29 February  2026

I am Artist in Residence in Swaffham until March 2027. The brief is simple and ambitious: work with children and young people to celebrate the town’s heritage and inspire futures.

Swaffham is a rural market town. One of the first things I noticed when I began visiting in winter 2025 was where are the kids? On my first few visits, there were barely any children or teenagers around town. I stopped a few teenagers and asked them directly: Where do you hang out? What do you do?

“The rec,” they said sometimes. But there are no lights there, so it doesn’t feel safe. “ASDA,” they said. It’s lit up, so it feels safer. But then adults assume they’re up to no good.

Some of them don’t live near the town centre. They rely on buses or lifts. There are a few youth groups, which I’ve been visiting, but there’s no longer a dedicated youth club. That’s something I’ve seen across the country: youth provision disappearing as councils struggle financially.

And yet these young people are our future. Many are isolated at home.

I relate to that. I grew up in a lone house amongst fields on the Welsh borders. No friends nearby. Just an overactive imagination, an unconventional family of antique dealers, a few very badly behaved animals who had a habit of impregnating the neighbours’ livestock, which did little for community relations, and strange objects scattered around the garden: a stuffed donkey, an old telephone box, that sort of thing. Think The Dingles from Emmerdale meets a rural Shameless.

I know what rural isolation feels like. I also know how powerful imagination can be when it’s given space. The young people I’ve met in Swaffham are not apathetic. They have ideas. Opinions. Sharp observations. They are funny. Thoughtful. Politically aware. But they feel written off. They say adults assume they’re lazy, or just on their phones. When they gather in groups, they’re often demonised.

They don’t need telling what’s wrong with them. They need someone to listen.

What has also struck me is how many generous, committed, interesting adults I’ve met in Swaffham. People who care deeply about their town. It made me think of the story of the Swaffham Pedlar.

The pedlar dreams there is treasure to be found in London. He travels all that way, only to be told by a stranger that the treasure is back in Swaffham, under his own doorstep. He returns home and finds it there.

We tell that story as folklore. But what if the treasure is the people?

The young people are interesting. The adults are interesting. The question is: how do we get them to listen to each other?

Part of my approach is to reverse the power dynamic. Instead of adults deciding what young people need, what happens if we ask them? What happens if we co-create? If youth voice genuinely shaped decision-making, would so many youth centres have closed?

I cannot solve rural isolation. I cannot reverse the closure of services or fix systemic underfunding. But I can create spaces where young people feel heard. Where their voices matter. Where engagement is not a tick-box consultation exercise but playful, creative and slightly subversive.

We play. We make. We poke fun at the system. We imagine alternatives.

Because Swaffham is rural, engaging young people has been harder. After school, they disappear. They don’t necessarily hang around town. So I’m going to them. I’m continuing to work with existing youth groups. I’m spending a week at The Nicholas Hamond Academy, delivering assemblies to each year group. (I’ve performed in some tough comedy clubs in my time, but this may be my hardest gig yet!)

Alongside assemblies, I’m running focus groups and workshops across different age groups. We’ll play. We’ll listen. We’ll test ideas. Some ideas have already emerged from the residency, but I don’t want to impose them. I want to see what sticks. What they actually want.

In May, I’ll be under the Buttercross in the centre of Swaffham for three days with a listening booth. It will look a bit like a lemonade stand. Over those three days it will evolve, decorated by young people, collecting their dreams, frustrations and visions for the town.

What if young people became tour guides for adults? What if they showed us the places that matter to them, the spaces they avoid, the stories they carry? What if they told us what they see when they look at Swaffham and what they want it to become?

Listening isn’t smiling politely and then carrying on as planned. Co-creation isn’t a colourful Post-it exercise. In my work, it means young people shape the piece with me. They influence what it becomes.

But this isn’t just about art. The same principle should apply beyond the rehearsal room. Politics and decision-making can feel completely inaccessible to young people. Council meetings often look like rooms full of well-meaning, middle-aged people speaking a language that doesn’t invite anyone new in. It’s hardly surprising teenagers don’t see themselves there.

The story of the Swaffham Pedlar is about travelling far in search of something valuable, only to discover it was close to home all along. In public life, we can sometimes overlook the knowledge already present in the people who live here, especially young people who experience the town in ways adults no longer do.

I’m an outsider in Swaffham. I don’t arrive with the answers. What I can do is create space for those voices to surface and be heard in different ways. If this residency becomes even a small bridge between generations, then happy days!

I was going to end with…. If this residency becomes even a small bridge between generations……then that would mean I found the treasure too….but I did a little sick in my mouth, let’s hope nothing cheesy like that comes out when I’m taking high school assembly.