Projects
I would be here if I could
I would be here if I could
The largest collaborative art project in the UK for people living with M.E. and Long Covid, giving voice and presence to those who are so often absent from the everyday.
Taking their messages to the locations they love but can no longer access. It is about absence and presence and the ways we can all connect through a shared experience, and love of place.
Where would you be if you could?
Audio messages have been sent in by some of the 2+million people in the UK living with M.E. and long Covid for people at the places they love but now can no longer get to.
Starting this year, a large Mirrorbox will take these messages to their locations across the UK. It may stay for a few minutes and be asked to move on. It might stay the whole day. At each place, visitors can enter the box and listen to the message from the person who has chosen that place. They will be invited to write a postcard back.
Raising questions around the nature of accessibility, the power to amplify unheard voices and the living grief of isolated lives. The project confronts the emotional and social isolation experienced by these communities, amplifying their absence from public spaces and facilitating connections between individuals absent and those present at locations through shared experience, memories, and love of place.
Explore
£20,000
Aims of the Project
With plans to run the UK stage of the project over the next 2-3 years. Explore is an opportunity to understand immersive technology in relation to this project.
Understanding how VR could be used to enhance a participants’ experience of The Mirrorbox at their location and how we could potentially expand the project reach with the use of AR.
Once identified, at a later stage this technology could be developed and incorporated as an ongoing evolution of the project.
Meet the artist
Alison Larkman
Lead artist
she/her
Alison Larkman is a Bristol-based artist living with life-altering M.E. She describes her experience of being housebound for months at a time as “living in a pause, shut in and shut out of the everyday” Her work explores themes of invisibility, fragility and the unseen.
Alison has studied at Chelsea College of Art, Newlyn Art School and Spike Island. In between those times, she has run businesses, worked with Hell’s Angels and retreated with M.E.
Her socially engaged practice focuses on absence, exploring and creating opportunities for connection beyond physical limitations
