In January 2023 I started a conversations project during my residency at Applecart Arts. I sit down and have a conversation of approximately one hour with someone I am interested to have a conversation with. Whilst there might be particular things I am interested in, I don’t have questions planned in advance and what happens is organic. Whilst we talk, I paint. What I share here is the painted/drawn outcome of the conversation. Afterwards, I write up my reflections which come from the conversation. Then, they go into my gallery of conversations, which you have found yourself in here…
Stephen Timms is my local MP, for East Ham, a position he’s held since 1994. I thought he would be a great person to talk to as he’s obviously very involved in community life around Applecart, so I emailed him explaining a bit about me and if he was up for a chat. I actually also found out after contacting him that he’s a patron of Applecart.
So, we met during his lunch break. I felt more nervous beforehand, I think because I was thinking about him as a politician rather than another human I’d be having a conversation with. I found it harder to imagine the conversation flowing easily. It makes me think of something I’ve learnt through Nonviolent Communication and how when we see people as a label, even people really close to us, we can lose contact with them as a human. Even if the label is really positive! Helpful/ rude/ late/ bad listener/ traffic warden/ old/ gay/ smart… Whatever it is, if we see the label more than the individual, we might find it harder to connect. I realised I thought it was pointless asking the simple questions I might start with, I think because I either thought the answer should be obvious and he might be sick of being asked the same things.
When he arrived, he was with someone (an NHS podiatrist) who was interested in spending a day with Stephen to see what his job is like. It’s something you can apply to do through Stephen’s website. I guess this ended up being the first three-person painting conversation!
Stephen asked me lots of questions about me, why I was at Applecart, how I became an artist and the other work I’m doing. I like being asked questions like that, especially as he seemed genuinely interested in the answers. I imagined that he was using the opportunity to get to know one of his constituents and that he probably often does that with people he meets as understanding the people in your community must be an important part of the job.
When I’m talking, I find it very difficult to do any painting. So I asked Stephen to tell me about himself and how he came to work in this area (he’s not originally from London). He told me about his career as a politician so far, his long-running work towards the international station in Stratford and how that helped lead to the Olympics being held there in 2012. We also talked about what it’s like to be MP for such a diverse constituency, which apparently some claim as the most diverse in the world (he also said he didn’t know how anyone would prove it) and what can be the opportunities and challenges. We also talked about migration to Newham from Singapore, Bangladesh, India and other parts of South Asia. Rizwan described how his grandad moved in 1960 and worked in a few different jobs, including the Ford factory in Dagenham and then gradually other family members moved over.
I’ve had a few opportunities recently to speak to people who have lived in the area for decades and I really like hearing about it from people who have been around longer and hearing about what has and hasn’t changed. I like stories. I like learning about the local personal histories as it helps me understand more and feel more connected to my community.
Something Stephen described as special about the borough of Newham is how groups of people come together to spend time together, in a way that might not happen so much in other parts of London. Particularly in mosques and temples. I could also relate to this, as over the past year (in no small part because of my time at Applecart) I have got more involved in the community and I have realised how much is on offer near to me. Community gardens, workshops, litter picks, markets and much more.
This got me thinking about the idea of coregulating, which is that we can, together with others, do activities which help soothe our nervous systems as, alongside others, we receive messages telling us that we are safe. It might be that you do some of these activities already; some yoga classes, drumming, types of dances, meditating with others, being in a choir. In our culture we often don’t understand what benefits there are to these activities so we don’t do them so much. I think generally there is a pressure to be more independent/individuals rather than acknowledge that we need each other. It made me wonder whether there are more of these types of activities going on in Newham, especially as there are more people from the global south, where these practices may be more ingrained in culture.
If you’d like to find out more about Stephen’s work, you can go to his website here.