Telling the Truth About My Niche Fears Has Enabled Me to Embrace My Niche. My MUM IS WHITE: exorcising 'half-caste' fears.
First I would like to apologise for missing 2 weeks and a day — internet was shocking on Pelee Island so I gave up and gave it a break.
Second I would like you to know I also write on Reddit at R/Mymumiswhite and Typeshare as me. Both are practise for my newsletter.
June 29th 2025
This is what I admitted on Typeshare where I am practising newsletter writing and trying to encourage people to respond. https://typeshare.co/aphorism-bardess-4193
I Always Think People Are Not Interested in Me. And My Niche Causes People to Recoil. I Don't Want to Teach Any More. I Want to Walk into My Art.
Over 23 years I have developed 3 surefire creativity techniques. 12-words. 8-stations. 4-dimensions. But I don't think I can actually teach them to anyone. Even if I want to.
I've just done a residency on an Island on a lake 1.30 hours from shore. How big is that lake? There is a co-op, sells saddles, pipes, beans, chocolate. You know the type. There are 3 bars with food. Budget burger. Burger with salad. Charcuterie with their own wine. I have a bike. I feel like Dorothy as I ride the 5 or 6km to my mosquito infested log cabin every day. And the 7mins to the shower in the morning. It is here I do my 12-word workshops. It is amazing. But what I realise is, they'll probably never use it again, because it's me who is the silver dollar. I fizzle. I touch. I ask the big questions.
What makes you happy?
The object you see when I say that.
12 things you associate with that object.
You have 15 minutes to write. You must include original title. Object. 12 associations. Subtitle: what is the purpose of my life? Silence. Except for pens running across the page. I join in. I sit down. I write too. Our conversation satisfies a psychologist. A pilot. A cellist. A Papua New Guinea rapper. A young blonde arts admin. A visual artist. A white woman brought up with Innuits for the first 14 years of her life. Me. A mixed-race first nation novelist. His wife. A librarian.
Our second session is:
The best moment of your life.
Object?
12 associations?
What will you think on your deathbed?
Immense questions. Beautiful writing. Beautiful big questions. Everyone is engaged. Race alienates people. 21.08.25 I will be asking 8 UK mixed-race creative and cultural practitioners to share their memoirs using 12-words. But what if I don't come from the angle of colour? What if I come from the angle of big questions? Ones we all ponder. Like me and the visual artist under the strawberry moon on the lake shore. And the campfire stories of the remedies the full first nation person's people made with their wild strawberry harvest.. What if I stop trading in pain and start trading in beauty?
I struggle on Pelee Island to have internet connection. I'm grateful now. It cut me off from my trajectory. I am fully committing to 30 days writing as I work out what my precious residency, MY MUM IS WHITE: exorcising half-caste ghosts in HOME art gallery, should entail. I will definitely be using 12 words to access our memoirs. I will definitely be transforming them into 8-station mind-maps, chalk on dark walls.
I want to create a succinct package I can practise across the world. I don't think I want to be a teacher. I want to be an artist who shines.
Telling the Truth About My Niche Fears Has Enabled Me to Embrace My Niche. My MUM IS WHITE: exorcising 'half-caste' fears.
Jun 30, 2025
So after writing the last post, my inaugural post: I Always Think People Are Not Interested. My Niche, Race, Causes People to Recoil — I then apply for a residency.
Before I admitted my truth about people recoiling from race conversations, I couldn't inhabit my niche. Admitting it publicly has paradoxically freed me of it.
My residency application artist statement.
Difference I want to make.
UK. Systemic caste. Mixed-race, ‘half-caste’, are overrepresented on the child protection register, care system, youth justice system, most at risk of mental health problems. As a mixed-race playwright, archaeologist, visual and performance artist, I untangle and process this.
Ideas and experiences that led to this point?
1759. My white mum is dragged to a nunnery. My black dad lynched. I die on a hillside. 1859. My white dad retires to his bedchamber. My half siblings attend a soiree. I clean their house. I am born in 1959. People spit in my pram. I think my mum is exaggerating.
2017. Until, I film the memoirs of Reno Regulars — my teenage cellar club in Moss Side, Manchester, where half-caste is a badge of honour — loads of 'half-caste' say the same.
2024. Analysing caste with psychologist mixed-race Adam Danquah in 8 x 2 hours we unearth shame. Aged 9, if Adam opens his council house door his brown body will unleash shame on his white mum. Aged 55 in my mum’s care home Xmas party, mine and my sisters’ brown bodies unleash shame on my poor old white mum.
2024. Factory International. ‘In the Ruins of the Big House’. Using my mum’s status, descending candlelit Bette Davis stairs in a bespoke £2000 denim ball gown, I declare myself the mistress of the Jamaican plantation my enslaved dad descends from. My immune system fights the caste poison. I feel equal. I belong.
Immunising others to affect change.
2025. HOME Gallery. 21.08.25 — 21.09.25. ‘My Mum is White: exorcising ‘half-caste’ ghosts’. 8 mixed-race creative and cultural practitioners.
Professor Danquah University of Manchester clinical psychologist
Whitworth Gallery curator
Embodied grief counsellor.
Freelance choreographer
Factory International community manager and their community connector.
Manchester Museum’s head of external relationships
UK universities’ equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) compliance officer
We’ll generate individual memoirs. The group unpacks. I’ll transform all into 16 x 64 feet square 8-station mind-maps. A forest. In which we exorcise our ghosts. Example. ‘Half-caste’ PC’s white mum takes them to 1960s Ancoats where no black bastards live. Daily, PC fights. Special unit. Borstal. Prison. Probation. PC unpacks in 3 Reno memoirs. His big brother devises our Whitworth Gallery exhibition. Is hospitalised 3 times with mental health. Professor Danquah, presenting as the mixed-race, council estate boy with internal reference points, could have helped them.
Danquah, ‘I am incapable of impacting anyone without embodying my true identity.’
I and my recruits allow ourselves to be falsely identified as black, denying our mum is white, never engaging with our practise as our true self, impacting our mental health.
This philosophy is shaping our project. The team are all mixed-race. Funded by Art’s Council England.
And furthermore, even while shopping, I realise there must be millions of us in the world who never get to voice how this feels. My niche concern is a total necessity.
Image. Pixabay. kdj71190.
Figure 1. I ask the question what makes me happy.
Figure 2. I arrive at I want to be an artist that shines.