A designer & community artist based in Manchester, Nerissa designs and makes stuff. She also helps others to design and make stuff.
I have designed youth & community projects for Aqueous Humour, Creative Partnerships, Rochdale Council, M6 Theatre Company, Activ8, Bury Met, Burnley Youth Theatre, Box of Frogs and TIPP. I create projects in various visual art forms but my specialism is in working alongside other practitioners particularly in performance-based disciplines to bring a visual element to a project.
For a full list of projects please download my Community & Education CV.
Designed to be used as part of the Drink, Drugs, Sex and Anger programme following the success of the STI masks for the Sexual Health programme. It is a performance and education programme for 12 to 25 yrs, that explores and promotes understanding of addiction, personal safety and emotional literacy.
Aqueous Humour was commisioned to work with the M6 Youth Theatre to create a piece of street theatre for the Carnival of Cultures in Rochdale under the title “Where Memories Meet Dreams”.
Over Easter I worked with two groups of teenage girls and a young mothers group at community centres in Langley & Hollins to create golden masks for the choir. The theme for the masks was fire and sun linking in to both the destruction happening in the area but also the new dawn of regeneration.
Devised & Directed by Tom Hogan
I approached the design of the project more like a piece of tv/film than theatre for schools. Having a dedicated space at the PRU was a wonderful opportunity. I was able to spend time turning an unused classroom into a realistic flat for the whole lifespan of the project.
I was asked to create a set of masks to represent a variety of sexually transmitted diseases. These were to initially be used for a drama project with young men in Middleton and then for use in sexual health workshops around the area.
I worked with Bury Met’s Theatre Arts & Performance Project to create the props & costumes for their spy project for Garden of Delights directed/choreographed by Clare Fildes. They created strolling work either on there own or in small groups as well as a static movement piece which involved all of them.
Directed by Dinos Aristidou
Ziggurat was a devised project on the theme of communication based on the story of the Tower of Babel. Over 100 children from schools around Manchester worked with artists from the Lowry’s partner companies to create the piece.
Summer 2002 proved very busy in Manchester with events for the Jubilee and Commonwealth Games. The Jubilee parade theme was Feast of Delights. Bury’s link country was Tuvalu, a set of pacific islands slowly sinking into the sea.