best suited, um, rather than making everything academic. But um, I went back and they said, Oh, look, you’ve got a second choice, apply to Leeds. Leeds has got this amazing um performance art and do film, experimental film. So I went back to that interview with this same little video, and uh, there was a man there called Mick Sean, and he said, Um, I said, I’m here to show this film. He said, Uh, we don’t I haven’t got the ability to show that. We stopped making films two years ago. We closed down that bit. And I instantly thought, Oh god, that’s it, that’s it, that’s my life gone. Because that’s what you think when you’re 18. I’m not going to university, it’s destroyed. And so I just said, All right, what do you do? And he said, Well, we do painting, printing, and sculpture. And because I thought I had nothing to lose, I said, All right, well, give me a bloody hammer then, and I’ll do sculpture. And and he gave me a place. I think he even gave me a place then and there. Uh, and and what I didn’t realize is that he thought I’d be devil’s advocate. Every he didn’t get on with all the other tutors, and so he brought me in as a live wire just to kind of you know make it more exciting. And so I I just went home and suddenly I was doing a degree in sculpture. You know, my whole life is happy accidents. I never people always say to me, and then a question I often get is when did you know you’re an artist? Or when you were a child, you know, when did you know it’s if there’s this moment? And I always say to people, it’s taken me 30 years to be able to say I’m an artist because I felt such an imposter. I didn’t even like stamp my own works all the last 10 years.

Lauren: 08:24
Yeah, yeah.

Carrie: 08:25
You know, for me, it’s like I I can’t I didn’t think I was an artist because I can’t draw and I can’t paint. You know, I’m not a drawer, I’m not. I now realize it’s because my brain works differently, and where some people can see imagery, I see nothing. There’s a word for it, anaphasia. They’ve you know, they give names names to these things, but I didn’t realize that it’s it’s taken me a long time to realize that I can’t remember music, I only remember music as it’s been heard. It’s why I could never do drama because I can’t remember lines. Yeah, I realize I can only rem remember three letters or three words, I can’t see a word and then write it down how to spell it. Is it dyslexia? Is it adh? Is it childhood trauma? You know, who knows? But that’s me. But it’s taken me so long to realize oh god, no wonder I was shit at English. I was dyslexic, you know. I don’t I see words differently, I don’t have an internal memory, so I can’t be hypnotized. I can’t think in my head, what does my mum look like? I don’t I’ve got no image of it, and so I never thought I was an artist because I can’t draw, right? And so I but what I was was a craft person because my mum was a fanatical knitter, fanatical. She was to knitting what I am to mosaics, and so from a very young age, in the old days, you know, if you were a bit hyperactive or a bit this or a bit odd, they gave you cross stitch, you know. I was doing needlework, you know. I’ve still got all my needlework, my I’ve still got a patchwork quilt I started when I was seven in the basement, you know. Wow, and so I naturally always did craft, and my mum learned to knit when she was four during the war in the tubes in the dark, and she learned on four needles how to do soldiers’ socks. Wow, wow, and literally died knitting. And when knitting wasn’t very popular in the 80s, my mum dedicated her life because she could afford to to going around knitting shops like John Lewis and teaching all everyone how to knit. You know, she just sat there like we’re in a women’s group and would talk, you know, you know, it’s where the dialogue comes from while you do craft, and so I think that was always in the background, but I never said, Oh, I’m an artist. I I wanted to do drama, I wanted to do film, I ended up doing uh sculpture, I ended up doing a fine art degree, I ended up doing mosaics because I couldn’t do my sculptures, which were all resin-based and really nasty materials to work with because I was working from home and I just had a baby. I couldn’t really keep making resin and hard-killing myself in a really small room. My partner designed a garden with a sunken bit and said, Oh, why don’t you do a mosaic? And so it, you know, everything I ever did was just accidental. But now when I look back at my self, I go, of course, that was all art therapy, you know. Yeah, this happened, you know. I I I had problems with being an artist because I have an internal dialogue that says you’re shit all the time. Right. Yeah, not an artist, you’re crap. You know, I’d when I went left my fine art course. I originally used to try and cast people for a living, but I don’t really like touching people, I don’t really like being in that situation. I found it all quite stressful, but you know, I wouldn’t be able to, there weren’t diagnoses, you didn’t go, oh yeah, I’m this, so it’s just like, oh, I’ve got to do this, and I don’t really like doing it. But you know, so it’s like all these little accidents that happened along the way, and and that’s you know, but in moments of true darkness where you know I was self-harming, I’d cut my wrists, I’ve OD’d. When in those true, true dark moments is when I made art or people around me helped me make art, and I just think being able to step outside of a situation to express it in some way when I haven’t got the vision the the voice to express it, you know, it saved me, literally saved my life. Beautiful, yeah. Yeah, I’m just gonna shut the door because it’s my dog’s opened it and my totally my dog likes to you know sometimes.

