WHO
Prints with Purpose is a project that's been in the back of my mind for a while now, conceived as a way to help promote and raise money for local charities through by donating a percentage of money raised from sales of Artwork.
It's taken me a little while to get around to starting this, but with the recent outbreak of Covid-19, which has had a devastating impact on the livehoods of the majority of the country (particularly creative freelancers like myself) it seemed like this would be a good time.
WHO
Prints with Purpose is a project that's been in the back of my mind for a while now, conceived as a way to help promote and raise money for local charities through by donating a percentage of money raised from sales of Artwork.
It's taken me a little while to get around to starting this, but with the recent outbreak of Covid-19, which has had a devastating impact on the livehoods of the majority of the country (particularly creative freelancers like myself) it seemed like this would be a good time.
WHO
Prints with Purpose is a project that's been in the back of my mind for a while now, conceived as a way to help promote and raise money for local charities through by donating a percentage of money raised from sales of Artwork.
It's taken me a little while to get around to starting this, but with the recent outbreak of Covid-19, which has had a devastating impact on the livehoods of the majority of the country (particularly creative freelancers like myself) it seemed like this would be a good time.
Beth Steddon
THE VIEW FROM MY WINDOW
At the start of 2020, when the world as we knew it upended itself, for a time society was plunged into a state of uncertainty where the daily freedoms so often taken for granted were for a while, suspended.
Covid impacted each and every one of us in different ways. For many, it was a sad and stressful time, with isolation affected mental and physical wellbeing. For others, it was a time of slowing down, turning inwards, and re-evaluating priorities.
As someone who loves the outdoors, and is not a natural to online communication, being mainly confined to a top floor flat was a challenging time, and I craved person interaction with other people. I wondered how everyone else was coping, and what life was like for people facing different life and living situations. I felt I needed to somehow document this strange and unique period in time, and so I put a call out on social media, and started to visit people who responded within a short distance of my home in Brighton, UK, to take their portrait through the window of their home, looking out onto the world. For each person I also asked them to write a short passage about their experience to sit alongside their photographic portrait.
POPPY HELMER
"Initially the lockdown was a bit of a relief to me as I’d been finding college quite stressful and I felt like I needed a break from everything. However, as it’s gone on I’ve found it increasingly difficult to be away from my friends and having to complete my college work from home. ⠀⠀
I think having so much time to be creative can be quite overwhelming for a lot of people and I’ve definitely felt that. I try to remind myself that it’s not about that and the reality is we’re trying to save the spread of a global pandemic and everyone hasn’t been locked inside to compete against each other to see who can spend the time most ‘wisely’.
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I’ve spent a lot of time on social media to try and remain connected with the world outside my house and this has actually been brilliant. I’ve ended up connecting with lots of people from a jazz collective I have lessons from in London who I probably wouldn’t have got the chance to speak to had we not been in lockdown. ⠀⠀
Another product of my boredom has been me shaving my head. It was something I’d wanted to do for a while after seeing @ellessechar ‘s short film ‘omg she’s bald’ where she interviewed other women who had shaved their heads. My mum suggested that I pick a charity to raise money for when I did it so I chose @bloodygoodperiod.
They are a charity who provide period products to people affected by period poverty and at this time that was clearly an important cause to me. In the end we managed to raise £615 which was well over the target £100."
CHARLOTTE, STEVE & ZEPHR GREEN
‘It would be disingenuous to deny we’ve largely enjoyed our lockdown experience, and continue to do so. We aren’t in a rush to go anywhere, and with a healthy disdain for our government, we will be distancing for a while. ⠀
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It’s been soothing to slow it all down, having no where to rush to and this time to hang out just the three of us. We get on well as a trio, so that’s a huge plus. No long commute to central London for Steve, hurrying back on unreliable trains to say goodnight to our son. He just has to make it down from the loft to join us for lunch. We’ve discovered more of the countryside on our doorstep than I have in the 15 years I’ve been here. I’m not blind to the privilege here. Truly, I’m not.
That’s not to say it hasn’t been without challenges, and a side order of a whole lot of grief: my parents are up north and I miss them with a burning that a WhatsApp call can’t quell, same with my siblings, not seeing my nephews and knowing that they’ll have shot up in height, a fledgling business that has been largely put on hold, missing hugs from friends, worrying how this pause in his social development will affect Zephyr in the long run, and of course fear and grief for the collective suffering of those losing loved ones.
