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‘Rooted Relations’ explores how embodied participation in creative practice can contribute to the cultivation of emotional intelligence through relational meaning-making. Throughout its network is a proposal that meaning does not necessarily being with an intention and end with an outcome, but that meaning can emerge between the practitioner, material, environment, memory and the decisions made along the way.

During my recent practice-led research project, I have started to question what actually happens during the process of making itself, particularly between conscious decision-making and instinctive response. Sometimes the strongest work appeared when I stopped trying to force it. That tension became the starting point for developing what I now call the Relational Making Process.

Images are often encountered quickly. Explored digitally, we glance, scroll and move on. Yet some images resist this pace. They ask us to slow down, look again and to feel before we understand. This project research begins there.

This journal documents the beginning of a practice-led enquiry into a questions that has gradually become central to both my creative practice and my wider research: how can embodied simulation enrich emotional connection and shared understanding? The project began from from a genuine sense of fragmentation in my own work. Whilst much of my practice has always aimed to communicate, I realised through reflection that communication and connection are not the same thing.