Simon Piasecki
Simon has enjoyed a connective career as an academic, as well as a researcher, artist, performer and writer. His Phd considered cartography, Self and Other in performance, examining identity and place. Research interests developed around the politics of human travel, belonging and landscape, most recently evolving with an interest in endured travel and the relative impacts on mind and body, drawing his focus naturally toward notions of pilgrimage. He has exhibited, directed and performed in international contexts for 30 years, as a painter and performer, making short films, photographs, installations and transporting audiences over mountains at night with performance and music. He also an illustrator, currently producing a set of Tarot cards dedicated to the nomadic. His recent theatre show, an adaptation of St-Exupery’s Flight to Arras directed by Shelley Piasecka, considered the plight of refugees and was performed internationally including the Memorial Programme to the Armenian Genocide at Highfest in Yerevan Armenia. He was invited to make an address at the European Parliament regarding the work at World Refugee Day in 2018. He is a Scout Leader, a trained Lowland Leader and currently Professor and Head of Subject for Creative Writing and Drama at Liverpool John Moores University.