Hello All

So as most of you will not have noticed I have not been in Wales for the last 2 weeks. No in fact I have been in the big LDN or more specifically I have been at Queen Mary University, Mile End, London. NTW TEAM posted an opportunity to be a pop up artist in residence for 2 weeks in London with Phakama for a festival that would be celebrating there 15 year birthday. I was lucky enough to get 1 of the 2 spaces available to Wales based artists the other space going to Frank Thomas.

We headed down on Saturday 16th of June and were one of the first groups to arrive we met up with Fabio who explained what was going to be in store for the next 2 weeks. We then went for a bit of explore as we were told that we meet up with the rest of the group on Sunday. That evening me and Frank managed to walk to Stratford from Mile End which is actually a fair distance which included walking past the Olympic stadium which we could also see from our kitchen, I really do like looking out at the city skyline at night something about it is very impressive. We found a pub called the Princess of Wales we thought it must of been a sign but they didn't serve food so I guess it wasn't so instead found a loverly cocktail bar that did serve food. We ate and headed back to our accommodation to get ready for the next day.

So on Sunday we met up with every one who would be taking part in the festival which included people from Poland, Turkey, Portugal, Ireland, Holland,New Zealand, South Africa and Basque country. We were given a meet and great lunch where people brought food from their country to share with every one else it was a loverly start to the project but also a little intimidating just the sheer number of people that would be around for the next 2 weeks. In the evening there was an opening ceremony and a awesome video that gave a brief summery of Phakama and their work over the last 15 years. This was super helpful and informative as I knew very little about the organisation before the festival. Phakama are really interesting they get people together from all over the world find out more at http://www.projectphakama.org/about.

So absolutely loads happened over the 2 weeks and I'm still recovering so I will try and point out a few highlights for my self. As pop up artist in residence we had the freedom to create what ever we liked. The stand out performances for me included a performance ending in a pillow fight, a secret rave and a paint fight. Frank Thomas also really impressed me with a poem to open one of the Mosaic talks. Besides the work, I really enjoyed outhouses show about the end of the world and also going on a river walk with Mike Webber who is a super interesting, intelligent person that knows so much about the River Thames and it's history. Mike is an archaeologist and excels in speaking about the subject in an interesting way that you can understand. I think we should try and get him in Wales talking about our beaches and rivers.

I met loads of interesting people and got up to some amazing things including learning 3 words of Portuguese failing at learning Polish and watching England lose on penalties with people from New Zealand. I would like to quickly mention the rest of the pop up artists in residence and thank them all for their in put, so a massive thanks to Swati, Jenni, Katie, Iga, Frank and Shona. In 2 weeks we achieved a lot and the future for us all sounds quite exciting. Sorry this is so brief I'm rushing to try and get as much down now while I can but I'll try and put a more detailed blog up soon.

Thank you so much to TEAM for enabling me to spend 2 amazing weeks meeting amazing people from all over the world. Thank you so much and Thank you again I can't express enough how grateful I am for this opportunity. Also thanks to Phakama for hosting the event and making all this possible.

Thank you.