“If you want to do it, you will find ways to make it happen”

What Steven asked Wendy Daws of the Mess Room and Medway Open Studios

In the second of a two-part interview, Steven sat down with Wendy Daws of the Mess Room and Xtina Lamb of Intra Arts, initially to talk about Medway Open Studios, which is happening now! Due to the election, these interviews ended up being slightly delayed, but you can still hear more about Medway Open Studios in the piece we published last week. Steven spoke with Wendy about what goes on at the Mess Room, the effect of closing UCA on Medway, working with tactile art, and more.

Wendy Daws with Mess Room participants. Photo: Spaghetti Weston

Where were you born?
Hoo. My dad still lives in the house I was born in.

Were both your parents from the Medway Towns?
Welling and Sidcup, and they moved into Hoo. I think it was ‘66, and when Hoo was then being built, the orchards were being turned into housing estates.

What jobs did your parents do growing up?
My dad did his engineering at the Woolwich Arsenal, and then when they moved down to Hoo, he was a milkman, amongst other jobs. Before they moved down, Mum was working on computers in the typing pool at Selfridges. Then did homeworking, then we appeared, and Dad went to BP forever.

How did you find school?
I quite liked it. All my schooling was at Hoo. Most of my reports were ‘Could do better.’ Then, I was in an O-level stream and met a boy, so I didn't get all the O-levels that I should have. This was when you chose your options, and if you're at O-levels, you have to do O-levels and I wanted to do pottery, which was GCSE. The pottery teacher said, ‘You'll have to really fight to do pottery if you want to do it because they won't let you.’ They didn't let me. I didn't do pottery, but I held on to that in my head. I left school when I was 16, did my youth training scheme at GC Avionics. I learnt stuff. I wanted to learn to type, so I did learn to type. After I'd finished the youth training schemes, I could go to college, but I couldn't. I didn't have my wits about me to put that into gear so I hadn't realised I could have learnt to type in my sixth form had I stayed to do Art, Sociology and English, the things I really loved. I did various night schools in things I didn't want to do: Shorthand, bookkeeping and then pottery at night school. Then I did sugar craft, and I left and did various jobs. I went back to school when I was 30.

Have you been to university?
I went to Brighton and did my BA in three-dimensional crafts. I worked in wood, metal, ceramics and plastics, and it was metals and plastics mostly that I worked in. It changed in my second year, I had an exchange with Nagoya Fine Art University in Japan, and when I came back, I wrote my dissertation, Museum Approaches to Visually Impaired Visitors, and graduated in 2004 and came back to Medway. I know this has been mentioned before, but we all say it's the Medway magnet. I didn't think I'd be coming back to Medway. I left in ‘97, and I was back again in 2004. You're kind of stuck in a good way.
When I came back to Medway in 2004, I had a part-time job at Frances Iles. I could have earned some money doing admin and temp work. I thought, ‘No, I'm used to living on biscuits and not buying CDs.’ I worked part-time. When I was working at Frances Iles, I met other artists, and I didn't even know any other artists. I went off with my secretary hat and came back with an art hat. I met Mark Barnes, because he worked at Frances Iles. And then from meeting Mark and then meeting others, very slowly, and got a studio at New Art Centre, as it was, which then became Nucleus. I was there from 2005 to 2009, then went to the Tack Room in Hulkes Lane, where I still am, and then the community space at Sun Pier House in 2017.

What is your official occupation?
Artist.

What additional roles, paid or unpaid, you do?
Mess Room, Sun Pier House, Medway Open Studios, Fat Lady Opera. I think that's it. And those jobs then entail cleaning the loo, writing funding bids, remembering the tea bags, facilitating, meeting other people, training other people, and just making all the stuff happen.

Where would you like to go for dinner in Medway?
Dylan’s! And the Cheese Room.

What has been the biggest improvement to the arts in Medway since you’ve been here?
I think the joining up. Us talking. Medway Open Studios has helped, I believe, strongly in joining up the conversation. You can see visible differences, working with Rochester Cathedral, that all-embracing if you ask, things can happen. And I think asking, I have realised, you can make changes and drive stuff. I think there's a real awareness that wasn't when I was younger. I just didn't have any awareness on how you can go about making things happen and I think there is a real focus and change. It's suitably vague and not really answering your question, but I can't really articulate it.