Being freelance means never knowing what you might be doing, or where. It’s one of the things I like most about it. Responding to a commission, or a call for tenders, is a process of discovery, akin to my idea of co-creation. It starts with someone else’s need or interest: my task is then to discover how to respond. At its best, it leads to outcomes that exceed expectations because they couldn’t have been foreseen. Everything depends on who is involved.
That’s true of much of my work in Scotland, where I was often between 1994 and 2016. Mostly, it was research, not community art, though the commonalities in my way of working are clearer to me now. I learned both by doing, and by observing what others did. The strengths and weaknesses of that approach still to give me food for thought, but I know it suited my temperament — in truth, I don’t think I could have done it any other way.
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