Award Holders' Reports

The format of Award Holders’ Reports has not previously been designed for inclusion in the website, but this will be part of the conditions of Awards in the future extracts. Extracts from Press releases at the time announcing previous Awards, are therefore given here

Commissioning Award for theatre writing partnership

The St Hugh’s Foundation’s Commissioning Award for 2006, advertised earlier this year, has now been announced. Out of a strong shortlist of applicants from Lincolnshire and the Humber, the successful proposal came from a partnership of Lincolnshire County Council’s Community Services, the Theatre Writing Partnership, the University of Lincoln and arts centres and services in South Holland, Boston and North Kesteven.

The Foundation’s award of £13,000 will support the commissioning of a writer in residence at four Lincolnshire arts centres. The writer, to be selected, will run programmes of playwriting workshops for young people, so that each participant can produce an original play. There will be links to other services for people of all ages, including mentoring and script appraisal opportunities.

The Foundation’s Trustees were impressed by the strategic approach, joining up the existing county-wide work of arts providers and services, and building a new partnership with the Theatre Writing Partnership – a regional organisation with proven experience of developing script writing for the theatre as an artform. All the partners will be helping to finance this ambitious project.

They also hope to continue to support the work of the best young writers who emerge from the residency programme, creating later opportunities to commission work for performance or rehearsed readings at the four centres.

St Hugh's Fellowship

The St Hugh’s Foundation, the arts charity for Lincolnshire and the Humber, has awarded the St Hugh’s Fellowship for 2005 to portrait painter Alan Parker, currently the artist-in-residence at Lincoln Cathedral. The award of £10,000 will support him through an extended period of observing and capturing the restoration and replacement of the Cathedral’s great rosary window known as the Dean’s Eye.

Over the next year Alan will create a large scale painting based on the restoration of the window in transition. He expects it to incorporate a series of portraits of the stonemasons, glaziers and others who are responsible for this continuous care of the Cathedral’s fabric, and he has already begun capturing many of them at work, through drawings and preparatory sketches.

The St Hugh’s Trustees were convinced that Alan would be able to carry through a major project on this ambitious scale. In his 2002 exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery he exhibited 22 portraits of Leicester police force and their community – the outcome of a year’s work.

Alan left school at 15 with no qualifications, and worked for five years at British Steel as a trainee fitter, before starting art college courses at Barnsley, Brighton and the Royal Academy. He has been Visiting Fellow in the Creative Arts at Trinity College Cambridge, and Leverhulme Scholar at Warwick University; but in between also spent five years as a police officer in Leicester, working in Child Protection.

The St Hugh’s Fellowship will also enable him to extend his technical knowledge through study in this country and abroad. Alan is interested in the ancient technique of painting in egg tempera, and wants to explore whether it can be the medium for this major new work.

Commissioning Award

Hull Central Library

Awarded to Hull City Libraries for an innovative proposal that will use creative images as part of the new fabric of Hull Central Library.

The ground floor of the library has undergone major refurbishment, and in order to engage a wider sector of the community in the visual arts, library and arts staff intend to incorporate new photographic imagery into the functional interior design of the refurbished area, allowing library visitors and staff to use the artwork as a guide to locate sections within the library.

The imagery, which will be informed by interaction with the public, will be photographically based and transferred onto various materials and surfaces, starting in the entrance area and continuing through the ground floor to the children’s library, making use of columns and bookstands as well as wall spaces.

Michelle Alford, who has recently managed the City Library refurbishment programme, said “Although mainly functional, the work by artists Sarah Daniels and Ian Killen will be highly visual, and is expected to have a vibrant and invigorating impact on the public space.”

Fellowship

Sarah Daniels

Sarah Daniels is a photographer with extensive experience of working in community settings, with schools, hospitals and health services, and who has carried out collaborative projects with creative writers and poets, leading to innovative public art projects and teaching packs. She holds a degree in documentary communications, and an MA in fine art and critical theory.

The Fellowship will enable her to embark on research into ways of placing photographic images within the fabric of the living and built environment, incorporating photographs into the design and manufacturing processes, by establishing partnerships with architects, engineers and interior designers.

