I’m excited to share the early stages of a new collaboration with PhD researcher Sadie Rockliffe at the University of Brighton. Together, we are beginning to shape SEE SWIM, a creative health project that explores how visually impaired swimmers experience the sea and other blue spaces, and how those experiences might be translated into multi-sensory artworks.

The collaboration grew organically out of shared interests in water, access, wellbeing and sensory experience. In 2025, Sadie visited my exhibition We Are The Sea, created for World Ocean Day, which centred women’s voices and relationships with the sea along this stretch of coastline. Following that exhibition, Sadie introduced herself and spoke about her doctoral research into accessible blue spaces and open-water swimming with visual impairment. She described her hope that, once she had gathered substantial stories from visually impaired swimmers, those experiences could be explored through tactile, sensory and imaginative forms of art.

That conversation stayed with me.

Sadie’s research involves swim-along interviews with visually impaired swimmers, an embodied and relational method that captures how people navigate water through sound, touch, balance, memory and trust. These interviews reveal rich, nuanced experiences of vulnerability, freedom, fear, joy and connection. They also challenge assumptions about how the sea is perceived and who blue spaces are for.

My own practice has long been rooted in the sea, working with texture, materiality and environmental storytelling through painting, installation, assemblage, sound and experimental processes. I also bring a personal connection to this work. My brother has lived with significant sight loss since infancy following retinoblastoma, and with his consent, that lived proximity has shaped how I think about perception, access and non-visual ways of knowing. SEE SWIM feels like a natural but meaningful extension of both my artistic interests and my lived experience.

What excites me most about this collaboration is the potential to move beyond visual representation and towards something more embodied. Rather than illustrating experiences of visual impairment, SEE SWIM will explore how art can invite audiences to slow down, listen differently, touch carefully, and sense space in unfamiliar ways. We are interested in how tactile surfaces, recorded voices, underwater soundscapes, subtle light shifts and spatial design might allow people to encounter blue spaces through multiple forms of perception.

The long-term ambition is to create a fully accessible, public-facing exhibition that supports wellbeing, celebrates sensory diversity and opens up new conversations around access, health and environmental care. We are particularly interested in how creative practice can contribute to Creative Health agendas, social prescribing, and more inclusive approaches to nature connection.

Right now, this project is at an early and exciting stage. We are developing the research and artistic framework, thinking carefully about access from the outset, and exploring how research and creative practice can sit alongside each other with care and integrity. Over the coming months, this will involve deep listening, material experimentation, collaboration with accessibility specialists, and ongoing dialogue with swimmers whose experiences sit at the heart of the work.

SEE SWIM is about more than swimming or art alone. It’s about how we understand bodies, water, trust and belonging. It’s about who gets to feel at home in blue spaces, and how cultural spaces might better reflect the diversity of ways people experience the world.

There is much more to come, and I’m looking forward to sharing this journey as it unfolds.

Find out more about Sadie's project, Accessible Waters, via her website: http://accessiblewaters.co.uk

This project is currently in development. Updates will be shared here as the collaboration progresses.