From self-loathing towards universal love throughcreativity, connection and compassionate changemaking.
For many years, trauma and self-loathing shaped how I saw myself. Beauty was something I searched for, gradually discovering it within myself and the world around me. Through poetry, painting, music, performance and other forms of creative expression, I began reclaiming my voice, my body and my relationship with myself. This continuing journey of healing, self-love and becoming shapes my artivism, including my response to violence against women and girls.
Like the lotus, rooted in mud and blossoming through darkness towards the light, my life has unfolded through embracing difficult experiences and discovering their possibilities for growth, beauty and renewal. Creativity, the wisdom of children, encounters with nature, movement between countries and cultures, spiritual enquiry, education, friendship and collaboration have nurtured my growing recognition of our shared belonging.
I believe every person, every place and the living Earth hold innate wisdom and the capacity to flourish. Like healthy soil, we blossom when conditions for belonging, participation, reciprocity and hope are cultivated.
This belief lives within my evolving interdisciplinary life-practice of Self ↔ Oneness ↔ Earth, grounded in the remembrance that we are all one.
Through creative expression, embodied practice and self-enquiry, I explore the relationship between presence, identity, body, voice and self-love. Through compassion, shared experience and relationship, I explore our interconnectedness. Through participatory arts, education, ecological enquiry and collaborative action, I work alongside others to cultivate conditions in which innate wisdom, creativity and collective agency can flourish.
My artistic, educational, contemplative, ecological and research practices are interconnected expressions of one evolving enquiry into how we might know, be and do differently when we remember our belonging to ourselves, one another and the living Earth.
As Founder and CEO of eduSOIL CIC, Regional Director for Design for Change partnerships across Northern Ireland, South Africa and Sudan, and Visiting Scholar at Queen’s University Belfast, I bring this enquiry into creative, educational, community and research collaborations. Since 2011, my work has reached approximately 19,500 people across 13 countries, particularly children, young people and underserved communities.
Through art, learning, embodied practice and collaboration, I create opportunities for individuals and communities to discover their own beauty and creative potential, deepen belonging, and transform connection into meaningful, compassionate action.
Connecting hearts, heads and hands.