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Not every day is a walk in the park, but for the most part I feel incredibly grateful for being able to take this time, and I hope to be able to come out of this, and remember how the slower pace of life made me feel more connected, to my family, to my friends, and to myself, not less and certainly not isolated.”
ZOE OWENS
"I hadn’t put much thought into lockdown. I was lucky enough to still be working & my partner works from home, so on that level we didn’t have much to think about. We’d moved to Brighton, so are familiar with not seeing family & friends for a while. ⠀
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Everything changed on 1st April when I was diagnosed with Breast Cancer. Suddenly lockdown became more real. I was concerned about my mum & how she’d cope, which was made harder when my Nan (her mum) sadly passed away the day after. I get my strength from her & looked on the positive. I had my cry in the doctors office, & then it became a case of ‘how do I fight this’. I had my rock, Alex, & he fought with me. I love researching things I don’t understand, so this became my new, hobby. I didn’t look for pages of doctors notes, I looked for real women going through this journey & found comfort knowing that even though I was “locked” in my home, thousands were doing the same. The biggest thing I got from it was how positive everyone was.
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Family & friends reached out on a daily basis. We’d have quizzes & group chats. A simple hello would lift my day, flowers in the post brought me to happy tears, & a cuddle from our French Bulldog Lola would ease the distance with family. It’s amazing how quickly the world adapted, as if everyone was more connected. ⠀⠀
I had my lumpectomy & my world opened up again when I was told they’d got all the cancer out. When I look back on this lockdown & my breast cancer journey, to me it will be filled with love, kind words, happy memories, simple pleasures & reconnections. As well as a beautiful scar. ⠀⠀
As the world opened up again, links between friends & family became distant memories. It was heartbreaking to think it was going back to the old normal, until the BLM movement reached an all time high, people came together again & my research changed to educating myself. Due to my health I was worried I wouldn’t be able to march & show my solidarity with our Black community, but for me this took a back seat. Fundamental human rights are too important. It was a strong peaceful protest.
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The world around us is changing, I’m holding out hope it’s for the better."
ROSE, TIM & STAN ROWKINS
"It's been a year (almost to the day) since we moved into this house, our new family home. We spent a frantic three months getting it ready before our son’s arrival in August, and he was born here in our bedroom.
At Christmas, we gathered both our families together. Stan’s first, our first as parents and our parents’ firsts as grandparents.
We entered the new year with the house full of beautiful new memories, without the faintest idea that we would be spending so much of 2020 within its partially decorated walls. It has been a very happy time from the short-sighted perspective of a new family, but all weighed heavily by a poignant ballast; we cradle our boy’s sleeping head whilst contemplating the future he inherits, and indeed the present to which he is so oblivious.
He has ensured we have retained purpose and structure and has truly filled our days with joy. A stark, bittersweet juxtaposition to what we see, figuratively speaking, from our window to the world."
MILES MLAMBO
“Like for most of us, lockdown has been really tough. I'm an actor and had a tour of Ireland booked for the first half of June of my first self written show, something I'd been working towards for years, watching the whole thing collapse in an instant was extremely upsetting.
At first I was excited at the prospect of all the free time I'd be getting but struggled immensely to get anything productive done, and got caught in a cycle of worthlessness and self doubt. .
Thankfully I live with my mum and sis, and we have a garden and a cat which have all helped keep me sane.
The recent BLM campaign triggered by the murder of George Floyd helped pull me out of my cycle. It's been incredible seeing the solidarity from across the globe, and the demo in Brighton on the 13th, with a turnout of 10,000+ people was beautiful to part of. Racism is one of the key themes in my show, as well for future projects I'm working. So it's been like an adrenalin shot of motivation to start working again.
Also I've been practicing Bass guitar loads and it's bloody awesome.”
NOOR AYOUB
“Prior to March I’d heard little bits and bobs about the virus but wasn’t sure if it was hearsay. Speaking with friends, some of them thought I was worrying too much, but then March arrived & everything royally kicked off. I don’t know about you, but the human brain needs a solution & a form of reasoning for us to compute.
