24 Hours to Go:

There is something rather strange about reaching the day before something you have spent months imagining.

Tomorrow morning, I will walk into Lighthouse Poole and the first Not Dead Yet? residency will begin.

And writing that feels quite extraordinary.

Until now, so much of this project has existed in conversations, emails, funding applications, spreadsheets, meetings, social media posts, notebooks and, very often, inside my own head.

Tomorrow it becomes a room full of people.

Artists, ideas, materials, conversation, and possibility.

Throughout today, I'll be introducing some of the people who are going to make the first Not Dead Yet? residency what it is. Keep an eye out on our socials!

You'll meet the artists and creatives joining me — the people bringing their own creative practices, ideas, perspectives and lived experiences into the room.

But they're not the only people I'd like you to meet.

I'll also be introducing:

Their involvement is important.

Not Dead Yet? is asking people to bring their creativity into a space that is also rooted in lived experience.

I want us to be able to explore that honestly, while recognising that sometimes the things we uncover through making art can take us somewhere unexpected.

So care, consent and emotional wellbeing aren't extras we've added around the edges of the residency.

They're part of how we're approaching the work. And so is documenting what happens; not simply photographing finished pieces, but capturing something of the conversations, experimentation, collaboration and creative process that gets us there.

I've spent months telling you about my vision for Not Dead Yet?

Today, I'd like you to meet the people who are going to help turn that vision into something real.

Keep an eye on our social media throughout the day, there are quite a few introductions to make…

I created Not Dead Yet? because I wanted to make space for a different conversation about incurable cancer. Not simply: How are you being treated?

I wanted to create room for these questions too:

◊ How are you living?

◊ What are you making?

◊ What are you thinking about?

◊ What makes you laugh?

◊ What frustrates you?

◊ What do you want people to understand?

◊ What do you still want to create?

Because an incurable diagnosis changes many things, but it does not remove our creativity, curiosity, humour, ambition or capacity to contribute. We are still here, and we are still living.

Over the next three days, we will come together at Lighthouse Poole.

We won't be arriving with an exhibition already designed or knowing precisely what the finished work will look like.

Instead, we are beginning with each other. We will talk, listen, write, make, and experiment.

We will explore ideas individually and collaboratively, and we'll see what happens.

That uncertainty feels important, and reflects our lives as people living with incurable cancer.

Creative collaboration shouldn't begin with somebody already knowing the answer. It begins with curiosity.

I've spent months organising this.

There have been applications and schedules, funding applications and crowdfunding, emails, meetings, shopping lists, safeguarding, accessibility, photography, cups of tea to organise and approximately four thousand things I have probably forgotten existed until somebody reminds me.

But beneath all of that administration is something beautifully simple.

Tomorrow, people are going to sit around a table together and create. That's the bit I've been waiting for.

Not Dead Yet? was never meant to be something I made alone. It was always supposed to become ours, and tomorrow, that begins.

I don't know exactly what will emerge from these three days, I don't think any of us should. What I hope is that people leave having made connections, discovered possibilities and perhaps found new ways of expressing experiences that aren't always easy to put into ordinary language.

And I hope this residency becomes the beginning of something much bigger, an exhibition will follow, then, if we can build the partnerships and secure the funding, I want the work to travel, I want more artists involved, more conversations, more opportunities for people living with incurable cancer, and those whose lives are shaped by it, to be represented in our cultural spaces not simply as patients, carers or stories of illness, but as artists, thinkers, makers and people with something to say.

But that's tomorrow's tomorrow.

The materials are almost packed, the tea and coffee are being organised, the artists are coming, and after months of talking about Not Dead Yet?, tomorrow we finally begin making it.

The fundraising doesn't stop, the crowdfunding page is still open to receive your pledges. At the time of writing the fund stands at £280, this is covering all of the artist's travel expenses, tea, coffee, and basic refreshments for the three days, with some money left to cover unexpected expenses or materials.

The crowdfunding campaign offers small rewards to those who pledge their support, although the one thing that is unconditional is my personal unending gratitude to everyone who has given money, and also to everyone who has shared my social media posts about the project and the fundraising, every person who has spent time listening to me and my ideas, and every person who has become a cheerleader for the project. Thank you, truly form the bottom of my heart.

Thank you for believing in the power of art to change conversations, challenge assumptions and connect people through shared humanity.