We Live Here was created by me, Tim Harrison, in 2023. I am an independent arts producer, curator and consultant and my work places contemporary arts practice at the heart of urgent social issues. I am particularly interested in Arts & Health, Arts & Ecology and community-based co-production. My practice is rooted in cross-sectoral collaboration, social responsibility and a commitment to embracing diverse perspectives. I have worked across performance, visual arts, digital, literature and public realm projects. 

 

I’m interested in work that connects deeply with people outside of traditional arts venues that can seem very like a distant world for many. I’m interested in how artists can learn from and be part of popular culture and wonder how we might deploy some of the strategies of mass media in order to increase the vividness, reach and impact of our work. Many of my project are also rooted in conversation, nurturing and then sharing direct personal interactions between people who might not otherwise meet.

 

As a kid I was rather socially awkward and often struggled to connect and find a sense of value within the usual social groups. As an adult this continued through periods of poor mental health. Throughout, nature provided me with a vital anchor, a place to feel myself and to experience great wonder and possibility. My experience of nature proposed alternative ways of connecting with the world beyond my own body and mind. It taught me practical things, scientific things, it taught me about beauty and about something deeper about my sense of identification and belonging in the world. It also gave me a space in which social connections could be fun and easy. I was lucky to grow up with nature on my doorstep and greatly missed that experience when I lived in cities as an adult.

 

I think that everyone, irrespective of social & economic background, race, disability or gender should have access to what I found in nature if they want it. In communities across the UK and around the world, people find many different ways of exploring and articulating their rich and complex relationships with the natural world. At a point when Western approaches to nature are threatening the natural landscapes around us, the biodiversity of the planet and our own continued survival, we have much to learn as we reimagine new relationships between people and our planet, locally and globally. Through We Live Here, I want to work with artists to find new ways of accessing, experiencing and knowing  nature, landscapes and the other organisms with which we share the world.