I don't make resolutions, but earlier this month I did do a review of 2008 looking at my achievements over the year. I then spent time thinking about my hopes for the year ahead. Despite taking on a small studio space at Spike Island last January I feel (yet again!) that I have achieved very little in my own creative practice and that the emphasis has been on my work in education. But with less paid work and more time ahead of me I plan for 2009 to be the year when this balance shifts and some of my work in progress gets completed.

I have started daily practice again after a lull over Christmas. My focus for the last week has been 'The epic in the everyday'. Here are the photos:
     

During December I travelled over to Belfast, taking photographs and producing an evaluation report for Wonderland an arts and science collaboration devised by Professor Helen Storey and Professor Tony Ryan that explores real solutions for a more sustainable world.

The exhibition has travelled from London to Sheffield to Belfast and I have been lucky enough to travel with it, following both the exhibition and it’s education programme. In London I saw teachers and young people have the space to think together, with teachers really seeing the value of their students’ ideas. In Sheffield I watched children’s eyes light up as they experienced the magic of the dissolving polymer, and secondary students’ sudden realisation that science can be art and art can be science. In Belfast I saw individuals blossoming in an environment where they were given the space and support to develop as creative individuals.

It was also a fantastic opportunity to combine my love of photography with my ability to evaluate creative educational projects, an area I’d really like to develop more in the future.