Lauren: 12:49
I think that um I think it’s really interesting to me all of the layers that you just uncovered, which is I think most people’s experience, because Lisa and I went to the same um school to get our masters, and my experience was very similar to yours walking into a room where people were critiquing my work that was extremely personal, and I didn’t know it at the time that it was like so so deeply ingrained in myself, and they were just like, Well, this is wrong because it’s technically not correct, and I I couldn’t, I I had no interest in that kind of conversation, and it took me a really long time to realize it’s because that’s not what it interests me in art. I don’t care how well you can um paint a painting or take a photograph, I want to know how it makes you feel. And I think that there are almost like two different, I mean, I’m sure there’s several different types of artists, but that’s a very big thing. No, I know.

Carrie: 13:48
I mean, I think it’s just there is you’re gonna get the academics, you’re gonna get the people. That was the same with pottery, you know. Grayson Perry is a you know one of the greatest potters in England, but go on a pottery course and half the tutors will say, He can’t even make a pot, you know, it’s not very good, you know. You know, that that but you know, definitely there are people who was doing one thing, but for me, and for obviously you and a lot a lot of artists who understand the therapeutic value in art, for me, it’s all about intent. Yeah, I’ve always been interested in outsider art. People always say, Oh, you’re an outsider artist. I’m like, I’m not, I’m trained, trust me. I’ve been going to college for years and years and years, but I have an outsider kind of way of working, which is all the time as a way of therapizing myself. But my interest was always artist’s intent. Why did you make it? And that’s why I always like art from institutions, I like art from prisons, I like art that’s conveying something, I like art that’s meant to be a way of communicating where they where communication is no other way for it. But I think college, I mean, I left college thinking I would never do art again. I hated my college, I hated it, you know. They told me that my work I went to college from 90, my degree was from essentially 90. No, what am I talking about? It’s from 88 to 91, and I did nearly a year of that in Montclair State University in New Jersey, and so um, so yeah, my degree was then. My course had just been closed down a few years previously, the whole department for sex for degrees, and it’d be really outrageous. So by the time I got there, they were like very like didn’t want anything that was controversial, Johnson. They would really try and put that, you know, and so I arrived there and I was absolutely like blown away by the gorilla girls, uh-huh. You know, the gorilla girls and Judy Chicago and all of this feminist art. And then I was introduced to Edward Keenholz. And actually, I think one of the more things that resonated with me was when I left my school, basically, I left school at 16, hating it, thinking it was boring, and I went and did a course called Films, English, Drama and Art Studies, which was a very weird two-year course where you did theatre design, theatre studies, film studies, English and drama and music appreciation. But I went from being bored to deaf to suddenly being introduced to Arto, Antonio Arto, the theatre of cruelty, the theater, the idea that sometimes you had to shock the nation, and this was all super exciting to me. And so suddenly I was in the world of film noir and and um Hitchcock women in distress films. But you know, I was such a little mind from 16 to 18. It was all like, wow, suddenly I’m interested in this and I’m making films and I’m doing drama, but then I went on what by the time I went to do the university, which is a few years later, the feminist that was the thing that caught my, you know, you know, that that spoke to me. But I had tutors that literally said to me, you know, it’s all been done before. I actually named all my pieces, my name, and something that a tutor had said about it. Oh, you must be a feminist, then it’s just another woman going on about her womb, you know. I literally had it because you know, you know, they literally come round and say, don’t do that, that’s kids. And I was like, you know, it’s really difficult because your tutors are your tutors, they’re gonna grade you. Yeah, the power dynamics is huge. But you’re if you’re 18, 19, 21, a female, you’ve only just left one form of patriarchy, or you’re you know, my father was mad, you know. I got to university or college, I should say, and you’re just in this other world, but you don’t understand any of that at the time, and I always said to them, I you know, now if they said to me it’s all been done before, I go, but not by me. I need to do it, and I’ll have my own way of doing it because I feel a lot now. I’m so much older and I often go back into universities, or I go back because someone wants, you know, there’s a be a student that says, Oh, you know, can we listen? And I go and I see all their work. It’s terrible because I think, oh my god, I did that. I have seen it all before, but you can understand that that’s part of their process, yeah. You know, part of going about learning about your body or processing this or doing things, but you know, I don’t think the amount of power that a tutor has at that time that I don’t think they realize it’s so crushing. I can remember when the the the when I put up my degree show, I felt like I was standing naked in that room. I thought, oh my god, everyone’s gonna know I’ve had an abortion, everybody’s gonna know because this work tackles abortion. And I I felt it, I’ve you know, uh but actually it was a learning lesson because I realized that they didn’t. People just look at it and they think differently about it, and it’s not, but you know, you know that like you’re saying, it’s like that it’s feeling naked because it’s so expressive, it means so much to you. Yeah, I think that’s a you know, uh uh it’s not what all students feel because some of them will be put in abstract paintings and love it, you know. But there’ll be a group of artists who will probably spend a whole lifetime using art in a therapeutic way and understand how magical it is. Yeah.

