Profile

Tessa J Fitzjohn is a curator producer and public art consultant based in Bristol

I  have over twenty years’ experience of developing socially engaged arts projects for museums, galleries, and the public realm.  My interest lies in commissioning works that focus on site, context and  community, focused on delivering  a set of objectives agreed in partnership with local stakeholders including community health and wellbeing and urban renewal.

Clients and funders include Somerset County Council; Bristol City Council; Arnolfini, Bristol; National Trust; Look Ahead Housing and Care, London & SE;; Torridge District Council, Linden Homes PLC, City and Country Group; Whitbread PLC ; Bristol Museum and Art Gallery; Kinsale Arts Festival, Cork; Aberdeenshire Council

My approach is strategic and developmental based on active collaboration between client, partners and the community,  as experienced as Arts Manager for Look ahead Housing and Care, delivering  Positive Places, five public art commissions for supported housing and a series of collaborative projects for homeless and vulnerable people in London and the South East. To include a three year youth arts progamme in partnership with South Hill Park, Tate Modern and the Whitechapel Gallery; As Advisor to the New Business Team initiated Flying Angel Studios, as part of mixed use social housing.

Macduff Revival is a good example of a self-initiated project responding to site and context, funded by Aberdeenshire as part of their placemaking renewal programme. We  commissioned two artists to focus on bringing Macduffs empty shops to life with music, film and food inviting the community to create a new vision for Macduff to include the amazing 1930’s Tarlair Lido. The programme included the New Producers a professional development programme for young people,  oral history collection with the primary school and ended with The Art Weekender.