Chronic doodler and community printmaker
With some young artists at Door 84 it was a delight to create this local York history collage. We used an old pub sign from the Castle Howard OX and a range of old guide books, maps and postcards. The approach was rip up the books etc and paste photos on the ox and text on the Oxen, adding then an outline in black.
The finished piece is fantastic and now hangs on a wall in Door 84.
Large wall doodle art timeline created for Action on Disability, West London. Includes various key moments in disabled peoples history and politics such as; ‘865 Legend says that the Disabled Viking prince, Ivarr the Boneless, led the invasion of England and was carried into battle on a shield’, through ‘1965 the Disablement Income Group, run by disabled people lobbies for changes in disability policy’, and ‘2023 New Action on Disability (AoD) Centre for Independent Living opens.’
For more about Action on Disability, see- https://www.aod.org.uk/
In 1873, in The Groves, York, Charles Hardacre, a greengrocer seeks help. And within records from the York Poor Law Union Workhouse Committee at that time, under the entry for ‘Quantity and Description of Relief in Kind’ its states he is offered ‘examination and assistance’, at the cost of 24 shillings.
The ‘description of disability’ penned in an inky script as ‘lunatic’. This piece is a tribute to all those in Mental Health institutions, past, present and future. Considering the current crisis in support, it asks the question, how it is that we can better frame, respond to, and record our inevitable experiences of mental distress and health?
Click here or the image below for a pdf with a more detailed description of the piece.
Made as part of the ‘Heritage Hunters’ community heritage research project with York Castle Museum and The Groves Association.
Thanks to Explore York Libraries and Archives and Borthwick Institute for Archives – University of York. And finally, a very big thanks to Imogen Kate for the excellent voice over. Stephen Lee Hodgkins, May 2023.
With near on a thousand years of events and happenings, it was a pleasure to create this timeline for Hull Minster.
Hand drawn, digitised then printed the piece stretches over 8 metres in the newly refurbished entrance and welcomes visitors with many quirky doodles representing the many goings on of this magnificent space.
Here is an image file of the whole timeline.
Find out more about Hull Minster here – https://hullminster.org
Here is a three minute audio visual summary – ‘How educational systems respond to diversity, inclusion and social justice: Disability, power, discipline, territoriality and deterritorialization’. By Navin Kikabhai, and published in The British Journal of Sociology, 73 (4), July 2022.
Original article – https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-4446.12969 for the original article.
Plus see here a one page doodle summary created from the clip.
…Looking within, to look out for folk, from a hidden corner…’
Celebrating all the very hard work of Scarborough Hull York Pathology Service (SHYPS), with this huge doodled wall art recently installed in York and Scarborough Hospitals. Plus also, 200 #letterpress prints for the staff based on this piece were created as part of this work.
Following a visit to SHYPS service I doodled a shared spoken word piece based on what staff said to me about their work, wellbeing and generally how they go proudly about their business to get stuff done together.
I then set this in letterpress type, sent it for review, did some edits, then with digital magic created the wall art piece using both the doodles and letterpress text forms.
Then, visiting SHYPS again I created 200 letterpress versions of the piece on an vintage #adana8x5 machine on handmade lokta paper. One for each of the staff.
Print work created for Sarah Wimbush’s ‘The PILGRIM QUEENS poem. This celebrates the women who voyaged to America on the Mayflower in 1620.
Just behind York’s ‘Bile Bean’ Ghost sign on Lord Mayors walk is Monk Bar car park. These bricks were recovered in late 2021 from a hole being dug there.
The hole was dug to install some electrical car charging points. The bricks were revealed as if once part of the foundations of a house wall. Previously, this area was not a car park, but the many terraced homes of Newbiggin Street and Groves Lane.
‘Cook’s York Directory of 1922’, published by the Yorkshire Gazette Newspaper held at Explore York Library and Archive, list some of the names of people living in those streets at that time.
Brayshaw, Christina ANNE. 20 Groves Lane.
BEAN, William. 17 Newbiggin Street.
TATE, Sarah Elizabeth. 19 Groves Lane.
WARD, Tom. 24 Groves Lane.
I have walked along Groves Lane many times not really thinking about it as a street of homes where families and folk lived, worked and played some 100 years ago. But these bricks possibly were part of the homes, or their neighbours’ homes that these people and their families lived in.
I wonder who these people were, what they were like and what life was like for them. What made them laugh, what made them cry? Did they know each other and what they might have said to one another when going about their everyday lives. Did they ask how each other, how they had been? And what were their replies?
I am now wondering about who might, in 2122, 100 years from now, be walking down Groves Lane, what they will be like, how might they live and where they might be going?
Some #visual minutes and a report summary from a workshop on Loneliness held in early 2022.
In October 2021, to coincide with the Big Draw festival, and in the run up to Remembrance Day 2021, I worked with York Army Museum to facilitate ‘A Big Draw to Remember’. Within the Museum, alongside military memorabilia and human stories from service and war, we stretched out a 7 metre paper canvas upon the officers mess table and around an elaborate silver centre piece.
Over the week of 23rd to 30th October people were invited to come along and add poppies and doodles and statements to the piece. We provided a ‘how to guide to doodling a poppy’.
This included contributions from York Normandy Veterans, Sid and Ken, the relatives of John Cunningham VC, a great great grandson of Captain Oats, friends and families of loved ones that have served, those in active service from a variety of regiments and units, and even the Lord and Lady Mayor of York.
The result is a multiple of poppies, reflections and statements that honour the efforts of those that have, and do serve. Remembrance Day marks when World War One ended in 1918 and is an important event, not to glorify war, but to highlight the value of freedom and peace, and to acknowledge the sacrifices made by all those have taken steps to defend it for others.
A selection of contributions from the week have been framed and hung in the entrance to the museum.