Lisa: 19:22
It’s amazing what you’re what’s that quote? An um artist living out loud. Remember that quote? Have you heard that? Something something so that’s what it that’s what I’m feeling. It’s like your art is your voice, and it’s you living out loud, and it’s um it is very feminist, and it’s um for me, it’s like although you were in the patriarchal system of the art institution of the you know of the gallery world, you were giving a voice to yourself, and so I’m I’m like really curious because you’re a craftivist.

Carrie: 19:56
Well, that’s what I was gonna say, because in a way I felt, you know, I couldn’t speak when I first did public art, when I first did community art, I get boils on my throat. It was so hard. You know, I can remember we did a piece of art where they said at the you know, they they open up your piece, and they said, Would any of you like to say anything? Because you get the mayor who says something, and you get the person who’s funded it, and they asked all three of us if any of one of us wanted to say it, and we no, none of us would say a word, but you have to understand that when we set up this group, one of us as was coming from drugs, I was very heavily into drugs and had you know just had another nervous breakdown. You know, I’d been a care worker for two years, and I’d got in two years I’d become the registered state manager of a care home and then had a catastrophe, you know, I just had a complete breakdown and spent two years, you know, being medicated and trying to pull myself together. And when I went to go and apply for a job, jobs say how many days sick have you had in the last two weeks or two years actually, how long? I can’t say all of them. I was unemployable, I was unemployable. You can’t come back from that. You can’t. I think I tried to spent my whole life trying to not get a diagnosis because in the old days, if you had a diagnosis, that’s it. You know, if you’ve got depression or you got this, it would carry with you. But I definitely didn’t want a diagnosis, and so it got to a point where the whole thing exploded, and I got a diagnosis of an extreme personality disorder. And even to this day, when I take out insurance, if I want to take out an insurance, I’ll say, Have you ever sorry we have to ask you? Have you ever tried to kill yourself? And you go, yes. And they go, Okay, but sorry, I know it’s stupid, but have you done it more than once? They’re like, Yeah, five times, and they’re like, Oh, you go, it was 40 years ago, you know. Do you know what I mean? But it carries, you know, all of that stuff is it is a weight, is is a real weight. So I was trying very hard not to, and then I suddenly did. And then I suddenly was in a place where who’s going to employ me? Who’s going to employ me? You know, I and and I was doing mosaics, and the person who was looking after my child in daycare had said, Oh, I’ve seen your mosaics. Do you want to come and mosaic the school? We’ll pay you 50 quid a day each. And so all three of us got this first ever job to mosaic. Uh, you know, it was the four seasons, which is a joke because we don’t have seasons anymore that had to be by now. But the amount of four seasons I’ve done in schools, or but anyway, so our first ever job was mosaic in Hogarth School, which is where my brothers had been to. And um uh and I I remember the first day we went into work and we were teaching mosaics, and they said, Yes, at the time my name was Richards, because I used to be Miss my real name’s Richards, but that’s another story. But they said, Oh, Miss Richards, would you like a cup of coffee? And when they went out of the room, me and my two friends were like, Oh my god, did you hear it? They called me Miss Richards, you know. We were so blown away, just kind of the respect and that they were nice to us. And I always remember because we went to the high road and we went to a place called Pizza Express, and we had a pizza that and we were like the happiest we have ever been because we were buying it with the earnings of doing this community project, and so it really was like it brought, you know, it we wouldn’t have you know, we were in such a bad place, and it gave us so much joy, and and it was so wonderful to be respected and to be liked, and and so you know, from that point I was doing public art for about the next 10 years, yeah. We weren’t capable of talking, you know, and my favorite quote, and I wish I knew where it was from, is the quickest way to happiness is to find a cause greater than yourself, happiness, and it was because what happened is is that I was doing all the community art and stuff, and then I started writing to someone on death row. I saw the big issue, which is a magazine for the homeless, and it said human rights, as in W-R-I-T-E-S. Could you write to someone on death row? And I thought, yeah, I could imagine writing to a serial killer. That was my mind at the time. Yeah, truthfully, because you know, I’m not some wonderful, kind-hearted person. I’m just you know, I was like, wow, you know, I like Silence of the Lambs, and I’d read every book there was on serial killers because I was really interested in why. How could you do that? You know, it was the why. So I was like, oh wow, this that could be really interesting. And so I applied, and it’s pre-computer, it’s not this time where you look up and you can see someone, and it’s like dating apps. It was literally write a letter and they say, Look, this is the next person on the list, Louis Romarez. So I I wrote and I sent him this letter, and about three weeks later he sent me one back. And I thought, What, oh god, what have I done? I’ve written to someone on death row. Oh my god, this letter just sat there haunting me on my fireplace because I’d just become a single mother to a three-year-old, and I was sitting in my flat thinking, you know, I really wish sometimes I did think about the consequences of my actions. But so when I opened it, this letter said, Oh dear Carrie, thank you so much for your letter. Um, I see you do mosaics. I’ve done mosaics in the past. Sending you a photo of a mosaic you might like, and it’s like humanity hits you in the face. Oh my god, okay, you know, and so over this course of five years, when I wrote to Lewis, he explained to me how capital punishment means those with no capital get punished. Showed me he was undoubtedly innocent of the crime that you know it’s all arbitrary, you know. The whole thing, it’s like I had went on this incredible journey of understanding of something because I’m very OCD. If I’m into something, I know everything about it, I may forget it and move on to something else. But in that time, you know, there was a 10-year period where I ate and dreamt death row. But but the thing is, is I might not be able to stick up for myself, or I might not be able to talk for myself, but I learned to get up and talk about that. And the craftivism and having a cause greater than myself enabled me to do public speaking. Now I can. I can go around the world, I can stand on a you know, I don’t pronounce my words right. There’s lots of things that’s wrong with me, but I don’t care anymore because it that’s that’s what people need to understand about activism is that what you give, you receive probably three times more. You know, people always say, Oh, you’re so nice, aren’t you? You’re really nice. You did this, you did that. You know, it’s such a nice thing. And you go, You don’t understand, you know, my life has been so enhanced by doing these things, you know. I did find power, I did find my own voice. And once I found my voice, I could help other people find their voice.