The fact that no one knew what this virus was, where it came from and how to cure it made going into the unknown was for sure nervy. At first conspiracies came into my mind, is this a hoax so that a war can start? Is this a form of social cleansing? Wiping out the poor and vulnerable. Is this just a ruse for us to be “entertained”, while M15 undercover scenes were taking place, or even that Mother Nature is seriously pissed off with us humans for our behaviour? I had visions of us going into mad max mode! ⠀⠀
I suffer with anxiety, so sometimes when you’re in a situation which you can’t control or manage, your anxious side starts revealing itself a lot more than usual. I’m not going to lie, the first few weeks were not easy, but after taking a step back & re-evaluating the situation I was able to control & manage my anxiety again. I’m still working so luckily my Mon-Fri have flown by, and on weekends I’ve been in ‘get shit done’ mode. Painting the house, doing up the garden - then getting on the self care vibe by going on massive hikes, learning new recipes.
Thankfully a sense of achievement and gratitude was flooding in. Speaking with artists across the world sharing their insights and stories on how it’s effected them really helped getting the boo hoo’s out & knowing that we were all in this together and not alone. ⠀⠀ As this slowly draws to a close (hopefully) what I come away from this experience is that all you can do is just take each day as it comes so that you don’t get overwhelmed & can take on the day easier. Make more room for kindness, love, and hope for yourself and others. ⠀⠀
We got this.”
SOLANGE LEON IRIARTE
"I live in one room. My heart and my mind and my guts are all together. There is enough space for my feelings and my thoughts and my shit to coexist in peace.
You’ll find a tad too much cat and dog hair should you dissect the veins of my carpeted lungs.
The wet walls are peeling off the skin of my untiled certainty.
My hands remember more than my lips do.
I am forgetting myself already and my achilles has returned.
The oven is warm again.
I am a revived bakery.
The mirror over it only reflects the top half of me.
My body is one room alone and one that I alone occupy.
My memories are orderly hung, my thoughts in the other hand float around like dandelion seeds, beautifully irritating and there are too many of them in this ocean of confusion.
My eyes are the only thing I recognise from the person reflected in that top half.
My tomorrow has nowhere to be, my bottom roots seem lost. Perhaps that’ s why my Achilles is trying to do- to not let me forget a dancing past.
Who were they, those that shared my bed before?
Too many lovers to count, too many dinners to count, certainly more breakfasts than dinners.
I am a trillion scars- the visible ones- surgery on my knee, right hand, ovaries and my poor left eye which still feels alien. I am the not so great body parts that still function.
This body needs water but it doesn’t like it.
I am one child that is no longer. The man he became is lost to me.
This body does not like to be told, or being rocked or patted. This body hates perfume- well not all, but it’s the quantities it objects to.
It doesn’t like being awake in the morning and it feels like winter alone.
This body is an animal, the owl or the small cat- may be a puma. They are loners too. You would never guess, surrounded as I am by a fracass of folk . My friends are a blue print.
This body is a light blinking for the briefest of times. It will be gone by the morning.
I will be exiting feet first.
Cut me open and you will find dusty worn old cloth and some scisors, sorrow to stitch beautifully over the scars too, my own japanese gold to glue the broken parts. Be careful with the sharp edges. There are a few of those.
To live in my body, you need to forget to think. Let the fingers lead.
Let me ask you something. Do you truly know who you are? Are you ears or lips or toes or hair. Are you axing or holding on?
I will never stop rubbing my eyes. What am I trying to delete?"
VANESSA COX PENDRY
“When it happened and I couldn’t see my family because of the virus, I thought ‘Ok I will make some good art work,’ but I was too upset. Also with no live music, just isolation and sadness.. I got back into gardening and growing flowers and vegetables in containers and buckets, and then I picked up the guitar and started to learn new skills.
This kept me interested with on-line one to one lessons. I managed to start to learn some tunes, which made me happy.”
MAGGIE THEED
"I hadn’t put much thought into lockdown. I was lucky enough to still be working & my partner works from home, so on that level we didn’t have much to think about. We’d moved to Brighton, so are familiar with not seeing family & friends for a while. ⠀
⠀
Everything changed on 1st April when I was diagnosed with Breast Cancer. Suddenly lockdown became more real. I was concerned about my mum & how she’d cope, which was made harder when my Nan (her mum) sadly passed away the day after. I get my strength from her & looked on the positive. I had my cry in the doctors office, & then it became a case of ‘how do I fight this’. I had my rock, Alex, & he fought with me. I love researching things I don’t understand, so this became my new, hobby. I didn’t look for pages of doctors notes, I looked for real women going through this journey & found comfort knowing that even though I was “locked” in my home, thousands were doing the same. The biggest thing I got from it was how positive everyone was.
