There’s a freedom that comes from loss that I hadn’t expected. A distance from expectations that is so freeing, one can get giddy with the knowledge you didn’t know age would bring. The cliched “life is too short” attitude becomes very real as you find yourself in situations you are not always comfortable with. But it works, that saying yes, that freedom from the critical voice. And I’ve found it strongest at Charleston. Already a beloved bolt hole, now a home for my often criticised neurodivergent mind to be what it needs to be.

Co-curating an exhibition on madness via the heads of those touched by the Bloomsbury group and a farmhouse in Firle, Charleston’s Cracked has become a place where I saw and believed I could be. Of connecting with queers gone by and seeing my life in theirs, my wiring in theirs, my struggles in theirs. Coming to appreciate queer dears, one called Duncan Grant, the other Stephen Tomlin, and the shame and joy they lived with.

It took me to the heart of the artist and allowed me to play, finding space I didn’t know I could ever belong to, welcoming me and my efforts. Okay, so I may never excel as a painter – those plates were made for eating, surely? The curtain-making was a surprising pleasure, the soundscapes recording pleasing this disco head, but it was the words I have often enjoyed pulling together in prose, finding a place to erupt into poetry that got me. Yeah, me, that’s right, me writing poetry.

These moments of connection with my fellow neurodivergent curators and the creatives we were and are becoming have resulted in an exhibition called Cracked, which opens at Charleston Farmhouse in Firle on 5th June. Supported by Screen South, Accentuate, the Arts Council, the many generous geniuses at Charleston, including the brilliant Hazel McMicheal, head boy Darren Clarke, my fellow co-curators Maisie Bayliss, Tracey Carter, Francesca DelGuidice, Erin James, Jade Mars, Aliide Naylor, Nikki Shaill and Georgie Sutton a.k.a. the Mad Heritage Collective, plus a very musical taxi driver from Lewes Taxi’s, it has been one of life’s unexpected joyous moments and one that brought freedom, understanding and deep joy. There is beauty in the cracks of our so-called madness, our neurodivergent minds, our misdiagnosed paths, beauty that it can take decades to see, but beauty that I found thanks to connecting with the group of companions we now call our Mad Heritage Collective.

Cracked: Installation
5 June–6 September 2026, 10am-5pm
Charleston Farmhouse, Firle, East Sussex, BN8 6LL.

More info here

Those poems I mentioned.

Queers That Bind

There’s no shame in me, I lie. Eyes heaven sent.
There is no shame in me, I lie. Eyes down.

Growing on the wonk.
Wires twisted.
Sexuality deviant.
Frowns endless.
Judgement always.
Freedom only when they are gone.

The lies that bind us.
The family that drowns us.
The love never shown me.
Estrangement the escape I yearned for.

My chosen family banishing the condemnation my madness brought.
Losing labels.
Finding lovers.
Embracing my wiring, wonk and all.

Dragging my shame into closets I choose.
Finding delight in the deviance.
Fleeing from the disgrace
Escaping the diagnosis’s that crippled me.
Embracing the queer family that made me.
My glorious queer family.

I found my Vanessa. I found my Bloomsbury.
I found my queer tribe.

I lost the shame giver if not the shame
Damage dragged still by the years spent with them
My chosen queer family allowing me to be.
Ties that bound becoming binders that free.

Kate Wildblood 2026

For Stephen Tomlin – A Peace Wished

A lifetime of touches moulding the clay.

His promise never quite finished, demons distracting him from the path.

The same now as it ever was.

The need to fit, to rebel, to love.

Creating in clay the stillness his head could never find.

I envy his captured love, the subjects he moulded.

The distractions he diverted to, the hearts he broke.

The insistence on company, the only way to dispel the loneliness that stalked him.

At the loudest of parties.

The gayest of gatherings.

He fought the shadow that sought to devour him. That devours me still.

The afters still a place for find sanctuary, addicted to the numbness it brings,

Never clearing the o v e r t h o u g h t words that fill heads but an answer until the dawn.

I envy him stilling the moments that torture heads like ours.

Turning down the volume, connecting with his created.

Faking the artists way whilst never faking the honesty he made with those hands.

Hands so often laid on the bodies of lovers

Finally finding a moment of peace in the clay.

A moment.

Just a moment.

Kate Wildblood