jeni mcconnell
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​W E L C O M E         
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Changing focus to greener things ...

welcome

​it's all about change ...

As a child I was often deeply and bodily embedded in nature, getting my hands dirty, playing in mud, climbing trees, making dens in the corn fields and picking blackberries. I loved being on my belly, looking down into the small spaces to see what grew and moved about - they were places of fascinating ferns and fronds, of fairy tales and fantasy. These are my roots; deep established connections made with places.

As a socially engaged artist there have been many significant projects, including being commissioned for the Art in Manufacturing for the first National Festival of Making, as a Research Artist for Dementia & Imagination, working in-residence with many socially engaged place-focussed organisations, including In Certain Places, In-Situ, Art Gene and Heart of Glass. My artists’ book making skills, evident in the Tate and National Library of Wales collections led to work on the Homeless Library, a north west focussed project led by arthur+martha, which launched at the Houses of Parliament in 2016.

Since 2018 niggling phrases that really didn't make much sense kept repeating in my ears; 'climate change', ‘global warming’, ‘global heating’. Perfect in their description, yet imperfect in connecting with me in my day to day life; I became aware of something truly important and felt I needed to delve deeper, to research and to understand in a way that I could communicate with others too.

In late 2018 I was fortunate to be accepted for a two-year mentoring programme with Chrysalis Arts Development. Their Arts Council funded programme, Greening Arts Practice supports a group of artists to shift their creative habits and perspectives on life in a planetary emergency, to respond in an entirely new direction as we face an uncomfortable situation for all life. Through this time we faced a pandemic and our world and the project changed. 
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My practice is now totally focussed on this situation, using my creative ability to find ways to communicate complex interconnected subjects to engage everyone. It is a shift from a deeper conceptual work to something more accessible – a response to the crisis we are in where we cannot afford to exclude anyone.



jeni mcconnell

ARTIST
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