Everything begins with a conversation. This guiding principle is central to my practice as a socially engaged artist, but at With For About (2024), it takes on new urgency. Organised by Heart of Glass and hosted at Shakespeare North Playhouse, Prescot, this conference transforms dialogue into action, creating a space where artists, activists, and communities exchange stories, ideas, and perspectives.
And yet, the conference’s theme, When Words Fail, lingers like a challenge. What happens when language proves insufficient? At With For About, answers don’t come in grand declarations but in fragments: shared stories, moments of pause, and even silence. Together, these pieces form a collective mosaic, reflecting the complexities and possibilities of socially engaged practice.
For me, the conference begins outside the grand glass façade of Shakespeare North. It’s a crisp October day, and the drive to the theatre is quiet, punctuated by the sounds of passing buses, shifting crowds, and voices coming and going. The building nestles beside Prescot Parish Church, an old haunt from my childhood. Sure enough, I see teenagers passing their time by the old stone wall. I wonder if any of them, like me at their age, have developed a morbid fascination with the graveyard, reading the names of people long forgotten.
Growing up, there wasn’t much in Prescot for someone like me; a mixed-heritage working-class kid with a passion for the arts. No youth clubs, no creative workshops, nothing that says, you belong. The streets felt like a holding place, not a home. Now, this building represents possibility and change. Yet, for all its beauty, it hasn’t bridged every gap. Many of my neighbours on the estate have yet to step foot inside, even though it’s right on their doorstep. I think about this as I stand at the entrance.
The woman at the desk greets me warmly. When she finds my name on the list, a small wave of relief washes over me, like I’ve passed some unspoken test. I do belong here, after all. Scribbling my name and pronouns on a sticker, I notice an optional dot to decline being photographed. I hesitate but don’t take one.
Inside, the air hums with conversations. Groups form organically, pockets of shared energy. Without being exclusive their ease and familiarity create a quiet barrier. These spaces, even when well-intentioned, can feel both inviting and distant. It takes time for me to settle. Familiar faces offer a bridge, and slowly, the noise becomes less daunting. The first session begins in the Cockpit Theatre, its smooth wooden seats grounding me in the space. In my lap is a booklet titled With For About: When Words Fail Glossary, a document as much about connection as it is about clarity. It opens with an invitation: ‘This glossary is intended as a playful and open-ended tool for conversation.’ Words like ‘care’, ‘interlocutor’, and ‘slow resistance’ fill the pages. They’re not fixed definitions but starting points, doorways into a shared understanding. I’ve often lacked the language for my experiences, for the complexities that defy simple explanation. Here, I feel the opposite of that narrowing. This isn’t Orwell’s Newspeak. These words expand thought, creating a shared vocabulary, a foundation for the exchanges to come.
As the day unfolds, the talks deepen this sense of connection. Ailbhe Smyth and Chrissie Tiller take the stage with unassuming gravitas. Both have spent decades in the trenches of activism, their lives shaped by resistance and resilience. Tiller, a woman from a working-class background, and Smyth, who recounted navigating the cultural conservatism of the Irish state, embody two distinct paths of resistance. Their words are not lessons but truths carried in the body. Smyth says, simply, ‘Life is activism.’ It’s not a command, but a reminder that every act of care, every decision to resist, is political. Tiller adds to this, reframing hope not as something passive but as something we do. ‘Hope is a verb,’ she says. ‘An action, a decision, a choice.’
Their different lived experiences highlight the many ways oppression manifests—and how it is fought. Yet despite those differences, they share a refusal to give in. Listening to them, I feel the weight of their determination. Their endurance reminds me that we can’t stop fighting, no matter how exhausting or disheartening it feels. We need to keep choosing hope, keep acting on it, because giving up is not an option.
Their words stay with me long after the session ends, as does the raw honesty of Kate O’Shea, who speaks later in the day. O’Shea identifies the toll socially engaged art work takes upon practitioners, naming it ‘S.E.A. heartbreak. ‘The term describes the grief of broken collaborations and the exhaustion of work that demands so much and often yields so little. ‘What gives you the heart to keep going?’ she asks, and the question hangs in the air. I think of Tiller’s words again: hope as a verb, as the thing we choose even when it feels impossible.
By this point, the schedule begins to unravel slightly. The planned breakout sessions for group discussions are shelved due to delays earlier in the day. Yet, in an almost poetic twist, those missed moments reappear organically. Over lunch and in stolen pockets of time between sessions, the conversations that might feel structured instead find their own natural flow.
