Celebrating our local creatives

Over the last few years, the creative and heritage industries in North East Lincolnshire have been positively growing.

Regular festivals and a boom in the music and art scene have both helped contribute to a healthy increase in people regularly experiencing arts and culture as part of their lives.

Alongside the public experience of culture, creative practitioners have been able to develop their work too, with grants available from Create North East Lincolnshire and Arts Council England too.

In a recent Arts Council England funding round (Developing Your Creative Practice (DYCP) Fund), four creative practitioners who are living or working in North East Lincolnshire have been successful in being awarded a total of more than £37,000 to help them develop their creative practice.

In this latest round of DYCP the successful applicants are:

• Chris McClean, who explores our connection to the natural world through immersive storytelling, using photography, film and sound. Using the grant, Chris will be able to collaborate with musicians and installation artists to experiment with and expand his practice. Chris will also be doing research to explore how audiences experience and engage with immersive work to understand how their experience influence perceptions of nature.

• Lucy Mager, an experimental video installation artist with a background in event visuals and VJing. Lucy is using the grant to acquire new technical skills in projection mapping, experimenting image-making techniques and projection methods. The grant will help Lucy to refine her practice, integrating film, sound and love art to create more immersive and interactive experiences for future projects.

• Oli Turnpenney, who makes contemporary ceramics using digital and handmade techniques at Turnpenney Pottery. Oli is using the grant to take time to develop material knowledge, process and techniques to create more unique works. This will enable processes to become less repetitive and hand finished decorations more bespoke and unique.

• Melissa Hommel, a freelance Creative Producer specialising in events within the arts and entertainment industry.

Another round of Arts Council England funding will open soon, but in the meantime, Create North East Lincolnshire currently have a similar fund open for North East Lincolnshire creative and heritage practitioners, the Create North East Lincolnshire Development Fund. 

Creatives living or working in North East Lincolnshire can apply for up to £3,000 to support them with development opportunities to help enhance their creative/heritage practice and/or personal and professional development. Opportunities may include: 

• Training courses 

• Workshops and conferences (going to or organising) 

• Coaching 

• Mentoring 

• Network and meeting development 

• Go and see visits 

• Memberships to groups or networks 

• One-to-one development 

• Research to develop new ideas and approaches 

• Development in working towards Arts Council National Portfolio Organisation (NPO) status

The deadline for Development Fund applications is Monday 7^th April, 11am and further details and the application form can be found here: Development Fund - Create North East Lincolnshire.

Cllr Hayden Dawkins, Cabinet member for culture, said: “This is absolutely great for our area – we’ve seen a marked increase in creatives both applying for, and receiving, National Lottery funding, and it’s helping to grow what we have here into a well-established heritage and creative sectors.”

Don’t forget to watch out for lots of exhibitions, festivals and events through the summer on our Discover North East Lincolnshire socials and website.