Creative People

Festival Stoke Creative Practitioners

Here we feature some of the people we have worked with over the years, at Festival Stoke.

Alice Cunningham

Alice Cunningham is a visual artist with a diverse practice and the ability to sensitively work in many mediums.
Cunningham has worked and exhibited throughout the UK, Europe, Asia and Africa. She was shortlisted to represent the UK in the first UK Young Artists Biennale in Europe.
Alice has lectured in Fine Art at Universities throughout the UK and works with charities organising creative events to engage hard to reach or marginalised groups.
In 2017 Alice created 'Let by' incorporating stunning portraits of local people along with quotations - as 'Let by' signs outside properties in Stoke.
www.alicecunningham.co.uk

Laurel Gallagher

Laurel’s work investigates processes of transformation and metamorphosis. Her paintings capture states of flux between illustration and abstraction, chaos and control; abstract layers of dripping paint inviting us to look through worlds of possibility and build our own reality.
In 2017 Laurel created 'Follow the Birds', big, bright, bold, beautiful birds around the town.

feralstate

Cultural Sisters

The Cultural Sisters is a participatory arts organisation. We work with people in community, education and health settings.
Established in 1995 and based in Stoke-on-Trent, we have a core group of experienced professional artists who design, deliver and manage creative workshops, consultations, Arts in Health projects, outdoor performance, events and commissions.
In 2017 artists Debs and Fiona hung bright coloured lampshades in unexpected places around the town for 'Inside Outside'.
www.theculturalsisters.co.uk

Richard Redwin

Richard Redwin is a multi-disciplinary artist working in visual, three-dimensional, and interactive mediums. Once an aspiring writer, now his artistic work explores ways to tell stories and engage audiences that move beyond the written word. His recent obsessions include mask making, kinetic sculptures, and light design.

Adam Pryce & Nic Winstanley

In 2017 Artists Adam and Nicola worked with local people to create three large tile murals which are now proudly installed around Stoke Market and called...'Proud of Stoke'.
www.adampryce.com winstanleynadin.uk

Scratch & Sniff

In 2017 Performance artists Emily Andrews and Toby White, as Scratch and Sniff Theatre, presented a fun and engaging act called 'Toni & Tony and their Trusty Trike'.
Emily Andrews

Dan Thompson

Dan Thompson is an award-winning social artist, writer, and speaker living in Margate.
His work is about people and places, and the stories that connect them. Exploration, walking, and leading guided walks form part of my practice. My work often touches on themes of migration in the UK.
He is also interested in the creation of social capital, in activating abandoned or underused spaces, and in DIY approaches to art, culture and social action.
From 2014 - 2015 Dan Thompson spent a year visiting Stoke on a collaborative residency with Appetite Stoke. He researched stories about London Road and created the book 'It's all about the Road', reading presentations at the London Road Festival 2015.
Visit Dan's website here.

Rachel Ballard

In 2017 Rachel created a surprising small garden for 'Greening Church Street'; incorporating a recycled filing cabinet as a plant container, with picket fence and lawn, it created a stir in the town. During 2018 Rachel joined with artist Anne Kinnaird to deliver 'Greening Church Street' as part of Kew Garden's Grow Wild project. Incorporating recycled and reused items such as filing cabinets and colanders turning them into various planters and hanging baskets that add splashes of colour around the town, turning unwanted materials into homes for nature to flourish. Rachel is now working alongside Letting in the Light's Anne Kinnaird to extend the project into 'Greening Stoke' in 2019.

Chris Oldham

In 2014 Chris Oldham interpreted used digital composites using multi-layered collages weaving in visual journeys and mental puzzles. "My pictures ask the viewer to spend time reading the images and decoding the clues to the locations in the pictures or be absorbed in the shapes, textures and spaces inside the images."

Behjat Omer A

Behjat worked with us over two festivals in 2012 and 2013 when he exhibited his wonderful and evocative drawings as part of Open Air Gallery.
Behjat Omer A

Anna Macdonald

In 2013 Anna Macdonald brought 'Car Conversations' to Open Air Gallery. Working with children from Stoke Minster School she created a fun and colourful artwork involving 6,000 small cars.

