Alberta: I love to collect things. It might be things I've found on the street; it might be a piece of nature. I'm a bit like a magpie where if I see something, I want to pick it up or I want to bring it home with me.

My name is Alberta Whittle and I'm an artist based in Glasgow.

Hello! So just find a wee seat.

Student: What inspired you to do art? And what age did you start at?

Alberta: I started even when I was like, seven or eight. My parents always took me on the road with them to do errands, and all I would be doing was sitting in the car literally waiting for them to be done, and they gave me a sketchbook and essentially, I would just find myself drawing in the car. It just made me feel a sense of, I guess, peace.  It was almost as though using my hands became a way for me to calm myself down.

Student 2: What’s your favourite materials for a work piece?

Alberta: So, it really depends on that day. I work with a whole variety of images and materials, and this can stem from collage to painting to sculpture to performance to film to installations.  I just really love thinking about how objects can be transformed into something different and give new meaning.

I have a huge box of tambourines I'm going to tell you to just pass them down. So, grab one and pass them down. These tambourines are so important in my practice, because when I paint, I like to paint using these tambourines as the palettes.

And then I want to give it a good hit. When I’m painting, sometimes it's just about shaking things up. You know, I don't like to feel tight when I'm painting.

Do you guys do collage much at school?

I’m wondering if we have tape somewhere.

I want you to think about some questions about the world that have been confusing you or that you've been thinking a lot about. So, I want you to use these magazines

and card and glue, but also pens and you can write down the different questions, and then we're going to cut them up and make them into a collage and one big poem.

Collage has been with me since I was a kid, and I like that physical ripping apart of something and juxtaposing certain ideas next to each other.

Oh that's nice—I like those colours.

There we go.

Collage for me is so many things beyond breaking the image. It's also making a costume, making a different self. As a Barbadian person, I'm always really thinking so much about my place in connection with the UK.

Student 2: Can I write in another language?

Alberta: Of course!  If anyone wants to write in any other languages, go right ahead.

Student 3: ... means, like, don’t ...

Alberta: Don’t?

Student 3: ... yell my name.

Alberta: Don't yell my name?

Student 2: [speaking Ukrainian]

Alberta: [repeats]

Student 2: Yeah

Alberta: What does it mean?

Student 2: Think what you're doing.

Alberta: Think what you're doing? That's really smart.

I do think part of the work is meant to be educational, or telling a story, but how can we also grow in empathy?

[Students and Alberta reading their questions and prompts in several languages – text translations appear on the screen]

Alberta: If I was talking to the younger version of myself, I would tell myself to try things and not worry about being perfect or making mistakes, and that there can be great beauty in ugliness.

Just keep making.