Spotlight - Jasmine Thompson, How Storytelling Can Inspire Change.

Jazz Thompson’s work is so integral to the city of Bristol as her captivating illustrations tell stories of individual experiences and community. Her murals have been placed all over the city from the M Shed, to The Bristol Museum and Art Gallery, speaking of individual experience and displaying a wealth of characters.

Jazz’s passion and enthusiasm for the work she creates is so apparent in the way she speaks of her work. Her need to create authentic characters that speak of real experiences is so visible within her bright and captivating illustrations. Her work is going from strength to strength, having worked with some of the biggest names within the industry including the likes of Premier League and Adidas. Her work primarily speaks of social justice issues as well as reflecting on our current society. It was great to sit down with Jazz and find out where her inspirations come from as she navigates the creative industry.

Hi Jazz, your work is full of stories and characters. Where did your early inspirations to draw come from?

I have drawn and done illustrations from a young age, it was always something that was such a huge part of my life. I started off just drawing animals then gradually got into drawing more people as I got older. Now people are usually the focal point of everything I do. They’re at the heart of it, whether it’s capturing somebody’s story, an experience or to use it as a platform for them to speak about something that's important and to start conversations. 

I’m really interested in talking to people in communities, it’s the main force behind what I do. I’m particularly interested in people within cities and how people move around the space, even how their environment affects people's lived experience.

There is such clear direction in your work. When you start a commission or a project what is your process? Do you look at people first, do you think about the history of a place? How do you begin?

I guess it's different for every project. Sometimes it will be research focused. The M Shed Mural I did of St Paul’s Carnival for example started with gathering stories of St Pauls Carnival which included a lot of research, a lot of talking to people. I love starting a project and not really knowing where it’s going to go. 

Occasionally I’ll get something that is really fixed and it will be more formulaic but usually it is just research. It’s about gathering ideas, mood boarding - mood boards are a huge part of it, they just help me figure out what I want something to look like and how I see it.

Your research process is so clear within your work, like in your mural at the Bristol Museum and Art Gallery ‘Movement Not A Moment’.  How does it feel to get a commission like that? Something with such political weight and that speaks so much of the times we are living through? Do you feel a lot of pressure or empowered?

A little bit of both for sure. I never apply for a commission that I don’t think I can do it. But I think with jobs that are particularly heavy there is a huge pressure to try and tell the story with some of my own bias in it, but not all from my own perspective. With ‘Movement Not A Movement’ it was around Black Lives Matter and that had to come from more of a wider sense rather than just one lived experience. I did a lot of research and a lot of thinking about that because I didn’t want to inject too much of myself into it. I wanted to make it something so many Black and Mixed Heritage people could identify with. So it became about telling the story of the people who had shaped the movement. With any activism work, you’re often talking to people who are really invested in the topic or they have personal experiences and that can be quite hard, so I needed to try and do something that was broad and encapsulated a movement rather than individuals.

Photo by Khali Ackford @khaliphotography ‘Movement Not a Moment’ Bristol Museum & Art Gallery

How was it to have people watching you as you made that work? Is it strange to have an audience?

Sometimes, I actually quite like it, it's nice to have people chat to you about your work and what it is you're doing. Usually I just make work on my own so to be able to share that process with people is really nice. I don’t get nervous drawing in front of people, it is nice just having people watch or ask questions. I don’t think it’s something people often see. They’re used to seeing final art works in places but they rarely see artists installing or making work so I really enjoyed it.

Image by Khali Ackford @khaliphotography from ‘Movement Not A Moment’ Bristol Museum & Art Gallery

So much of your work around Bristol seems to so heavily reflect the city and the spaces in which you work. How does the city influence and inspire your work? 

The first project I did that was Bristol focused was when I was coming out of uni. It was the project that determined what it was that I wanted to do. I watched a documentary about segregation within cities in America and it spoke of how cities were so multicultural but were still so segregated. It showed how different racial groups lived in similar areas and some cities had just complete racial divides. I was so fascinated by this and how it’s still such an issue. It made me think about Bristol and the racial divides that can exist within the city, for example the difference between St Pauls and Clifton. So I started a project that spoke about that and why this was and how Bristol had changed and could change further for the city moving forward.

The themes within your work are so present and rich, are there any artists that inspire you when it comes to talking about certain issues or topics within your work?

