This April a selection of the dusters from the touring collection joined my presentation at the University of Brighton’s CCA Gallery, as part of an event exploring creative processes in activism. The themes of the event: refusal, care, and thriving, were explored through short talks and practical research based activities. These events took place in the gallery alongside Billie Zangewa’s beautiful fabric collages, and beneath the strings of dusters that hung above a huge workspace.
I began the Duster Project presentation by giving each participant a duster and re-threaded needle, inviting them to hold and stitch it as I talked. This was followed by an invitation to “activate your dusters!” accompanied by prompts to contemplate, embody, and embellish their dusters through touch, smell and manipulation.
As I concluded: “The duster is a conundrum. A clever, beautiful thing used for a boring, dirty task. It is invisible. It is often used like a woman”.

