Features / Breakfast with Bristol24/7
Breakfast with Bristol24/7: Parys Gardener
Parys Gardener was once given advice not to take no for an answer. It’s something she’s carried with her as she has forged a creative career path that has taken her from unpaid commissions to having her work featured on the front of Bristol Beacon and on official Comic Relief merchandise – as well as twice featuring on the front of Bristol24/7 magazine. Not bad for someone who was told at school that she couldn’t draw.
“I love to tell stories. That’s how I work out the world around me through storytelling,” says the artist, trying to put into words where her creativity comes from.
We are tucking into breakfast at The Granary, just a stone’s throw away from Bristol Old Vic, where Parys now works as a media & communications officer. It’s just one of the many strings to the bow of the 28-year-old who, through a combination of talent and fierce determination, already has a range of diverse and ever-bigger projects under her belt.
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Born and brought up in Stapleton, Parys spent her formative years helping out at her dad’s pub, the Black Swan on Stapleton Road in Easton. It was at least in part due to growing up watching her dad run the pub that gave her the confidence to set up on her own, but also it was the need to create a space for herself that she says didn’t exist at the time.
Parys Gardener was once given advice not to take no for an answer – illustration: Lucy J Turner
Going back to her school years, Parys, between mouthfuls of a full English breakfast, cheerfully recounts without a hint of bitterness how her art teacher had told her she couldn’t draw.
“I was always told that I wasn’t very good at drawing,” she says with a chuckle. “My art teacher at school was super supportive but said I wasn’t the strongest drawer. What I am good at is creatively problem solving so I was able to get around that. I spent a lot of time trying to work out where I fit in.”
After going away to study art at university in London, an experience Parys describes as “character building”, she returned to Bristol, where she went back to working at the Black Swan and came to do a work experience placement with Bristol24/7.
“I think that was the point where I could really see myself making a career here, doing that kind of work,” says Parys. “I couldn’t see how that fitted in as a job before. I feel like I was really given the space at Bristol24/7 to work out where I fit in.”
In her final year at university, Parys started doing commissions for Gal-Dem, an online platform that was launched in Bristol and was dedicated to centreing people of colour from marginalised genders before its closure last year.
“Gal-Dem started getting some funding to be able to pay artists,” Parys recalls. “They worked at the time as a bit of an agency really. They would get people coming to them saying they need an artist and they would recommend people.
“I worked with Nike for the first time through Gal-Dem. They [Nike] wanted a gif and I was just the biggest blagger; they said ‘can you make this?’ And I’d say yes and then go away and work out how.”
It is this attitude that has helped the artist get to where she is today, but Parys admits it has often been a scary and challenging path to navigate.
“I had a careers coach tell me that I couldn’t do art,” she tells me. “Being young, being Black, being in Bristol, people tell you you can’t do things. They didn’t know me so they didn’t know the things I’d had to overcome at that point. Being dyslexic as well, I’ve had to work things out in life and figure out how it makes sense for me.”
Parys Gardener (left) says having a supportive network of artists in Bristol – through organisations like Creative Youth Network (CYN), Babbasa and Rising Arts – has really helped her – photo: Martin Booth
Parys, who went to John Cabot Academy in Kingswood, said she got good support for her dyslexia in school – and later found out she is also dyspraxic – but that hasn’t always translated into the world of work.
She says having a supportive network of artists in Bristol – through organisations like Creative Youth Network (CYN), Babbasa and Rising Arts – has really helped her, especially in dealing with projects that can take a lot of emotional labour and draw on her own lived experience.
It was through a digital exhibition with CYN that Comic Relief came across Parys’ work and got in touch. “They sent me a brief and I couldn’t say yes fast enough,” says Parys, of the Comic Relief commission. “Then the imposter syndrome sets in!”
Whatever project she does, Parys approaches it from a viewpoint of making a space feel more accessible to people who don’t feel they have access to arts and culture.
She says that her parents always worked hard to give their children a good life and initially had concerns about her pursuing a career in the arts. “Then I was getting commissions from the BBC and then they could see it could be a job,” says Parys, who now sometimes teams up with her brother, Kaden, who she says is an amazing filmmaker.
“People say, ‘your parents must be so proud’, but the way in which they just take it in their stride, you wouldn’t believe,” says Parys, with a laugh, admitting it is her family and community who keep her grounded and help her understand her own background and culture.
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As she prepares to head off for a day of work at the Old Vic, Parys says she doesn’t know yet what project is around the corner. But, rest assured, she won’t let anything stand in her way.
Illustration by Lucy J Turner. To see more of Lucy’s work, visit www.lucyjturner.co.uk
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