Lauren: 26:59
And you know, yeah, it feels like it started for you, like it started as um art for you, obviously saved your life, and I completely wholeheartedly can relate to that. And then you it sort of became you, it became your voice and your form of self-expression, but also a form of therapy to work through. And then it became something where you could relate to someone that you thought you could never relate to before, and then and then it became a way for you to almost use your own voice, but also give voice to other people. I can see the timeline there. Um, so where where do you feel like you are now in your journey?

Carrie: 27:41
Well, it’s interesting because like everything about my life is kind of governed by what’s going on around me, you know. I’m not governed by art, my life governs my art.

Lauren: 27:52
Yeah.

Carrie: 27:52
And uh my father died last year at 94. It’s the end of a big empire because he was the there’s him and two brothers, which means whether I like it or not, I’m going through a shedding of a skin that you would naturally do in the crone stage anyway. And and so I’m actually at a point where I’m partly in an existential crisis, partly trying to lean into the fact that I’m jumping into the fertile void because I’m having to simultaneously deconstruct my father’s estate, which is a big house with like he’s a hoarder from hell of rubbish, but mixed in with that rubbish is all of the documents from my family, and my family on my dad’s side is spectacularly interesting. Yeah, you want to talk about colonialism. My grandfather was one of three brothers who in the 18th century went out to Mount were the first people to go travel into Outer Mongolia and trade with them and bring camel hair back to New York, and there are buildings in Wall Street with the Rikard brothers on it because they were camel hair kings, but they also, you know, traded with uh Persia and were became a count by the Tsar of Russia. And we have documents that say that we owned all the trees on the Caspian Sea, that my insane family tried to fight for 40 years back because they lost it all in the wars. The thing is, is my grandmother when she was 40, she got on a ship, and think about the time we’re talking about. She got on a ship, went all the way to Iran, and forced a 70-year-old to marry her, and then had three children. Yeah, that’s why I never met my grandfather. He was dead years ago. He was dead when my you know, and my father comes from an aristocratic, unbelievably billionaire family that by the time he was um came in, he was living in a in a hut in in Budapest, penniless. And so that is a very weird family, but we have all these paperworks because nobody in my mum or my dad have ever thrown away an envelope in their lives. Wow, they’ve just taken the letters out. I mean, it’s nonsense, you know. So we’ve got this kind of upper, you know, we’ve got all these documents, letters to the king and stuff. So I’ve got this period where I’m kind of with other members of my family realizing that this archive needs preserving just because it’s interesting, you know, it’s of a certain class and stuff, but it’s fascinating from seeing a woman because because my my grandmother was really out there, you know, in terms of what she was doing, and um same as I’m trying to get rid of all my father’s stuff, which has everything of mine, you know. I’m finding all my everything, but I’m also having to give up my big studio that I’ve had for the last 20 years because it’s part of my dad’s estate, and so and unable to to even do anything, I have to go through my own house and get rid of everything. And I’ve you know, I’ve got a basement I haven’t been in for 16 years, you know. I’ve just been throwing stuff down in the basement because I like to say I’m an artist, not a hoarder, but really I’m a hoarder, right? Yeah so I’ve been forced at this moment of time to do proper, what do they call it, Swedish deaf clearance? Do you know what I’m saying? I don’t yeah I don’t want my pa I don’t want my kids to have to do what I’m doing, which is to wade through this, you know. So and I see it as a natural stop in my life where I’m going to go through everything, but I’m trying to work out what I want to keep because I’ve collected materials and stuff on the basis that it can made I’ve got an idea for it, you know. I’ve got eight 1960s mannequin dolls, and I’ve got a box over there of 4,000 eyeballs that I bought off of eBay in the 90s, you know what I mean? Yes, yeah. So I bought it all for you know, it’s wonderful. I was gonna stick it all into my mannequins and make an eye, you know, all ideas, avoid paying tax as well because I bought materials. But now I’m at this stage where I’m going, do I really want to make public art anymore? I’m not sure. I don’t need to financially I don’t have to sell things, you know. I’ve had to, I became a single parent who had to just, you know, do the things I needed to do because to pay the bills, but now I don’t, I’m not in that world because I’m married to someone and I’m in a better position, so I don’t need to sell things so I don’t want to, because you know, that’s the least interesting thing to me. I mean uh I don’t really want to do public art anymore because A, I think it’s gone to a world where it’s too stressful. People are you know, we now have phones and everyone take a close up of a picture. And when I’m trying to retell history, I just offend somebody somewhere along the line. It’s you know, the last job I did, what I always do is I go on Facebook and I go into local groups and I reach out to them and I ask them for their own photos, you know, and talk to people and try to engage the community. So the imagery that I use in my public art has come from the very place.