Goldpeg & Malarky

Grafitti artists Goldpeg and Malarky transformed four sites along London Road in Stoke during the summer of 2013 with their bright and bold illustrations.

Letting in the Light + Denise O'Sullivan

In 2014 Letting in the Light joined with Denise O'Sullivan to 'site-vibe' the festival site - creating massive windmill structures and hosting windmill making workshops. Hundreds of colourful windmills were planted over the weekend.

Alice Thatcher

Artist in Residence at Art Stop during August - November 2018, with her final exhibition in January 2019. During her residency Alice used the time to research and experiment with new techniques, in addition to hosting workshops. Alice creates beautiful paper porcelain artworks.

Siobhan Mcaleer

During March 2018 artist Shiv went out into the local pubs and cafes of Stoke with her easel and paints. She created her own unique and bold artworks and engaged the locals in arty-conversations.

Adam Pryce

In 2014 Adam Pryce created striking repeat pattern graphic banners interpreting Stoke traditions in a fresh way. They adorned the buildings along London Road and the town centre for Open Air Gallery.

Mitchell Robinson

In 2017 Artist Mitchell designed hand created beautiful gift bags, using Lino-cuts, featuring well-known potters across the eras: Josiah Wedgwood, Susie Cooper and Keith Brymer-Jones. They were available with customer purchases in selected local shops around the town centre of Stoke during December 2017.

GKA Gay

The Roaming Poets, coordinated by GKA Gay, performed at bus stops, in pubs, outside shops during January 2018. Their poems were installed in the bus stops of the town centre for a month.

The Unknown Artists

Over the years at the festivals we have had guerrilla artworks appearing. We love them, but have not yet discovered their creators.

Rebecca Davies

Artist Rebecca Davies created a pop-up cinema on Church Street Stoke in November 2017. Showing a selection of independent films, Rebecca also reworked 'Everything but Flowers' by Talking Heads, especially for Stoke-on-Trent. Featuring local artists and filmed in the atmospheric former Spode Pottery board room.

Polly Shave

In 2017 Photographer Polly Shave installed echoes of autumn on the pavements outside Stoke Minster with her beautiful leaf patterns as part of 'Botanica Decorus'. Pedestrians encountered stunning artworks under their feet.

Sylvia Bull

Sylvia Bull graduated with an MA in Childrens' Book Illustration from Anglia Ruskin University in 2008. Having spent over 10 years as a Story Artist for Aardman Animation, Sylvia's work often has a story to tell. Drawn from childhood memories, or from classic Myths and Children's Fairy Tales, her prints prints evoke remembered emotions, people and places.
Sylvia is working with Festival Stoke on the Werburgh and the Wild Goose project. sylviabull.com

Oliver Sherlock

In 2017 Oliver, along with Samuel Freeman, used technology with creativity to create three sculptural LED light pieces which hung outside shops along Church Street.

Kate Robinson

Dr. Kate Robinson BA (Hons) MRBS
Sculpture, drawing and the spoken and written word using body, voice, stone, metal, wood, ice, sand...
Meaningful social engagement...Art can be in an approach as much as it can be a thing.
Contexts range from galleries to parks to prisons and public squares, from archaeological sites to public and private memorials.
Creative and academic writing and the telling of stories through word and image...
Kate is working with us on the Werburgh and the Wild Goose Project.
'Woman Man Sun Moon' pictured
katerobinsononline.com

Nic Winstanley

Nic is contributing to the Werburgh and the Wild Goose project.
Whilst being a true daughter of the city, Nic has lived in the town of Stoke for just over three years. "I was thrilled to be given the opportunity to challenge my own perception of the town and discover things that not even I knew about or had ever really thought about deeply. I have been devising ideas that lean away from expensive material constructions and more towards participatory, experiential, thought provoking and accessible (in the physical sense) interventions that highlight what is worth coming to Stoke for, and how Stoke can become more open and inviting to others."
nicwinstanley.com

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