Introducing our brand-new Artist Advisory Group – where artists and makers from North East Lincolnshire and West Midlands have been brought together to share their experience and perspectives to help Creative United deliver new strategies to support creatives around the UK.

About the Artist Advisory Group

We created the Artist Advisory Group (AAG) so we can become better informed and more accurately understand the challenges and opportunities that exist for artists and makers to develop sustainable careers in the UK. Initially, we will be working with creatives from North East Lincolnshire and West Midlands.

When recruiting for this year’s cohort, we were particularly interested in hearing from artists and makers who are currently considered underrepresented in the arts and crafts field – i.e. they are facing barriers, marginalisation, and inequality to opportunities due to physical health/disability, sensory impairment, learning disabilities, mental health issues, neurodivergence, sexuality, gender, or ethnicity.

Who's taking part?

A range of independent makers, artists and craftspeople working in a variety of different mediums – including painting, print-making, sculpture, ceramics, jewellery, craft, photography, film, writing and other works.

North East Lincolnshire Cohort:

Dale Wells

Drawer, Writer

Dale Wells

Drawer, Writer

Dale Christopher Wells is a multidisciplinary artist, award winning gallerist and renowned restoration expert. With over 22 years’ experience in the field, Dale has been integral in raising Grimsby’s artistic offering to a level of national importance. Currently co-Director of the Turntable Gallery in Grimsby, his work in the cultural sector has brought contemporary heavyweights to the town, seen a huge increase in public engagement and drawn the attention of the world press. Dale’s practice encompasses sculpture, drawing, performance and writing. He has shown country-wide and appears in public and private collections across the UK and beyond.

Instagram: @dalechristopherwells

Jen Holtridge

Ceramicist

Jen Holtridge

Ceramicist

Jen Holtridge is an artist and potter working under the name Quite Contrary Pottery. Jen harnesses the wellbeing benefits of pottery to unlock people’s creativity, most recently working with disabled artists to spotlight endangered migratory birds of the Humber Estuary, with young people from the LGBTQIA+ community and people with lived experience of immigration and resettlement to represent their journeys.
Working in ceramics and photography, and often combining both, Jen’s work explores personal themes of contradictions, mental health, neurodivergence and always includes a sense of humour.

Instagram @quitecontrarypottery

Darren Neave

Painter, print-maker, writer

Darren Neave

Painter, print-maker, writer

Darren Neave is an artist and researcher currently undertaking a doctoral award at Leeds Beckett University. His practice-led research navigates the preposterousness of olfaction with sculptural resurrection, with links to re-use, ecological demise, corporeal embodiment and memory. This links with his research in consumerist delight and disgust, embracing commodification, the written word, a working-class and a queer, neuro-divergent background. Aside from his studies and practice, Darren co-directs the Turntable Gallery on the historic fish docks in Grimsby – the first dedicated space for contemporary art within the town.

Instagram: @thehazmatguy

Annabel McCourt

Photographer, sculptor, multi-media artist

Annabel McCourt

Photographer, sculptor, multi-media artist

Annabel McCourt is a distinguished contemporary artist known for her provocative and thought-provoking works that challenge social and political norms. Her multimedia creations span installations, sculpture and public art; often exploring themes of power, identity and societal conflict. McCourt’s innovative approach and fearless commentary have garnered her international acclaim and numerous exhibitions.

Instagram: @annabelmccourt_artist

Lynsey Powles

Painter, Print-maker

Lynsey Powles

Painter, Print-maker

Lynsey is a self-taught Urban Artist from Grimsby, Lincolnshire, with over 25 years of professional experience and a proud member of the internationally acclaimed all-female graffiti art crew, Girls On Top. Lynsey’s work has garnered recognition both nationally and internationally, and she has painted at graffiti events across the UK. Her signature style is characterized by cute characters with large heads and small bodies, resonating with audiences of all ages and genders. She is committed to her local community and it’s evident through her extensive involvement in organizing events such as the Grimsby and Cleethorpes Urban Art Festivals.

Instagram: @lyns_urbanart

West Midlands Cohort:

Maddie Webb

Painter, print-maker

Maddie Webb

Painter, print-maker

Originally from Scotland, Maddie’s childhood was largely spent by the sea; an environment that inspired her creative practice over the years. Maddie studied Art Foundation at Cumbria College of Art and Design then graduated from University of Central Lancashire with a BA (Hons) before completing a PGCE in Art & Design in 2001 and forging a successful career in Arts Education, whilst continuing her own creative practice in painting. Her work is inspired by the patterns, colours and landscapes of nature, as well as the thoughts, feelings and emotions she resonates with in her daily life.

