A PhD Curatorial Research Project
Part 1: ‘The Meet Me Caravan Tour’ (2023)
A collaborative project with older Lewisham residents from Meet Me at the Albany, local artists, Bernadette Russell & Barbara Majek, volunteers and staff from the Albany Arts Centre & Entelechy Arts. Together we produced a storytelling tour and immersive audio-installation as part of Deptford X Festival.
This intergenerational, cross-cultural public realm project forms the curatorial practice element of my PhD research on art and migration at the University of Derby.
The elders were invited to share a story from their lives, families, fiction or folklore. We toured together in the caravan to different green sites & spaces in the urban area of Deptford.. Luxmore Gardens, Fordham Park, Creekside and the Albany Garden.
People came to join us under the Harvest Moon to share food, song & stories. We gathered around a fire and listened to the elders speak of childhood memories, legends & fables, travel yarns, ghost stories & tales of the otherworldly.
Listen to the group’s stories here
‘I enjoyed the group work.. learning to make different things, lovely group togetherness, sharing, having a good laugh.. and time‘
Moira, Meet Me member
‘We just didn’t know what to expect, but it was so good to get out, meet new people and even get to spend time in the lovely caravan..’
Pauline, Meet Me member
‘People might not know about these things.. so I thought I’d share.
I didn’t know whether people would want to listen. But they did!’
Jim, Meet Me member
‘It was all very heartening for me.. storytelling as resistance- resistance to being erased, silenced, ignored, unheard, storytelling as an act of self care, saying I matter, my stories matter, storytelling as an act of joy- the mischievous lark of it all’
Bernadette, storytelling artist
The project aimed to create spaces for diasporic elders to share and preserve their stories, to amplify their voices, engage with local sites, local ecologies and complex histories and to bring visibility to Meet Me and to the lives of older people in public space.
This curatorial project was followed by
‘Stories Across Borders’ (2025)
a collaboration in Derby City Centre with Artcore UK
Stories Across Borders was born out of my long term relationship with Meet Me at the Albany. Collaborative projects include The Great Escape (2019) two daytime ‘camping’ trips to Greenwich Park, and Meet Me on the Radio (2020-2022), where members shared everyday stories, migration tales, music and laughter on air during lockdown.
Part of Deptford X ‘23 Core Programme 25th anniversary events and the Albany programme
CARAVAN ARTS 