From the very outset of my career as a creative artist I was intrigued by the question: what is the social relevance of artistic practice? Is there such a thing as 'communal creativity' ?

As an environmental artist I had always been aware of my responsibility towards the living fabric of nature, but I grew increasingly weary of doing my artworks in nature on my own. My first community environmental projects confirmed my sense that doing such artworks together with other people is much more meaningful and rewarding.

In the course of my PhD research project at the Social Sculpture Research Unit at Oxford Brookes University I had a chance to deepen my interest in this field and become more familiar with Joseph Beuys' concept of Social Sculpture, which had a lasting influence on my work. The workshop processes that I designed as part of the PhD research project were social sculpture pieces in their own right. In the workshops, an arbitrary group of people from a variety of backgrounds together explored and transformed their relationship to the living fabric of natural landscape - and to each other - using a variety of creative social processes.