About

As a Walking Artist, Researcher and Mountain Leader, I am an advocate for engagement with the outdoors through creativity. My work as both artist and facilitator aims to explore human relationships with what we understand as nature and find new ways of connecting with those wilder places in the outdoors.

As an artist-researcher (PhD candidate at Nottingham Trent University), I work outside in those spaces which facilitate greater exchange with the nonhuman. I adopt a slower pace and invite a receptivity to lived experience, hoping to share what I find through my work. I take an adaptive approach to making and employ experimental approaches to walking, documenting and sharing.

As a facilitator, I run workshops exploring art, walking, and the outdoors, as well as offering my services more generally as a Mountain Leader. I have experience in working with diverse groups including adults, children and various community groups. As a qualified Mountain Leader, I can facilitate more adventurous workshops in the outdoors, introducing creative approaches to engaging with and seeing these wilder places.

I can tailor workshops and activities to different requirements and have previously run workshops with Backlit Gallery, University of Loughborough SU, Wonderful Wild Women, Lakeland Arts, Brewery Arts, and Kendal Mountain Festival, as well as independent workshops. Examples of workshops I am able to offer include:

Seasonal walking and drawing workshops
Sensory drawing
Wild drawing 
Nature journaling and wellbeing
Journal-making and bookbinding
Experimental observational drawing



Contact: jessemsleyart@gmail.com