Artist Jacqui Rolls working at Furzey Gardens Photographer Nick Carter

In  2019, I was awarded a Talent Development grant from a space’ arts, this support enabled me to undertake my first supported artist in residence and gave me the confidence to explore further.

I had approached Emma the then community manager at Furzey Gardens owned by the Minstead Trust to propose the idea of me spending time at the wonderful gardens to create site-specific responses and explorations using materials from the site

The residency in the gardens would be undertaken for a period of 1 year with me being on site 1 – 2 days a week depending on my other work commitments. (at the time I was still working part-time as a community working alongside running my own art business.)

The trust kindly agreed to provide me support in kind with Emma acting as liaison and advice provided by the gardeners and staff.  For more details https://www.minsteadtrust.org.uk/furzey-gardens/about-us/

The award provided by a-space arts funded a mentor and photographer to help me to record the experience and equally importantly support from the organization itself and occasional meetings with the other award winners. For more details .aspace arts 

The residency took place between September and April of 2020 -1 and was cut short by the first lockdown so unfortunately, I was unable to resume it as the trust needed to be very careful about visitors because of their duty of care to their vulnerable supported users who live on site.

During my time there I kept a record of my experience for my details visit my blog