Lauren: 33:12
Yeah.

Carrie: 33:13
Uh and I I think it’s in the old days I’d go to the library and go for all the photos, and you know, because I’m trying as like an arch archivist to get this information. Well, on the last job I did, I did all this, and then retrospectively, they wanted proof that I had permission for everyone I’d ever spoken to. And I, you know, I spent two days having to write to people on Facebook and get their permission, and it’s like, trust me, I’ve done this work for 10 years, nobody’s ever complained. But nowadays, you know, almost could find someone who’s going to complain with their photo or nothing, and it’s just I I don’t need the stress of it, and also because of the ODC way I am, like I spent the last few years doing working up in St. Helens and Knowsley, which is near Liverpool up north, working on basically women’s stories, working class women’s stories. But and I did two big pieces of art there that are great, you know, because it’s that famous quote that I won’t be able to remember now. Um anyway, but the thing is, is that even though I was only paid to work so many months there or weeks there, that’s all I thought about. I don’t kind of not think about that move into my own work, I just think about the job I’m doing. It consumes me. And I’ll work every minute of every day. You know, some they say to you, how are you gonna know you’re gonna work in budgets? Like, because I just work with the budget you give me, trust me, you know. I work for peace work because I make it with love and I make it with passion and I make it with such a strong sense of belief that it might help, you know. So, but I’ve done that now for at least 10 years, you know. I’ve done that, I’ve done that, and and I don’t want the stress of offending people now because I think we’ve in the time that I’ve done public art, we went from a place where me and my friends used to advocate to include the local people in the art that they were getting, and we’d be up against people who do big lumps of metal or you know, counseled. Well, why would you want to do that? We were the advocators of that. Now you can’t go for a job that doesn’t say how you’re engaging the local people. A lot of it’s just tick boxing, a lot of it’s tick boxing. That’s the thing, it’s not any more real because I’ve done enough jobs where they want me to give the design before I’ve done the consultation. In fact, I are over six months about one job because it’s like, how can I give you a design if I haven’t done jobs consultation? I mean, you know, because it’s it’s tick boxing. Can you do this? Yeah, but we have change and change for for the better because now local artists are often given the jobs, you know what I mean? You know, it’s local, the work is usually focused about the place, you know. But that’s been a 30-year journey that I’ve watched, and I advocated for it at the beginning. You know, I was talking to the people saying, Look, surely we should do something about here. You know, but you know, now that is standard, and now you can do degrees, you don’t have to just do a degree in painting, printing, or sculpture, you could do one in craft, you can combine them, you don’t have to be regimented, you know. It was like you had to explain why you want to move from painting to sculpture in my days. Well, I’d might like to use the printing studio. We’re a sculptor, but I’ll quite like to do print, you know. Now everything is crossover, you have craft, you have all that kind of I can’t even remember what the word is, but you know, where artist participation, or you know, there’s all MAs in it. You know, that’s we’ve well people have at least woken up to the principle that that’s what would make better public art is to use the community, you know, you’re getting double your money’s worth. But now I’ve done that for 30 years, and it’s it’s almost at a point where it’s like I don’t need the stress because I know now that trying to promote putting photos of all the community from me just being the person that’s going to find it is all too problematic, and I don’t, you know. And also, I think because I am shedding a skin to a degree, and I have got to a stage that you have to live 60 years to get to. I think there’s a voice that I want to say where I want to explain what it’s like to be a woman and to have that experience and to be from a survivor, from a victim to a survivor. And I’m not really bothered whether I who I see it. Um, in a way, I want this work to be seen when I’m dead because everything’s just so worrying with the way the world we live in. But do you see what I mean? I think that now I made all that work when I was 21, and I made a lot of if you think made them maiden mother prone, I made a load of maiden shit when I was at college. It all was done a lot of mother stuff because I’ve been making helping over 1,500 people make hearts to women that they love. Do you know what I mean? But now I feel like I’m at the throne stage. I want to kind of retrospectively make a series of art while I’m going through all my own archives, using all my own photos. I’m you know, I’ve got I I’ll show you just for a this is a print of me when I was seven from a very traumatic holiday in Yugoslavia where my dad took me to a nuda speech. But you know, I want to make pieces about this with all the beautiful stuff that I’ve collected because I think it will be healing for me. Yeah. Because I’m so singly focused, I think it might be good for me to focus in on my own life rather than in a way. I spent a whole load of my life avoiding everything through drink, drugs, weed. I kind of then did a form of art therapy and helped other people, but I I’ve kind of realized I have been in therapy for 10 years, but I kind of realized that my OCD workaholic nature is another way of keeping things at bay. I might be terribly happy, but it’s keeping everything else. And so, you know, there’s part of me that wants to slow down, stop, and make the whole body of work that’s just another form of art therapy, but where I’m very conscious of what I’m doing.

