Helen Kilby Nelson is a multi-disciplinary, neurodivergent artist based in rural Warwickshire. Helen’s practice is informed by social and political issues, including socio-economic inequality, disability, class discrimination, ageism and gender inequality. Working across media within post-digital and socially engaged approaches using processes that include: written word, moving image, photography, music, and found images to create sculptural installations and 2D works, performance, participatory workshops and community interventions. Helen identifies as working class and has lived experience of living with a long term health condition. Through these experiences she has observed and experienced the impact of being marginalised and the effects on identity, opportunity, inclusion and belonging. Helen continually questions the human condition and society, forensically peeling away layers of information and misinformation, meanings and subliminal messages, within the multiple ways we experience language.
Read MoreLetty McHugh is an artist and writer based in West Yorkshire. Her work explores the universality of personal experience, which is basically the intellectual way of saying she's interested in people, their stories and the things that connect us all. At the moment, Letty is researching ways of making work to bring connection and solace to people experiencing isolation, drawing inspiration from my own experiences of living with a chronic illness. In the last 12 months, Letty has been named Associate Artist with Disability Arts Online. She has worked with the National Maritime Museum and the Bradford 2025 City of Culture Bid as well as appearing on an online panel for Garage Museum of Contemporary Arts in Moscow.
Read MoreTamsin Grainger is a writer, bodyworker and walking artist living in Edinburgh. She holds online workshops and events, including On Death and Life, Touch for Grief, Death Cafes, Grave walks, and Enquiries into Bodywalking.
Read MoreI am an interdisciplinary research based artist, my relationship with art has always been one of limitless possibilities that has introduced me to the most amazing people and communities who have shared their incredible life stories and experiences with me.
Currently I have been working on a new body of work called ‘Hollywood’ which has been inspired by a Welsh journalist and broadcaster whose career has spanned over forty years, who is now living with dementia. I have recorded their oral history which has been incredible and a privilege to listen to and archive.
I am also an Associate Artist at The Glynn Vivian Art Gallery in Swansea, South Wales. My role is to focused on disability arts. To increase more opportunities for people with disabilities to express themselves creatively in an inclusive arts practice. And create new opportunities for people with disabilities and non disabilities to work and collaborate together.
Since 2013 I have been an arts facilitator with the Alternative Arts School at the gallery, which is a visual arts programme working with artists with learning disabilities. The sessions are self directed, focusing on the creative process and exploration of art mediums and techniques which are inspired by the exhibitions at the gallery, Richard Glynn Vivian’s collections, life experiences and interests.
Read MoreDebs is an award winning theatre artist based in London and West Yorkshire. She is an actor, director, writer and performance storyteller working across a range of theatre forms, with a love of work that playfully explores performer-audience relationships. Recent collaborations include Shakespeare's Globe, the BBC, Red Ladder, Rose Theatre Kingston, the Royal Opera House. Her solo pieces have played venues as diverse as the Royal Opera House, the British Library, the Southbank Centre, Hay Festival and Shakespeare’s Globe theatre, as well as many prestigious theatres and festivals in the UK, US and Europe.
Read MoreWalid Siti was born in 1954, in the city of Duhok, in Iraqi-Kurdistan. After graduating in 1976 from the Institute of Fine arts in Baghdad, Siti left Iraq to continue his arts education in Ljubljana, Slovenia before seeking political asylum in 1984 in the United Kingdom where he lives and works.
Formerly trained in printmaking, Siti works extensively in a variety of mediums including video, installation, 3D works, work on paper and painting. His works traverse a complex terrain of memory and loss, while at the same time offering an acute insight into a world, which for him has been a place of constant change. The narrative of Siti’s experience, of a life lived far from but still deeply emotionally connected to the place of one’s birth, is one he shares with many exiles; he takes inspiration from the cultural heritage of his native land that is crisscrossed with militarized borders and waves of migration. The artist’s work considers the tensions between collective identity, interdependence and the constraints placed on the individual by themes of heritage, tradition, homes, borders, mobility and migration.
Siti’s work has been exhibited internationally, at Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin, at the Imperial war Museum, London, at Institut des Cultures d’Islam, Paris, at the Sharjah Biennial with prize award, and at the Venice Biennale, 2009, 2011,2015. Yinchuan Contemporary Art Museum, China(MOCA), “Systems and Patterns”, International Centre of Graphics, Ljubljana, Slovenia, Bruges Triennial, Belgium.
Read MoreMatthew Dowell (b.1994, Sunderland, UK) has a research based practice working across the expanded fields of print, performance, and sculpture. Responding to specific sites he adopts anthropological models of working through exploring social histories and recording signifiers of place: street and welcome signs, mapping, and walking tours. He studied Fine Art at Kingston School of Art (2013-16) and Print at the Royal College of Art (2018-2020). He was shortlisted for the Gillian Dickinson North East Young Sculpture (2019) and is the recipient of the Stanley Picker Print Tutorship (2021). Recent exhibitions include Artworks Open at the Barbican Arts Group Trust (2020).
