5pm – 9pm

The Conan Doyle Collection has recently received Arts Council funding to develop a project called The Detectives. Using this vast and wonderful collection as a tool, we will be providing opportunities for Detectives – people with learning difficulties, disabilities, people with a history of substance misuse or mental health – who are looking for work, to engage with artists and the Collection to gain work based skills. The Collection holds approximately 40,000 archives and we would like a selection of these archives to form the basis of this projection based project. We have a laser projector set up in the Menuhin Theatre in the Central Library, Portsmouth, and we would like to explore the possibilities of this equipment, such as creating a Pepper’s Ghost or other creative light ‘experience’ with Detectives being involved right at the beginning of the journey. This project also coincides with the 137^th anniversary of a Study in Scarlet – the first Sherlock Holmes novel, written in Portsmouth, published on the 22 November.

Detectives are involved in every aspect of this project that suit each individual Detective, they are working with the artist, researching the collection, planning marketing and evaluation as well as hosting during the event – the Detectives will be involved at every level and supported by the artist and staff at every stage of the process.

All workshops and the final products need to be truly accessible for Detectives and our wider family audiences, to entertain, educate and promote the Conan Doyle Collection.

Artist Bio:

I am a visual artist based in London. My practice is influenced by my background in architecture, heritage, community development and music, and incorporates drawing, intaglio printmaking, painting, photography, moving image, sound, projection and installation. My work has been presented in galleries, churches, theatres, concert halls, museums, historic buildings and outdoors.

I work in locations across the UK. Recent commissions include Funnel Vision, a moving image projection onto a ventilation shaft in Clay Cross, Derbyshire, celebrating the town investment plan (September 2021) and Emergence, a drawing on panel installation in the grounds of Llanthony Secunda Priory in Gloucester (December 2020).

I regularly collaborate with other practitioners, including Different Light Collective, most recently in Clay Cross and Spilsby, Lincolnshire, and pianist John Reid and tenor Nicholas Mulroy for a Concerts in the West tour in Somerset. I often run workshops in the local community as part of the development of projects.

My work has been awarded The Open West Curators Award and the Curat10n Progressive Art Prize.  I have exhibited at The Mall Galleries, Hackney Museum, MK Gallery, Tower Bridge, Phoenix Brighton, Parallax Art Fair, Hundred Years Gallery, Tent London, Safe House Peckham and Kulturgatan Sweden. Commissions include New Work at Newark Park and The Wilson, Cheltenham, Light Waves for Transported at St Botolph’s Boston, Shadow Play at St Andrew’s Leasingham for Altered, Constellations and Portal for Spilsby Light Night and Glimmer for GLOW at Eastbury Manor House. I have been artist in residence at Meantime Project-Space in Cheltenham, creating North Place, and The Crypt Gallery in London, exhibiting Fallout.