Instagram: @maddiewebbart

Hannah Taylor

Grassroots arts organisation, multidisciplinary artist

Hannah Taylor

Grassroots arts organisation, multidisciplinary artist

Hannah is passionate about developing and producing interdisciplinary immersive arts and culture programmes that connect and build meaningful exchanges for intersectional communities. She has over 10 years of experience working in artist-led spaces as the Director of Asylum Art Gallery LTD and the Public Program and Projects Manager at Compton Verney. Her practice has manifested in response to her long-term chronic health condition. She explores the creation of eulogies and the tension between oral histories and digital archives, seeking to understand how to reclaim some sense of agency within a society which dehumanises within medicalised settings for birth, healthcare and death, scaring our neuroendocrinological functioning and changing our symbiotic lived experiences.

Instagram: @asylum_artist_quarter

Corinne

Photographer, Sculptor, Textiles

Corinne

Photographer, Sculptor, Textiles

Corinne is a disabled queer self-portrait artist and curator, producing art from the same 2 by 1.5-metre space: their bed. Primarily a photographer, Corinne’s self-portraits are laden with symbolism and explore themes of confinement, fragile health and queerness. Corinne’s childhood and imaginary friend “Daisy” is central to their practice. To escape childhood trauma, Corinne and Daisy created Daisyland, a magical Utopia they entered through a Fairy-Door on their bedroom wall. Daisyland inspired the Arts Council DYCP project ‘Daisyland: A Queer Utopia and Curatorial Platform’.

Instagram: @corinnesdiary

Sahjan Kooner

Installation, video, computer based media artist

Sahjan Kooner

Installation, video, computer based media artist

Sahjan Kooner is an amalgamation of inherited worlds and speculative futures, they work in a freelance capacity to support their practice and owe a great deal to their family. They are a student of the dream state.

Dinosaur Kilby

Contemporary Visual Artist

Dinosaur Kilby

Contemporary Visual Artist

Dinosaur Kilby is an Artist-Curator based in Birmingham. He currently works at Wolverhampton Art Gallery as a Digital Producer. Between 2021-23 he completed an artist-curator traineeship at Eastside Projects. He set up and ran Cheap Cheap, an artist-led space, between 2019-2023. Dinosaur is currently working on Free House, a new artist studio complex and Prayer Room, a new exhibition space, both in Digbeth, Birmingham. He is also a founding member of Kühle Wampe, a horrible collaboration based across The Midlands.

Instagram: @dinosaurkilby

Kevin Hunt

Painter, print-maker, sculptor, functional designer

Kevin Hunt

Painter, print-maker, sculptor, functional designer

Growing up on a council estate at the edge of Liverpool, Kevin Hunt’s work draws from his personal experiences and memories navigating lower-class architecture and spaces primarily designed by and for heterosexual, cisgendered individuals. Making sculpture in the broadest sense, his interdisciplinary practice questions societal hierarchies within heteronormative culture. A colloquial use (or misuse) of language plays a key part in the artist’s work. Kevin also has a background in the education and DIY artist-led sector and has conceived, strategically developed and managed several organisations and projects that have helped sustain and amplify regional artistic practice. He is currently a member of the Visual Arts, Artist Development Advisory Group at The Lowry, Salford.

Instagram: @sculptureartman

Josh Edgington

Painter, Print-maker

Josh Edgington

Painter, Print-maker

Josh is an emerging British artist with work featured in New Art Gallery Walsall’s ‘Twenty Twenty’ collection. Born in Rugby, Warwickshire, Josh first studied Fashion at Kingston University London, later going on the attain a MA in Art History from The Open University. He lives and works in Birmingham. Whilst studying part-time for his MA, Josh began to experiment in ways of making work through textiles, polaroids, and illustration before arriving at the current practice of mixed media painting, monoprints and writing.

Instagram: @edgingtonisart

Exodus Crooks

Multi disciplinary artist, working in film, installation and performance

Exodus Crooks

Multi disciplinary artist, working in film, installation and performance

Exodus Crooks is a British-Jamaican multidisciplinary artist and educator, interested in self-determination and how it is steered by religion and spirituality. Their art is research focused and follows the lead of the many radical Caribbean writers and thinkers advocating for indigenous ways of living. Exodus is currently experimenting with gardening, text, filmmaking, and installation to better understand indigenous thought and tend to the breaks that occur in the human experience. They are proud to be based in heart of the Midland’s vibrant art community, working closely with local galleries and organisations such as Grand Union, Vivid Projects, The New Art Gallery Walsall, and Wolverhampton Art Gallery.

Instagram: @exoduscrooks

Suki Chumber

Mixed media artist

Suki Chumber

Mixed media artist

Sukhjeven (Suki) Chumber is a British mixed media artist whose work is based mostly on stories of identity, collaborations of thoughts, dreams and actions. He obtained a BA in Art & Design from the University of Hertfordshire and an MA in Jewellery, Silversmithing & Allied Crafts from the Metropolitan University of London, before going on to achieve a second MA in Fine Art and a PGCE PCE from the University of Wolverhampton. They have been exhibiting in and around Wolverhampton, and further afield, since the early 2000s.

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