Lauren: 39:36
You’re more aware of it as opposed to uh as opposed to being able to see it after it’s done.

Carrie: 39:41
Yeah, and I actually recognize the fact that I’m trying to write a book while a friend is helping me by interviewing me and turning it into AI because I could never write anything, but I I there’s a recognition because I do all this work about trying to keep women’s history alive, because we are the carers, we’re the mothers, you know. I’m now going to become a granny, you know. I I feel that I want to archive my own work. It’s not about publishing the book, it’s just I want to write my own history because those who, you know, it’s those who write the history, you know. I would I I have a stage in my life where I think, no, I have a story, it’s an interesting story, and it might be some way give hope to some other people that are struggling at different stages, you know, because I see myself as going to the dark and coming to the light through art and through helping people. So I’m at this period where I’m just thinking, no, I want to spend a couple of years archiving, writing, documenting, doing some work of my own. And then we’ll see, you know, I don’t know beyond that. Yeah, no, that sounds nice.

Lisa: 40:51
It’s a beautiful story. It’s like the hero’s journey, you know. You’re you’re and then but now you’re going within, so your cycle is it’s legacy, right? So you’re you’re, you know, and that’s the it’s the art of life, also, because the art of life is you you want people to see your art and make a difference, but then at some point you have to inverse, right?

Carrie: 41:12
You have to really go inside and and get to know and also I think because you know, you do as you get older, you know, I’m now 60. If I’m lucky, I might have 15 Christmases. Yeah, you know what I mean? Life gets faster. I know all these cliches come out of old people, you know. But life does speed up, I can assure you, it’s speeded up. I spent half of my life wishing it away, which is a tragedy, you know. And then I spend the rest of my life going, can you just slow down? Because it’s just it’s all going too quick. And so I think as an artist, A, you your time suddenly becomes precious and and you have less energy. But you just do. There’s a you know, I have less energy. I used to work on about four to six hours sleep a night. I yeah, I only get six to eight now, but I just know I don’t have the energy because I always wanted to live in an artist’s commune, and I always dreamed that if I ever got any money, I’d get a small holding and you know in Wales, and all my mates would live there. And now we’re all like, I can’t even bother to tidy up my garage. The idea I’m gonna move all the way here, I haven’t got the energy, it’s not even the actual energy, it’s like a life force energy. It’s like you know, but maybe I’ll do all this and I’ll have another spot of energy. The energy that I do have, I want to do what I love most, and what I love most in the world is to go to other parts of the world and work with other people, you know, and I can only probably do that about twice a year because it it’s it takes up you know time. But going to Mexico and creating a mother serpent on a wall in one of the oldest cities in Mexico City, working with the most incredible artists you’re ever gonna work with, that is life, you know, that keeps me, you know. But I kind of think now, well, probably I kind of deserve it because I did put 30 years into I mean, but what I’m doing is helping over there, you know.

