Spotlight on Art – Intangible Labour’s Spiritual Cleanse

What does it mean to start where you stand, not as a slogan but as a practice? If art begins on the pavement, by the bus stop, at the edge of a park or in the corner of an adult education building, what changes in how you listen, how you notice, how you belong? When a poem names what is small and close rather than grand and distant, does it ask you to look again at the ground beneath your own feet?

Where does performance end if the street becomes part of the stage? When a cloak marked with everyday symbols moves through a crowd, when disco is sung as affirmation rather than nostalgia, when fire is carried past taxis and traffic, are you watching something separate from daily life, or are you briefly seeing daily life reframed? What happens when ritual is not hidden away at a festival or gallery, but placed directly in the flow of an ordinary evening?

Who does the work that goes unnoticed, and how do we recognise it without trying to measure it? When a candle is lit for care, for emotional labour, for creative effort, for the quiet maintenance of people and places, does that recognition change anything, even for a moment? Is a “spiritual cleanse” about erasing what weighs us down, or about pausing long enough to acknowledge what has been carrying weight all along?

What kinds of folklore are still being written, not in books but in gestures, collaborations, and shared jokes made in the cold of January? If myths can be remade to suit the present, what gods, symbols, or stories would emerge from adult education centres, side streets, and working lives? How much of what feels ancient is simply sediment within us, waiting for the right conditions to surface again?

As you listen, are you an audience member, a witness, or a participant? When the microphone captures laughter, uncertainty, interruption, and movement, does it change how you think about radio itself? Can broadcasting be a form of presence rather than documentation, a way of holding space rather than fixing meaning?

And when the recording ends, what stays with you? Is it a line of poetry, a song re-sung, the image of fire moving through a city street, or a question you did not realise you were carrying? If you were to start where you stand, right now, what unseen work around you might deserve a moment of recognition?