Urgent call out - help artist Sian Davey secure her home

Sian (along with other tenants on the Dartington Estate) has been served notice that her home is to be auctioned on 7th May. Any potential buyer can legally end Sian's tenancy within one month.

In order to secure her home she must purchase the house but needs your help to get together a deposit. Having been given only one months' notice, she is urgently reaching out to her community to help secure her home and place of work.

We really need your support. Her home is not just a home, it is where community and creativity come together. And, crucially, Alice needs a forever home.

Please see letter from the artist Sian Davey below....

To the Creative Body Process Community

URGENT CROWD FUNDER - A LETTER OF APPEAL

I have lived in and rented my home on the Dartington estate for fifteen years. As you all know, it is both the heart of my family life, my place of work, the site of all my major photography work and the home of the The Creative Body Process. The workshop reconnects us with our creative core but it works because of a quality of attention and radical love that this house brought into my life and has continued to serve as a container supporting those seeking to rekindle their vital creative self.

I have just learnt that on May 7th this year, my home, which is also my studio, goes up for auction. Other homes on the estate that have recently been sold by the trust to private owners, has resulted in the tenants being evicted, entirely within the terms of the existing contracts.

The only way to secure the house before it goes to auction is for me to buy it. I have secured a mortgage in principal, but I need to raise funds for a deposit to make this possible. I have been advised that I would need approximately £40,000 to make an offer before the house goes to auction with Knight Frank on May 7th. An offer we are confident would be considered.

I never set out to own a home. I have always lived as an artist, choosing to prioritise the work over financial gains because it is a calling. But the current situation means that, like many long-term tenants here, I face eviction unless I act. What has emerged is, in effect, a small housing crisis within this community.

As the sole provider for my dependents, I am trying to keep my family’s world as stable as possible, and to keep my work rooted in the place it has grown from. My daughter Alice lives here and attends her special school five minutes away. This house is not only where we live, it is what holds our world together. Alice is an integral part of the Creative Body Process and shares her home with participants. It is crucial that this house should also remain her forever home as all her support networks orbit around it.

Over the years, my son Luke and I created “The Garden” – a living space that welcomed hundreds of people, and lives on in the hearts and minds of those who visited. The Garden, which provided a focal point for the community, the disenfranchised, the disabled, and enabled many people to finally feel seen. From there the first thoughts were conceived around The Creative Body Process which I run with my dear friend and colleague Abbie Trayler-Smith.

The Creative Body Process cannot continue in its current form without this house. My home, and the land around it, has enabled a particular quality of learning to take place in lived, daily ways. Hosting the workshops from my home enables participants to feel at home and is integral to the process. As I'm sure those of you who have attended know only too well. It also allows me to keep the work accessible to as many artists as possible by keeping the cost low.

This next step is not about ownership in the traditional sense. It is about protecting a way of life: keeping a space where people can live, learn, and create in connection with one another. It is about integrity, community, and continuity.

I am truly grateful for your support, and for helping sustain what this space makes possible.

Please donate, share with friends, and your creative networks. Time is short, and the process needs to move quickly.

With love and gratitude,

Sian x