Lauren: 43:13
I’m yeah, well, yeah, you’re just you’re still, I mean, I think that the thing is that we I think it’s a mistake to say that when you take care of yourself or you do work for yourself, that you’re not doing work for the rest of the world, you are doing work for the rest of the world, and so I I I actually think that that for some reason um gets misconstrued quite a bit that that it’s a selfish.

Carrie: 43:38
Interesting that I’ve never really, you know, because I you know, I still struggle. It’s the kind of eternal as a very female attribute, isn’t it? Yeah to be, you know, I’m someone who has been the mother, I’m gonna be the grand, but you know, I was the unfit mother because it’s you know, I felt a lot of resentment about it because anything that takes my time away from making makes me slightly. Resentful, and then of course you get to the other side and go, Oh god, it actually went quicker than I thought, you know. My mum always said that you make better grand parents because by then you’re not in the stress of all your life or trying to work out what you’re doing, you could you come at a different part of your life. So I’m kind of hoping that I’ll be a better grandparent.

Lauren: 44:22
Yeah, well, we can always be improving, and I think that so long as you continue to make art, right? You constantly discover new things about yourself, and then you you’re right. I mean, you never know who’s gonna stumble upon your work and have their life changed, you know.

Carrie: 44:36
Oh, and and you know, and I just think the whole thing about craft and craftivism, it’s it’s a wonderful joining of things because craft in itself is meditative, it will put you in a flow. And my experience of it is that when you get groups of people together who might not be able to voice their themselves very well. You know, I’ve worked with kids who couldn’t even make eye contact and say their names, but whilst your your hands are busy and you’re focused on something, conversations start more. Do you know what I mean? It’s so therapeutic by nature, you know, bringing people together or working on something. I the first mosaic courses I ever ran were at psychiatric hospital, you know, where me and my friend could have easily been patients, do you know what I mean? And we’re only just the other side, and we worked in a group there where the old guy that had run the um upholstery had died, and so there was quite a nice per nurse there who said, Well, you know, you come and do mosaics. And so we sat with these pieces, and one one bloke, elderly bloke, never spoke, he was mute, yeah. And every single week he would pop out a mosaic, he’d just do an apple, he’d like because you know, some people are very slow and it’ll take him hours, but he’d just do one, and then at the end of it, everyone would come up and go, Oh, that’s really good, oh, that’s really nice. And so many people talked to him that after about six weeks he started to talk to people. Whoa, literally got his voice, and it was a tragedy because it was it should have been a movie, you know, this feel good movie where all the it was a bit like clock not clockwork orange, that’s the wrong one, but one flew over the cuckoo’s nest where they were imagine them all engaged in mosaics and suddenly, you know, and then some other woman came along and decided that you know this wasn’t helpful. How is it helpful for them to make their own art? They got to learn to make an income, so they stopped them having any freedom of what they did, and we had to make blue and white signs for the hospital. It only took about it, it only took about two, three weeks, and most of the people dropped away, and then they closed. Oh, and it’s just like this is like oh, you know, it’s you know, sometimes it just takes the right person, one person with the right mentality to understand and appreciate the benefits of just having a voice and being creative and just being having some freedom of expression, you know, because you can see the little uh you can see how people’s conscious is awoken by creativity. I’ll tell you the biggest time I ever saw that is in the 90s, 2000, at the very end of the 90s. Me, Karen, and Mark and uh my friend Natalie, we went to work in the orphanages of Romania, you know, at the time where it was all in the news, went with some weird Christian or American Christian organization called World Something Health. Um anyway, we went there and we worked in those places. Uh, you know, I think it gave us post-traumatic shock, actually. But we worked there and we worked with kids who’d never seen colour, never seen that. If you add red to yellow, it makes orange. Wow, you know, these are kids who’d spent all day having to put dots in a thing. I mean, they were so mal badly treated, I can’t even go into it. But we brought paint and we bought materials, and we literally saw a girl who was a hunchback who couldn’t speak. Kind of I could show I haven’t got it, but her first painting that she ever did of a dove. She she literally, after the three we went there three times, I think, she was upright. She was like, I know, you know, I saw it, I saw how how so dramatically they changed inside, just knowing they were good at something, seeing people’s reactions. But more importantly, I learned that the people around them who’d perceived these kids as less than human, because that’s the only way you can treat people badly is is you know, because this was a very poverty-stricken place. But I I they went from having numbers on their uniforms, just like old dirty uniforms with a five on it, but because the TV crew wanted to come and see what these kids were painting, they had to get uniforms, and because it was presented to the outside world, it literally it kind of changed. You could see it, you could see the people going, Oh, did they do that? What you know, yeah, right. Yeah, and when we went to that school, they said, Well, we’ll just bring you your we’ll just bring you the good kids, and we said, No, we either work with every kid or no kids, we’re not doing it. Yeah, and we did we literally slept in this orphanage, it’s like the aura of the place, and we went back there three years, and then because Romania wanted to join the EU, it had to close down all its orphanages, um, which actually for some it was great because they were resettled in the community, some okay, less okay because families just get paid to have the kids, and some just get left in hospitals. So, you know, it’s a very mixed bag, but essentially they didn’t want this idea of having horrible orphanages, and some of the kids I know literally, I mean, they would have been um resettled, and I’m sure that that whole experience was good for them. I just know it will be because I remember one of them when we were all crying when we were leaving, one of them looking at me and going, You really care? It’s like somebody actually cares. We’re like, Yeah, we do. But I think for some of them it will have been a benefit, but for some of them, like you know, to them, my you know, I still haunts me that you know, is it good better to show it, you know, show a light and then take it away? Because when we left, these kids would be rocking and banging their heads, and it was very traumatic. And one girl would walk around calling me mummy everywhere I went, you know. So, you know, but I’ve never seen such a kind of like because you you’ll only find that in a very, very dark part of the world. But when you see it and you go, Oh my god, look at these kids, look at this, you know, just bringing color into their world, just bringing color, just letting them create, letting the world see that these kids can paint and draw and do these things, and that whole kind of uh journey, you know, it’s a difficult one to go on, but I you know, I I I I don’t think there’s probably more of a way that you can actually experience that light going on with people. Wow, wow.

