Katy Connor

PRACTICES OF COMMUNITY GROWING

For six months, during the cold, wet Autumn and Winter, I worked with ten residents of St Anne’s, Bristol to explore what a community-led hydroponics system might look like.

Over the six workshops of this community growing project, we explored easy, low-tech ways to use hydroponics at home such as sprouting and Kratky jars, through to setting up a small and medium-sized system in a community setting at BRICKS, St Anne’s House.  

We also made a ZINE!

These workshops considered what it means to grow Hopeful and Generous Food Futures. A generous city is regenerative and redistributive, working like an ecosystem to replace and restore what it extracts. In our discussions, we prioritised abundance over scarcity, reciprocity over extractivism, collaboration over competition, citizen over consumer, and interdependence over separatism.

We held participant conversations around what a “generous food city” looks like, alongside co-design hydroponic workshops and community dinners. Sprouting jars and the Kratky pots enabled participants to continue their learning at home and share knowledge (and pictures of lunches) with their peers over WhatsApp.

The sessions also included a visit to a commercial hydroponics system, LettUs Grow, within the context of learning hydroponic growing at a range of scales.  

This project is a collaboration between Katy Connor, artist and researcher, Georgia Bate, Bricks St Anne’s, Chloe Meineck social designer, and Liz Roberts, UWE.

Creative Economies Lab

Bristol + Bath Creative R+D

My World

A series of creative workshops with Year 3 pupils at Whitehall Primary School, Bristol: introducing an array of creative design methods and technologies for STE[A]M week.

90 children produced design sheets for growing their favourite fruits and vegetables, exploring hydroponics, robotics and microbial fuel cells. Following this, they crafted individual 3D systems using recycled materials.

Led by Katy Connor, with artist Rachael Nee and Daniel Gosden, PhD student at Bristol Robotics Lab. These workshops were funded through Robotany: an EPSRC IAA collaborative project (2021-22).

“Living well with technologies” Brigstow Institute, University of Bristol

This project explored how arts research can bring new insights to lab-based practices of cell culture, in particular to the practices of culturing red blood cells.

As an artist, working together with Dr Ash Toye (Director of NHSBT and Synthetic Biology Research Centre), Dr Maria Fannin (Human Geography) and Prof Julie Kent (Sociology of Health Technologies UWE), we asked how this interdisciplinary collaboration might lead to a better understanding of these technological transformations, on it means to be human, and what it means to be biological?

Through a range of public events, exhibitions, talks and journal articles, we invited participants and audiences to consider how we might live well with blood culture - as technologies of living substance.

Corresponding to Brigstow Institute’s theme “living well with technologies,” our project placed this groundbreaking scientific research within a wider frame of arts, humanities, social science and philosophical enquiry.

Exhibitions and events include:

Art in the Anthropocene, Dublin (2019)

Pint of Science, Bristol (2019)

Blood Culture, Stockholm University (2018)

We The Curious, Bristol (2018)

Art of Engineering, London Science Museum (2018)

Creative Reactions, Hamilton House, Bristol (2018)

Becoming Image, Medicine and the Algorithmic Gaze, UCL London (2018)

Brigstow Showcase, The Station, Bristol (2017)

Deconstructing Donation, Sociology Conference (2017)

OPEN studios, Spike Island, Bristol (2017)

Konteksty Festival, Sokołowsko Poland (2017)

KLAS: Max Planck Institute, Potsdam, Germany (2017)

Journal Articles:

Reimag(in)ing Life at a Cellular Scale, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews

NanoEthics of Artist Research

Art Machina was a research and development project in schools across Devon with DAISI (2016-18).

I worked in Newton Abbot, Ilfracombe and Paignton with artists, teachers and young people. Here we explored each school environment as a sense of place, introducing children to satellite imaging technologies as navigational tools and visual mirrors; revealing birds-eye perspectives over local and global terrain.

In combination with experimental methods of GPS drawing, together we made satellite models, large-scale maps and glow-in-the dark paintings.

These child-centred activities generated multiple questions and conversations with many young people in both primary (reception, years 1, 5) and secondary settings. By working with headteachers through DAISI, the project has contributed to sustainable models of creative practice in further schools across the region.

“I like the way Katy works, she is very allowing. If I have an idea she lets me try it out.”

Young person (9 years) from the published evaluation for Arts Council England

Working with a group of young women, residents at St Basil’s Birmingham we covered a wide range of skills in camera work, animation, scriptwriting, editing and sound recording.

‘Before I Could Remember’ is the result of their hard work - a short experimental documentary. This five minute film explores themes of childhood and memory, through a collage of images and whispered voice-overs. Working with musicians Sam Owen and Max Simpson, the young women also composed the film’s original soundtrack.

The film was shortlisted for Best Film in the national First Light Movies Awards, 2007.

An arts consultation I led with patients, young people and communities of care in North Staffordshire. Research methods included co-design workshops and participatory videos in sure start centres, elderly care homes, Polish day-care, and with young people with diabetes.

The project considered multiple impacts of assistive medical technologies on participant's healthcare and community life.

In line with the imminent revolution in the NHS and the target of ‘increased connectivity’ for patients and health care professionals by 2008, this project specifically called for an artist to consider the practical application of modern technologies in medical, healthcare and domestic contexts. Funded by The Arts Council, and produced in partnership with North Staffordshire Health Authority, Keele University and Medilink WM.

First presented to delegates at the Remote Diagnostics Conference at Keele University (2006) the ‘Creative Innovator’ DVD was distributed to professionals in health and educational contexts.

Collaborating as part of a team of 'artist provocateurs' across city schools, we enabled young people to map and document their environments, interview their teachers and peers, and design fundamental changes to the fabric of their schools. As an illustrated report and DVD video, their creative visions were integral to Birmingham City Council's programme for Building Schools for the Future (2006).

“I’m making a relaxing area in my future dream school. When people feel stressed out they can just come and cool down in there” Natalie