This work was created in collaboration with Radical Rest Collective.

Changing Ideas Award
The pandemic dragged millions of lives into chronicity, robbing people of the ability to walk and access nature. I never stopped loving mountains; it perplexed me that my legs would never again take me up there. These experiences are represented by classic illustrations of mountain rescue, in which the ‘fall’ into illness is comforted by climber buddies supporting those unlucky enough to be broken on the mountain. The comradely solidarity of rescue is absent from lives which lack treatment and representation, but I found comfort in the poses of vulnerability and support– improvised harnesses, blankets, rope seats, snow holes, and sleds made of branches. These ingenious adaptations reminded me of the wit, or creative adaptation, that chronic pain and fatigue require of us. Other images show a crutch transformed into a planter; a hut of healing for recuperating in wild places, which doesn’t exist but should; and placards fixed to walking sticks from an imaginary demonstration. The ‘rest signpost’ – a proposal for a real artwork featuring the word rest in many languages – represents our evolving philosophy of radical rest. The artwork was created in collaboration with the radical rest collective– artists and writers with ME, Long Covid, MS, Ehler-Danlos, and Lupus – and drawn from an archive of thousands of artworks I created which represent our lived experiences and promote our ideas. These ideas, in turn, relate to day of access, a project I conceived in 2019, which returns the vulnerable, chronically ill, refugees and asylum seekers, to wild nature. Working with a creative team, I have presented over thirty events, at landscapes such as Ballochbuie, Trees for Life Dundreggan, and Taynish NNR, gathering new perspectives which consider the relationship between ‘vulnerable ecologies and vulnerable bodies’. - the artist