Between sessions, connections emerge in these unplanned exchanges. Over lunch, I hear an artist talk about centring joy in her work, setting boundaries to protect herself from reopening old wounds. Another discussion circles around the quiet labour of holding space for others, and the unspoken question of who holds us in return. These moments feel as vital as the formal talks and weave threads of connection across the day.
Later, as we reconvene in the Cockpit Theatre for Practices of Wayfinding, Taey Iohe and Danni McKenna introduce paper planes as a playful tool for exploring communication. Earlier, we were handed brown envelopes containing a small kit: a slip of brown paper, a pencil and a sturdy sheet of A4. These, we’re told, are for making planes. If we have questions during the talk, we can write them down, fold them, and launch them toward the stage. There are some laughs at the idea, an almost childish air of excitement rippling through the room. We fold them carefully, timidly testing our throws. None quite reach the stage—falling just short—but we’re reassured that no matter where they land, they’ll be collected, and our questions will still be heard.
I’m struck by the symbolism. Each plane carries a question, its trajectory reminding us that even fleeting messages occupy space and can land in unexpected ways. But as Iohe notes, airspace can symbolise fear and violence. Who controls it, and what messages do we send? For me, it’s no message at all. I hold on to my plane, thumbing at the folds of it and questioning how people find the courage to send theirs through the air.
I’ve signed up for the workshop Transboundary Water: Mapping Leaks, Resistance, and Bodily Nature with Taey Iohe, drawn by the phrase ‘bodily nature’. After the break, I find myself back in the Cockpit Theatre, a familiar space that feels comforting now that I’ve acclimatised to its grand oak interior.
Iohe guides us gently as we pair up to ask each other questions. I share memories of Big Lake and Little Lake in Stadt Moers Park, while my partner speaks of growing up by the sea, her love for it intertwined with a fear of tsunamis. Our conversation feels intimate, creating a space for vulnerability.
By this point I find myself adrift, carried by the ebb and flow of the space and the wave of newfound knowledges that envelope me in a tender push and pull. Though the exact themes of our conversation escape me, I vividly remember how the differences in our language and meaning bring us closer together. A single word, we discover, carries so many layers of interpretation.
The quiet, reflective nature of the sharing is a welcome change of pace. But soon enough, the sound of chattering fills the room as people return to the Cockpit Theatre for a reading of ‘Aarti’s Diary’ by Radha Patel. The vast stage seems almost overwhelming at first, and for a moment, I fear it might swallow her whole. So much space, so much silence, the kind that feels heavy with exhaustion from a long day.
Patel sips water and begins flipping through the pages with a quiet, deliberate rhythm. The projection behind her flickers with symbols, colours, drawings, and phrases; each element adding to the layers of her words.
As she begins to speak, the stage seems to shrink around her, or perhaps it’s her presence that grows. There is something intimate about the way she navigates between the pages, reading fluidly from one, then pausing, switching to another, connecting fragments of a story. The symbols behind her seem to pulse with life. ‘Etsolstera’ is the visual language for the world she conjures—a world that blurs the boundaries between ancestral connections and imagined futures. It’s a story of hope. Not the kind of hope that demands forgetting the past, it’s a hope that builds, slowly, with care, over time.
She finishes, and there is a moment of silence as her final words settle in the space. Then, a gentle applause follows. I let my hands communicate what my voice can’t, clapping in rhythm with the energy in the room, a quiet acknowledgment of the power in her words.
And then, with a quiet honesty, she reveals that she had rewritten the story not long before. That was why she’d been turning through the pages, finding her revisions. It feels like an admission of how fluid and evolving our experiences are, how often the stories we tell ourselves shift and reshape.
Leaving the Playhouse, the town feels different. It’s not transformed, not entirely unfamiliar, but alive in a way it wasn’t before. I think of the neighbours who haven’t come inside yet, the ones who still see the building as something not meant for them. The thought lingers, not as frustration, but as a question: how do we bridge that gap? When my mother picks me up, she asks how it was, and I pause, searching for words that can capture everything. Some conversations, I realise, can’t be rushed. They unfold in their own time.
As I write these reflections, I’m struck by the impossibility of capturing every moment, every feeling, every story. With For About: When Words Fail is not an event that neatly folds into a narrative. It’s a mosaic, a weaving, a web of connections—messy, imperfect, and beautiful. Like the paper planes, each question it raises may not land where it’s intended, but it will find its way. And sometimes, that’s all we can ask for.
Alexis Maxwell is an Artist and Writer based in St Helens.
With For About: When Words Fail, Shakespeare North Playhouse, Prescot, 10 October 2024.
This review is supported by Heart of Glass
Published 28.01.2025 by Natalie Hughes in Reviews
1,944 words