Lauren: 51:18
Thank you so much for sharing so much with us today. I really appreciate it.

Lisa: 51:23
No, it’s well, what is one one last um word or comment you have to share with our audience about? I mean, you’re really talking about the power of art and how it gives voice to everybody.

Lauren: 51:35
Yeah.

Carrie: 51:35
Well, yeah, I think that you know, this idea that you’re an artist or you’re not an artist, it doesn’t really matter. You know, the thing is is to find something that you like doing, and if it gives you pleasure to just do it.

Lauren: 51:48
Yeah. One of yeah, one of my um most favorite quotes from like a teacher I had in grad school was that you know, find something that you enjoy doing, whether you are good at it or not, just give 200% to it.

Carrie: 52:02
Well and just stop, you know. Sorry to interrupt, but my dad’s only advice, and trust me, he didn’t give me a lot of good advice, is Carrie, if you find something you like doing, you’re lucky. And if you find someone to pay, he says if you find someone to pay you to do it, then you’ve really hit the jackpot.

Lauren: 52:19
That’s the lottery. I mean, it is it’s incredible if that if that happens for you, and I think that um I think that’s awesome when it does.

Carrie: 52:30
And I I yeah, but I think I actually think that people who become I know successful people, I know people who make money, and A, they’re driven by that thought, you know. I know, I yeah. People who are famous, people who make money are usually they’re they’re that’s what they want because you have to have draw, you really do have to want to make money in art, you have to limit your supply, you have to create scarcity, you might be lucky, but the I think it damages your art because you can’t you’re in it, you’ve got a style, then yeah, yeah. People always said to me, we can’t really, we don’t know what you’re gonna do because if you’d have just done the spray cans, if you’d just done mad in England, you know, you have to have a brand. People will say it’s the same way on an Instagram, you know, you’ve got to do the same thing over and over again. It’s like I can’t do that. I’m not talking about the place, you know. I’m following my little life, I’m not following this career path, or I was lucky I didn’t have to follow a money path. But you know, yeah, I think people my my thing to say to anyone is that give it a go because you never know, you know, just try mosaic, just try playing with clay, just try a bit of tapestry, just try writing a poem. I always say to people when I go teach in schools or young people, public art, man, street art. It doesn’t have to be big, it doesn’t even have to be illegal, but trust me, pointing something out into the street, whether it’s a poem stuck on a lamppost or a little bit of tapestry, just having that voice. Trust me, things happen, dialogue start. You know what I mean? You find your voice just tentatively, just taking over ownership. So I’m always an advocate for people just going out and counterbalancing the visual pollution of advertising, which is essentially selling stuff that to make us feel bad. Just put a little thing, just leave a little thing. You know, someone walking to work will just see that and go, Wonder what that’s doing there. Yeah, but you know, beautifying our streets is revolutionary. I love it.

Lisa: 54:34
Yeah, thank you so much so much. Amazing.