On Our Doorsteps is an international programme of community engagement, creative learning and public realm commissioning. Artists Tiitu Takalo and Henna Asikainen are invited to take part in the the programme by curator Tim Harrison.
Delivered in partnership with communities in Norwich, Lancaster and Hull, On Our Doorsteps will explore the relationships that individuals and communities have with nature, landscape, local places and wider environmental issues, connecting local and global contexts.
The new works created in the three cities are co-commissioned and presented with Norfolk and Norwich Festival, Lancaster Arts and Freedom Festival (Hull). These partners bring a wealth of expertise in the creation of contemporary arts projects and in participatory co-production practices. They are also committed to addressing with urgent environmental issues in the themes of the work they support and the methods employed to deliver their programmes.
Artists
On Our Doorsteps is a collaboration between artists from Finland and the UK, who will work together and with local communities to develop new public realm commissions. The artists are:
Henna Asikainen is concerned with humans’ complex relationship with nature and its intersections with social justice, climate justice, migration and notions of belonging. Her practice often revolves around participation with people who have a lived experience of displacement and of seeking sanctuary. These participatory projects explore ecological and social issues through communal experiences within rural landscapes and examine issues such the importance of access to nature and green spaces and how a sense of homelessness – of not belonging – is produced through exclusion.
Tiitu Takalo is a Finnish artist originating from Tampere. She is a feminist, comic artist, illustrator and visual artist. She has eight published graphic novels to date, some of which have been translated from Finnish into other languages such as English, French, Hungarian, Polish, Spanish and Swedish. Her work often deals with connections between individuals, community and place. She has also self-published numerous zines, and her comics have featured in various small-press publications and anthologies.
Breakwater is a London-based Korean diaspora artists duo of Youngsook Choi and Taey Iohe. With a mutual interest in counter-narratives of ancestral/indigenous knowledge and queer methodologies, Breakwater’s practice centres around the socio-politics of neo/colonialism, climate justice, and migrants’ lived experiences. Breakwater is the recipient of ACE project grant (2020-2022) for the diaspora healing project Becoming Forest which proposes mental health as a collective responsibility and adopts a folk healing approach of engaging seasons and nature as critical healers.
Zakiya Mackenzie is a journalist, academic and writer. She is a PhD candidate with the Leverhulme Trust-supported Caribbean Literary Heritage project at the University of Exeter researching Black British journalism in the post-war period and was the 2019 writer-in-residence for Forestry England. In Bristol, she was 2017 Black and Green Ambassador and is a volunteer at Ujima Community Radio station. She regularly leads nature, art and writing workshops, including one on Caribbean storytelling for primary schools.
