2024 Award Winners Announced
The Foundation is pleased to announce the six successful applicants to the 2024 Artist Respond programme and this year's winner of the Claire Peasnall Memorial Award
Rebecca Kershaw will use her award to gather stories from farmers, historians, walkers, detectorists and archives to discover the untold stories of the Isle of Axholme area of North Lincolnshire, in the shadow of climate change. Rebecca’s writing has always been rooted in the landscape and she now feels an urgency to record stories of the land, in fiction and creative non-fiction before the land is changed forever and the older generation disappear. Her longer term ambition is to reconnect local people with their stories and landscape, encouraging engagement and care of the land.
Cross disciplinary artist Fenia Kotsopoulou plans to focus on her passion for still and moving image-making. She aims to elevate and expand her practice in the field of feminist documentary film. Venturing into experimentation with 16mm film, Fenia will also initiate a cross-generational and cross-disciplinary exchange with Lincoln based artist Lena Sass Hughes producing a film portrait of her.
For Spalding based actor and community artist Ryan Gilmartin the Award offers the opportunity to co-create a “cowboy catwalk” with groups of 14 to18 year olds. Using the iconic cowboy/ cowgirl image resonant of independence, resistance and living alongside the land, Ryan will work with the group to design, craft and model an event on a theme or issue that matters to them. The resulting event will be presented in a non-traditional arts venue such as a retail space or shopping centre, making the group visible in an area where they say they often feel overlooked.
Soraya Smithson longs to provide opportunities for rurally based artists to access the type of support networks enjoyed by their urban peers. She will use her Award to kick off a rurally based network by bringing a number of artists together for an initial creative long weekend of ideas, sharing, mass collaboration, critical thinking and exhibition in a south Lincolnshire Village Hall. Soraya’s ambition is that this could provide a working model for other rural areas and plans to connect to other artists in similar environments.
Grimsby based Gabriel Shields Hanau applied for an award to expand her music practice from a song writing focus to a live, performance driven approach mixing digital technologies with acoustic artefacts. Gabriel wants to highlight stories of decay, hope and renewal in developing the project.
Hornsea based illustrator and artist Charlotte Eldred is concerned with igniting the imaginations of children. She will develop an offer to primary schools using Mindful Doodling, providing a fun experience that enhances creativity, relaxation, confidence, concentration and focus – much needed after the past few challenging school years. Her award will enable her to offer her workshops to schools where budgets are severely limited and need is great.
The 2024 Claire Frances Peasnall Memorial Award
Grantham based artist Szilvia Ponyiczki, like several award winners of this prize previously, wishes to develop her practice through travel and working alongside other inspirational artists. In this case Szilvia will journey to Budapest in Hungary and enjoy mentoring sessions with the veteran artist Gyorgy Olajos, whose work, she feels has a strong connection to her own work.