On Saturday 9th July 2016, 6-9pm, Instigate Arts take over the main gallery space at HOME in Manchester to host our ‘Ambition’ pop-up exhibition. In this series of Q&A’s we get a little more insight into what makes some some of the participating artists tick. Here we speak with author and poet Angela Readman

Can you tell us about your practice?

I’m a writer. I write stories and poems.

How does your work relate to the themes of Ambition?

I’ve never stopped to wonder whether I write about ambition before now.I probably don’t write about it as much as I should. It’s probably because I’ve never been that ambitious, when I think about it. I don’t think I was supposed to be. I grew up in a Northern town with high unemployment, no one in my family went to university before I did, ambition wasn’t something we ever talked about. It wasn’t a dirty word, it was just a word that didn’t seem to apply to us.

Do you think the themes of Ambition relate to the current political and social climate?

I think ambition is something we’re likely to talk about less as our opportunities become more limited. With the current climate, our ambitions are increasingly about our physical needs- we aim to find paid work, we dream of having a roof over our heads, and being able to put the heating on in the winter sometimes . We consider ourselves lucky if we have that. It’s sad, but a lot of us will stop asking what do I want to be, instead we’ll ask what will they let me be.

How important is the role of artists’, and the art world, in shaping both people’s lives, and the social and political landscape?

Art has the ability to make people think about the world we live in and ask questions. It invites people to discuss things we may never talk about otherwise. Take this exhibition, I have been with my partner for 16 years and not once have we talked about ambition, suddenly we were talking about it.  Through art, we can know each other more, and know ourselves.