Ali is an established visual artist, best known as the founding member and artistic director of the international outdoor arts company –Kinetika. Throughout her practice, Ali creates projects that bring communities together through walking, talking and making to help to connect people from different backgrounds and generating dialogue between them to create inspirational, new work.
Over the next few years, Ali is looking to establish a pioneering model that brings together arts and health to create happier communities. Kinetika’s recent move to High House Production Park in Thurrock has led to Ali developing new partnerships that focus on creating projects that will contribute to the regeneration of the borough, in particular Thurrock 100. Engaging with the local community is at the heart of this project, and Ali is already meeting with local people and schools to devise ten, ten mile walks across ten key locations in summer 2015.
In her practice, Ali seeks to find local stories and help to create new ones as conversations emerge with groups who are walking together and through workshops and presentations. These stories are then shared with a wider audience through an online dialogue. This has been used to great effect in several of Ali’s projects including Gravity Fields, Walking Wiltshire’s White Horses and the Isle of Wight Carnival Trail.
In Walking Wiltshire’s White Horses, an online story was told alongside the 100 mile public walk, and at each white horse where a flag was presented to the walkers a sound park was inaugurated, created by digital artist Richard White using sounds mixed and sourced through social media. The walks also generated 10 new apps in which walkers can discover the White Horses as a series of rich soundscapes and expert comments are triggered by GPS, ensuring the conversations and stories generated by the project are preserved.
As an advocate of the arts for change, Ali seeks to inspire others to include this practice in their work and she has presented her work at a number of conferences, including the Culture Change Conference in the Royal Opera House this year. Other speaking engagements have included the Annual Lecture for the Horndon Society, the Changing Places Outdoor Arts Symposium and the Pathmakers Discussion as part of the Slow Marathon with the Walking Institute.
Ali is happy to talk to you and support you in the development of your ideas – as a consultant, facilitator, mentor, artist or walker. If you are interested in having a conversation with Ali please email her ali@alipretty.co.uk
“In a frantic week of meetings, it was wonderful to stop and listen to your presentation at Culture Change. It was so refreshing and inspirational; I love walking so your description of the walking flag projects resonated with me. Thank you for taking part and for adding colour and imagination into my busy week.” Jillian Barker, Director of Learning and Participation, Royal Opera House
