Caitlin Kiely and Dr Jamie Larkin

Caitlin Kiely is a Birmingham-based artist, practice-led researcher, facilitator and educator. Alongside her practice, she teaches at a number of institutions including Coventry University. She holds an MA in Visual Communication from the Royal College of Art.

Dr Jamie Larkin is an Assistant Professor at the University of Warwick. He completed his PhD at the University College London’s Institute of Archaeology, with a thesis that examined the history and development of commercial activity in the UK museum and heritage sector.

For Coventry Biennial 2025, Caitlin and Jamie will collaborate to make a new project that explores a broad definition of the museum – considering it as a collection of processes connected to a place, as opposed to a static destination or specific point in time. Through the use of art, storytelling and social engagement they will reimagine museums, their structures and functions, applying a range of lenses to engage and connect with overlooked fragments of a place’s ecology and social history.

This short video of Caitlin talking about the project was made by local photographer, documentarian and Coventry Biennial 2021 exhibitor Alan Van Wijgerden:

Caitlin’s practice is situated across site-studio-archive, where she explores human relationships to landscapes and the social context. She often takes archival material as a starting point or practical material to think with and work through. She’s interested in the materiality and expanded history of a site beyond what we already know or that can be seen. It is the process of weaving geological, historical and human timelines which enables Caitlin to make connections between people, places and industrial processes.

Jamie’s academic work has largely focused on the museum shop. His interest initially focused on examining the cultural role the shop could play as part of the museum experience, and he has increasingly started thinking about how this space could be used to support curatorial programming and to communicate messages about the climate crisis.

Caitlin has exhibited with Radiophrenia in Glasgow (Scotland), Centrala in Birmingham (UK) and at Airspace Gallery in Stoke-on-Trent (UK). She has additionally delivered workshops with the British Ceramics Biennial and published work with Hoax.

Jamie has published several papers surrounding his work on the museum shop, including ‘Rethinking Museum Shops in the context of the Climate Crisis’ and ‘The Role of the Museum Shop in Sustainable Futures’. He has been able to put this idea into practice at the University of Warwick, where a pilot of the ‘Museum of Climate Stories’ was conducted as a part of Resonate Festival 2024.

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This collaborative project is generously funded by, and co-commissioned with Warwick Institute of Engagement and Research and Impact Services at University of Warwick.

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