Featured Work

Physic Garden

The Physic Garden is a gift created by women, for women. An artwork, an argument and a space to belong.

We said that it would take seven years to build and that it would last for a hundred years. We have worked intimately for six and are delighted to be celebrating it opening to the public this year.

Selected Projects

Physic Garden Network

​​A website rooted in a garden, sharing medicinal plant introductions, new digital artwork, learning and friendship. Created through a collaboration with a hundred women throughout 2021 and still evolving.

​Women on the Water

Nine waterside audio companions made by women using pocket technology offering a moment of belonging to download or stream. Commissioned to compliment a report for Canal and River Trust who invited us to look below the surface and into the realities of life by water for women.

Stadium for the Future (if I can't dance I don't want to be part of your revolution)

A proposal, a provocation, an occupation. During the UEFA Women’s EURO 2022 football championship, women gathered in fields and underpasses to dance the stadium into existence at site-specific women-only raves.

NB Selina Cooper

Selina Cooper is a hand built 55ft motor-less narrow boat conceived, designed and built in collaboration with Humraaz and named after a local suffragist. Launched in Burnley on the Leeds to Liverpool Canal in 2016 to provide a residential and workshop space for Idle Women's inaugural touring project On The Water.

Power Tools

A series of building tutorials for every woman that give instructions on basic DIY tasks like changing a lightbulb, smashing a window, painting a wall and using a drill. Created in St Helens in 2019 through a collaboration with women in refuge the videos which are available on youtube went viral during the lockdown of 20-21.

Graphic Novel

Idle Women on the Water A brick throwin',hijab-wearin', hairy-legged, space takin' odyssey by Candice Purwin tells the story of the Selina Cooper and the Idle Women tour of North West England. 

Work in Progress

 Petrichor 

Petrichor is a performative argument expressing the urgency of lost years and women's rightful place on land. Expressed through a body of new projects to recover land and those who love and depend on it.

Bobby Baker's An Edible Family in a Mobile Home

An Edible Family in a Mobile Home is touring from Tate Britain in London, to the Whitworth in Manchester, before being presented by Idle Women in Lancashire. Following this final staging, Bobby has gifted the prefab to Idle Women to be repurposed as our first permanent building and a legacy space, sited by our sisterhood somewhere in Lancashire.

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World Art School

World Art School is an itinerant artist-run education project which honours and critically engages with a non-Eurocentric curriculum for art. It is being developed with Idle Women in its first year through a series of workshops lead by Kinsi Abdulleh, Ruksana Begum and Alana Jelinek.

Past Work

Helen

From 2016-2019, Idle Women, Heart of Glass and ANU Productions were granted the Arts Council Ambition for Excellence Award to create a major new partnership work in St Helens.
The resultant project, Helen, addressed a deep and radical need to dismantle in order to reveal, expose and rebuild.

 Queer Arts North Showcase -
​Leeds Playhouse 2020

Developed in collaboration with musician Sophie Fishwick and performer Jill Raymond in winter 2019 as an early iteration for Petrichor. A performance created for Queer Arts North showcase at Leeds Playhouse featuring a galactic collaboration with playwright Mojisola Adebayo and her character 'Mrs'.

Izhaar

Izhaar  is a statement of creative expression through details of our day-to day. Created through a process of workshops in collaboration with Humraaz, Izhaar was a single promenade performance telling pivotal stories through live illustrations. Held in Bangor Street community centre in 2016.