⠀⠀
Family & friends reached out on a daily basis. We’d have quizzes & group chats. A simple hello would lift my day, flowers in the post brought me to happy tears, & a cuddle from our French Bulldog Lola would ease the distance with family. It’s amazing how quickly the world adapted, as if everyone was more connected. ⠀⠀
I had my lumpectomy & my world opened up again when I was told they’d got all the cancer out. When I look back on this lockdown & my breast cancer journey, to me it will be filled with love, kind words, happy memories, simple pleasures & reconnections. As well as a beautiful scar. ⠀⠀
As the world opened up again, links between friends & family became distant memories. It was heartbreaking to think it was going back to the old normal, until the BLM movement reached an all time high, people came together again & my research changed to educating myself. Due to my health I was worried I wouldn’t be able to march & show my solidarity with our Black community, but for me this took a back seat. Fundamental human rights are too important. It was a strong peaceful protest.
⠀⠀
The world around us is changing, I’m holding out hope it’s for the better."
CHRISSIE MILLS & LYDIA CHAN
CHRISSIE
“As I am a key worker, I at first felt privileged to be allowed to go out to work three days a week and not feel trapped at home, however this soon wore off as the work I do is very challenging, and it soon became draining that my only social interactions outside of the house were in the workplace.
Lydia moved in with me just a few weeks before lockdown, so it was strange at first being in lockdown with a housemate you are still getting to know. Luckily we are very similar and like our own space, but also enjoy a cocktail and game of scrabble together.
Midnight is the landlady's cat, but I’ve become very close to him, and he has certainly kept me sane the last few weeks. For me, time with animals is so therapeutic during stressful times. Thankfully we have a lovely garden, another privilege during lockdown. I have spent more time in the garden the past few weeks than I have the last three years.
It feels like life has come to a standstill, and that we are all temporarily frozen in our situations, and our homes. Forced to be still, consume less, travel less, and contemplate more.”
LYDIA
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. “Lockdown hasn’t been cruel to me, it taught me a lot of things (⁎⁍̴̛ᴗ⁍̴̛⁎) - how to notice the small things like the shelf height in my room are not aligned from one wall to another (they’re not wonky, they just don’t align), and how many steps it takes to go from the front door to my room.
It’s taught me how to manage boredom, one effective way for me (I do not recommend this to everyone) is to FaceTime my sister and argue which villager is the cutest on Animal Crossing.
It also taught me to be grateful - grateful that I have a roof over my head, grateful that I have a friendly and considerate housemate, grateful that I get to witness Midnight the cat climbing through the window even though there is a cat flap lol.” .
BARRY MILLER
"Being a freelance welder & fabricator for the entertainment industry, as the lockdown started I found myself more or less out of work and with a possible three months at home having to come up with a plan.
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The plan ended up being: Sort garden, build stuff, mend stuff, and lurk in my workshop and make strange things - all of which I have done and enjoyed.
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I have also found a strange peace where a lot of things don’t seem as important anymore like what day of the week it is and what time it is. ⠀⠀
Having a garden has also come as a real bonus giving a place to just sit and relish the peace and quiet as well as the weather.
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All in all I’ve grown to like the lockdown - strange but true .
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I feel for the ones with no garden and the people with their little flats in the sky.⠀
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I feel for the families in bed sits and old ones all on their own."
CHARLOTTE WILLIAMS
"Lockdown has been both incredibly intense and incredibly freeing. The feeling of global sadness has felt so oppressive at times, like wearing a chain mail suit trying to function, whilst other times I have been lucky enough to have had time and space to do all the little activities I've never had the time to do.
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It's slowed me down, made me realise that actually, I like having 5 or 6 sit downs a day and that is more what I'm working towards now than some strange idea of 'success' as a hellishly busy work life.
Every day I think about how lucky I have been in the lockdown, just me, furloughed in a beautiful space and sometimes it makes me riddled with guilt. But sometimes, I feel I can just float along and enjoy the ride."
JOSH THEED
“I consider myself very lucky. I have a garden, which has helped make the past few months of lockdown tolerable.
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To keep myself occupied and my mind distracted I have, like many people, got stuck into some home DIY. A good podcast or audiobook while I decorate on a rainy day has been a great way to pass the time, and when the weather’s been good I have been able to go on long country walks.
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Getting out into nature is always great and never fails to lift my spirits.”