Read MoreLady Kitt is a maker, researcher and drag king, based in the UK. Kitt describes their work as "Mess Making as Social Glue, driven by an insatiable curiosity to explore, share and (gently) insight the social functions of stuff that gets called art". Kitt uses crafting, performance and research to create objects, interactions and events. Some of the things that have happened as part of their work are: super-sized origami boat races, policy changes & the creation of an international feminist art magazine for and by children. Kitt is co-lead for Social Art Network (SAN) North East, trustee for Crafts Council UK, & member of disabled artist led consortium Disconsortia Kitt's work has been selected for inclusion in The Institute for Art and Innovation (Germany), “Social Art Award 2019 Book”. Their work has recently shown work at Atlanta Contemporary (USA) and Saatchi Gallery London (UK). Kitt is currently Maker in Residence at Durham University 2020-21 (UK) and one of nine "Constellations" artist with UP Projects and Flat Time House (London, UK).
Read MoreChristopher’s award-winning work looks to the power of storytelling, imagination and fables to create new visual and physical landscapes within communities and our environment. Through the use of colour and adjustment of context, Christophers paintings, sculptures and social engagement encourages the exploration of our imagination and how we 'read' objects and images, finding new narratives. What stories do they hold, what can they tell us? Based in Sheffield, Christopher continues to create visionary and unique pieces that have been exhibited nationally and internationally.
Read MoreRebecca Thomson is an artist based in London. She explores the relationship between the intimate and public through printmaking and installations. Much of her work is about pursuing playful ways to ‘reach out’ to a stranger through text, scale and touch. Influenced by the different places we find faith and personal value in, Thomson often uses fortunes, personal stories, and mementoes as material. Exhibitions include the Woon Foundation Painting and Sculpture Prize, the Royal Scottish Academy and Art Licks Weekend.
Read MoreLisa Creagh devises and create artistic works including site-specific installations, photographic exhibitions, video interviews and social media interventions. Creagh's work is shown in commercial and other spaces including museums, community settings, health care environments and other public places. Creagh is passionate about the transformative potential of art to create healthier, happier people.
Read MoreMy name is Sara Qaed. I’m an artist and editorial cartoonist. I practice art through drawings, comics, illustrations, wearable pieces and things in-between. My daily caricatures focus on refugees, women, corruption, power, human existence, and contradictions.
Read MoreEva Sajovic is is a Slovene born artist photographer, living and working in London. Her focus is on socially engaged, participatory practice through which she explores the drivers ofglobal displacement such as regeneration, poverty, trafficking, culture and climate change.
Read MoreI am a socially engaged artist with a career and provenance of work spanning over 43 years. My work is site and need based specific focussing on social, economic and ecological change. I have a profile of published works, exhibitions and events across the visual arts and poetry genres.
I have provenance track record 43 years delivering ‘Socially engaged arts’ enabling the creativity of others; Qualified with MA by research Fine Art an HND and ADMP in ‘Site and Need Based Specifics’ Spatial Design & FAETC 730/40 City & Guilds. Worked for organisations including Somerset Film ‘Generations Together’ Cabinet Office of third sector; Creativity Works as key worker during transition from North East Somerset Arts (NESA) in 2003-09; I designed, delivered projects and published books contributing towards regional portfolio organisation status. I designed, delivered and evaluated many projects working with people most disenfranchised in society; at risk vulnerable, young people and families, people with mental health, drugs, alcohol, poverty, social isolation, abuse with deprivation issues and multiple challenges in their lives. I myself experience some of the same issues and challenges as those I work with gaining insights and empathy.
https://andrewhenon.wordpress.com/poetry-films/
Read MoreClare Qualmann is an artist/researcher whose work focuses on participatory, site specific, and experimental modes of contemporary creative practice often using walking. Her teaching research and art practice explore the interconnections between art, activism and the radical potentials of participation.
clarequalmann.co.uk
Read MoreHannah Kemp-Welch is a sound artist with a socially-engaged practice, working with community groups to compose audio works using voices, field recordings and found sound. Works take the form of audio installations, radio broadcasts and online artworks. She also creates zines to document research and processes, aiming to open out sonic practices, spaces and technologies to new audiences.
https://www.sound-art-hannah.com/
Read MoreMelissa is a London-based visual artist, designer and creative facilitator. Whilst maintaining her own creative practice through screen printing, she has also worked with various creative and educational organisations as a facilitator delivering creative workshops with children and adults.
https://engage-here.co.uk/
Read MorePositive concepts derived from everyday life and nature influence my work. Nature has always inspired me. Its form, colour, sound, taste, texture excite and sometimes frighten me. I feel there is nothing equal to its magnificent power and pure beauty. The challenge to design alongside the power of nature will continue. I intend to create my works to present a moment of peace to a viewer who lives in our hectic world and to push the boundaries of textiles being perceived as craft.
Read MoreSam Ivin is a photographic artist who explores social issues and the people connected with them. By documenting their stories and perspectives he hopes to provide a more personal, tangible understanding of them. Ivin’s process often involves hosting photography workshops, where he creates collaborative artwork with project participants. He has been awarded numerous significant photography prizes including the Magnum Photos Graduate Photographers Award, May 2017, The GMC First Prize, Royal Birmingham Society of Artists, March 2017, the Best Graduate Single Image, Runner Up, British Journal of Photography (BJP) Breakthrough Award 2016 and the Winner of Best Single Image, Human Category at Renaissance Photography Prize 2015.
Read MoreI am creative practitioner, curator-producer and educator. Regardless of which creative hat I am wearing, I actively seek out to instigate and produce collaborative projects that support and promote social change. Most of my work takes place outside of the gallery, working on short and long term residency projects, across health, social housing, justice, learning, heritage and environmental settings.
www.elizabeth-wewiora.com
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