Part of the great excitement of adventure on any scale great or small, is in the planning. What to expect, what to wear, what to carry… While many people have fun planning short holidays, for me I crave adventure on a grander scale. So that’s what I am doing, adventure planning. Choosing my own adventure….

Choose Your Own Adventure  was also an immensely popular series of childrens’ ‘game’ books around in the 1980’s and 1990s. Each story gave you prompts on how you could start the adventure for the main protagonist. The decisions you made along the way then determined its various endings.

I was thinking about that today as I was getting excited about my next adventure. The decisions that are made now will affect to a greater or lesser degree, the possible outcomes.

I think I’ve always loved the idea of adventure, starting from the time I could read. The Famous Five and Secret Seven kids always went adventuring, whether it was exploring the neighbourhood and pushing boundaries, to foiling ‘baddies’ who were up to no good.

For me travel was, and still is a grand adventure. Experimenting in my art practice and pushing boundaries is also an adventure as I never know how things will turn out.

Combine art and travel and that’s the greatest adventure to me. Which is what I’m planning for 2023. This is the big reveal – I’m off to Devon, England to undertake my Masters at Dartington Arts School. It’s an adventure in Art and Place, learning about how to respond to a site and create art from its locale.

The adventure is starting already with all the planning. Where will we live, and how will we find the English climate over a whole year? Then of course there are the doubts; can I research and write to the academic standard required? Fortunately much of the work is practice led research, which means you are also assessed on your project(s) and how well you can resolve them. It’s immensely comforting to know that there will be support along the way.

So for now it is one step at a time with planning for visas and housing. One option is van living which appeals greatly. A house and mode of transport all in one package. In 2018 we travelled for a week in a converted VW combi van which was fun, but now we are looking at 10 months…can we pull it off? Let the adventure planning begin!