I’ll be in Middlesbrough on Friday 26 June for a public conversation about Drawn to the Boro - and I won’t be doing the talking alone.

I'll be joined by three of the project's sitters - Imran Anwar, Zainab Aboharoon and Judith Bell - in conversation about their own stories, and about how those stories find their way into the paintings. I'm looking forward to listening as much as talking - the project began with their stories, and this is a chance to hear them first-hand. 

We’ll talk about staying, leaving and returning, about inherited memory, and about the place of pattern in how I work. It’s part of the Middlesbrough Storytelling Festival, hosted by Borderlands and in partnership with Teesside University, Middlesbrough Council and the National Literacy Trust