Dr Richard Hollinshead

Richard Hollinshead’s work as a sculptor has been widely exhibited in the region, in the UK and abroad, through group projects and solo exhibitions, and he has carried out overseas research projects including studying sculpture parks in the USA (for which he received a St Hugh’s travel award in 1999). He holds a degree in fine art and an MA in sculpture, and his PhD in 2000 was on sculptors and sculpture parks.

His current work involves practical research into contemporary understanding of nature and the impact of bio-engineering and genetics on our relationship with the natural world. The Fellowship will enable him to carry out a major sculpture project, provisionally entitled ‘winged rat’.

Henrietta Bowder Memorial Bursary

Kayla Dougan

Kayla Dougan has worked in San Francisco, Lincolnshire and Humberside as a performer, teacher, facilitator and community dance worker. She is currently a freelance dance worker, coordinating ‘Artsplay’ in Lincoln, and engaging with Converse Theatre on the Grounding Project in Lincolnshire. She holds a degree in dance and an MA in theatre and contemporary arts practice.

The Memorial Bursary will enable her to attend the Winter Melt dance festival at the Movement Research Centre in New York in January. The festival will provide an opportunity to work with some contemporary pioneers of improvisation, new dance technique, and choreography – experiences which she hopes to contribute to future dance development initiatives in the region.

Commissioning Award

20-21 Visual Arts Centre, Scunthorpe

At a time when many museums and galleries throughout the country are trying to attract teenage visitors into their venues, 20-21 visual arts centre in Scunthorpe already has a significant teenage audience from their successful first eighteen months programme. This new venture will give young people the opportunity to work in a creative partnership with professional artists, to devise and develop public works in different locations during the next two years.

The St Hugh’s Foundation’s new Commissioning Award programme was launched during 2002, to encourage organisations in either Lincolnshire or the former Humberside to commission new public work in any artform for performance or permanent location in the region. The aim is to support and promote the work of arts practitioners, and to make the arts accessible and available to the public by engaging communities in the process. The Foundation’s Trustees were impressed by 20-21’s early achievements in creating the visual arts centre from the former St John’s Church, and their determination to include teenagers in building and developing their programme of work.

Simultaneously with their successful bid to the Foundation for £14,000, North Lincolnshire Council has secured a grant from the Arts Council to appoint a part-time Arts Youth Worker, whose role will include involving local young people in the commissioning projects.

Fellowship

Carol Chambers

Awarded to Carol Chambers of Reepham, Lincolnshire, a music therapist who is developing the use of song as a form of self-expression for women with mental health needs.

Henrietta Bowder Memorial Bursary

Megan Kyte

Awarded to Megan Kyte of Lincoln, a signwriter, who also works with sandblasted glass, to study decorative Islamic arts and architecture in North Africa and Spain.

The St Hugh’s Celebration Commission

The Firebird Trust

The St Hugh’s Foundation, the charitable trust which supports innovative arts projects throughout Lincolnshire and the former county of Humberside, is celebrating ten years of grant-giving with a region-wide project which links the generations through music-making.

The Foundation has commissioned the Firebird Trust to design and manage a major music commission. This will involve five different composers working with five different communities in five different parts of the region. The theme of the commission is inter-generational work.

The project begins with a residency in June by Gloucestershire-based jazz composer and performer Pete Rosser who will spend a week at The Lindsey School & Community College working with students at the school, members of the Grimsby & Cleethorpes Youth Orchestra/Swing Band and with a group of older jazz musicians from Cleethorpes and Grimsby.

Other composers will include Jane Wells from Norfolk who will work with children and their parents from a village school in Lincolnshire, song-writer Sally Goldsmith from Sheffield who will work with a group of older local historians and young people in Gainsborough; internationally-known composer Duncan Chapman who will work in Beverley and playwright Peter Spafford and composer Hugh Nankivell who will work together with a group of people in Scunthorpe. The five pieces will be performed but will also form a CD which will be a legacy to what will be an exciting and innovative project - and a fitting tribute to the work of the Foundation which has played an important role in the lives of arts organisations and individual artists in Lincolnshire and the former Humberside over the past ten years.