I’m super inspired by my peers and the people around me. A lot of my friends are illustrators and designers like Parys Gardener - she’s an amazing illustrator. She’s doing some work on Bristol Beacon at the moment around Black Lives Matter, and Abbi Bayliss worked with me on some recent work I did for The Bristol Light Festival. Just people doing amazing creative stuff in the city and it’s just amazing to be a part of that community and see how people are growing and developing. It does inform your own work, in a big way. Rubbing shoulders with creativity does fuel creativity. Global influences are photographers like Devin Allen. He did some beautiful photographs of the Black Lives Matter protests back in 2015 and I created some illustrations of them for one of my projects. The way he captures the activism, how he captures the city and people is just really stunning and striking but also really honest and raw. There was so much beauty in it. I just thought the storytelling element of his work was so inspiring. 

The storytelling elements are so strong in your work and the way you capture people's personalities is really present within your work.

Yeah, I’m so drawn to stuff like that, even if it’s not an illustrator. It’s nice to have those references. There is a photographer called Prince Gyasi, his work has the most amazing rich tones. They really influence my digital pieces and the way he uses colour and puts together shoots.

Do you have a preference over working digitally or straight onto a wall or paper?

At the moment digitally. I really want to do more colour. My whole career up to lockdown was pen on paper or pen on wall, I never used colour. Since I’ve been drawing digitally I’ve been able to incorporate colour and I love it. I love being able to create such vibrant bright artwork and still being able to get all the detail in, I just want to do more of that really. It really inspires me. At the moment that’s what I’m enjoying.

I saw you did some recent work for Premier League and Adidas too. That work was amazing!

Thank you! They were both social media activism campaigns. They both incorporated all those color and vibrancy elements. It’s that sort of stuff that I want to work on more in the future.

How was it working for a client like the Premier League?

It was good. Working for a client like that you rarely deal with them directly. There was just such a huge team to coordinate the project. The brief was so open and it was amazing to be able to work in that way. There were 10 artists making 10 portraits of black football players across the Premier League for Black History Month. We had to send in a pitch of two players - they wanted to know why we wanted to draw this player and why and why we resonated with certain players. But with Adidas they gave me specific athletes to draw.

Do you prefer drawing people you admire?

Yes of course, I love drawing people who I admire. There is more of an ease to it, because you’re enjoying it and are inspired by them and I always love drawing people who inspire me.

I noticed teaching is such a huge part of what you do. How does teaching fit into your own practice?

Workshops have been such a huge part of what I’m doing this year. Which is surprising because coming into this year I thought I might move away from workshops but I’ve just ended up doing more of them - which is great! I love doing creative stuff with young people. It's nice going into those spaces, especially because within education Arts are so underfunded and people just don’t really see how they could make a career out of it and so going into those spaces and making murals or artworks is amazing. I did a mural with kids in City Academy recently and it was so inspiring for me and for them and you get so many questions like is this actually your job? I think it's so important for kids to see creatives doing creative things and to have the opportunities to meet artists whether it's musicians or dancers. But to see people doing it and to know that they could do it as well is really important.

So much of your work has a community space in mind and the people in those spaces in mind. How does that influence the work you make?

Yeah definitely. The main difference is when things are commissioned for a specific public space, I'm more mindful of creating something that people are going to respond to specifically. It becomes a little bit more audience focused, about what they’re going to like or resonate with and enjoy. Whereas if I’m doing other visual art I’ll make something that inspires me, like my work with Premier League for example. When it’s commissioned for a certain space you have to think about is it going to be received well? I don’t really ever sway too far from the kind of work that I want to do. I just cater it a little bit.

Taken from ‘Movement Not A Moment’ Bristol Museum & Art Gallery

That’s really present within your work. The people really make a space. Do you have any plans moving forward this year for your work?

I am about to do a really interesting project painting a globe - a huge globe that is going to be on display in the city. It’s part of a project where there will be loads of them in cities all over the UK that speak about each city and the story of culture within cities and documenting more marginalized experiences. So yeah, I’ll be looking at telling more stories of communities and culture within cities. I’m also doing some live sketching workshops which are all of the UK and I’m working with two people I really admire. They’re two producers and the project is called ‘Unearthed’ and they are traveling to rural communities all over the country exploring people and their relationships with land and nature and the environment and the land. Some are in really desolate and isolated places like Forest of Dean or the Highlands in Scotland and they're going to be doing these sessions, taking me with them to capture the conversations and people who are involved. I was in Cornwall a few weeks ago and it’s such an interesting community project around nature, a totally different theme to my usual work but I’m really excited.

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