The Creative Learning Team at Brewery Arts is made up of various skilled practitioners, each of them experts within their field and experienced in teaching their craft.
Emily Davies – Engagement Officer: Dance
A previous Brewery Youth Dance member, Emily has been delivering sessions at Brewery Arts and other settings since gaining her Dance degree in 2016. Her style of movement is grounded in contemporary technique, creative dance and connecting with people, be that in the studio or with an audience. Emily enjoys sharing her love of dance with those she teaches.
Contacts Emily by emailing emily.davies@breweryarts.co.uk
Helena McGregor – Learning & Engagement Officer
Helena is the newest member of the Creative Learning team, responsible for administration and ensuring a smooth running of classes and workshops at Brewery Arts. She is a visual artist and a qualified Secondary Art and Design Practitioner with over 10 years of experience, teaching 11-18-year-olds in a range of creative subjects. She also has experience in Primary Art, art CPD, and art workshops for adults.
Contact Helena by emailing helena.mcgregor@breweryarts.co.uk
Freelance Team
Chris Barnes is a practising ceramic artist with a background in fine art. His ceramic work has been exhibited widely in the UK and Germany. He has taught pottery to adults since 1994 and has experience of teaching art in schools from the infant to the secondary school level.
Emily Baxter is a previous member of Brewery Youth Arts and now directs Brewery Youth Theatre. Having graduated from The Guildford School of Acting in 2018, she now enjoys sharing her skills and experience in community theatre and dance sessions. Emily is also a tutor at Kendal College in the Performing Arts department, alongside managing ad hoc Musical Theatre and Tap workshops in the local area.
Orla Collier grew up in the Lake District and began her dance training on the Centre for Advanced Training programme at The Lowry, Manchester. She graduated from Rambert School with a first-class honours degree in Ballet and Contemporary Dance in 2020. She was then part of Verve Company (Northern School of Contemporary Dance), before heading back to the area and developing her practice, creating her own work and delivering dance with youth and community groups.
Philomena Dickson is a recent graduate of Leeds Beckett University with a BA (Hons) in Dance. Her work is experimental and often improvisational, working with chance and harmonious accidents. She looks forward to collaborating with participants and other artists and is committed to making the arts accessible to all.
Jessica Emsley is an artist and walker, and an advocate for engagement with nature and the outdoors through creativity. Her work as both artist and facilitator aims to explore new forms of the creative process, with a particular focus on creative engagement with nature. Jessica recently completed an MFA in Fine Art with Nottingham Trent University and is currently pursuing an ML which will allow her to lead more adventurous art workshops outdoors.
Ciara Heaton’s career focuses on community arts, after spending many years working within specialist education, mental health support and creative community groups around the country. She has since moved with her young family to Cumbria to indulge in the outdoors, which has inspired her to study for a degree in Painting, specialising in large abstract landscape pieces. As well as being a practising artist, she has a great passion for making the arts accessible to all.
Chris Jones is a fully qualified teacher and has been working as a professional actor since 2009. Career highlights include playing King George VI in the stage version of ‘The King’s Speech’ for Bill Kenwright, Treat in ‘Orphans’ at the English Theatre of Hamburg, Mr. Manningham in ‘Gaslight’ for Paul Taylor Mills, and the comic lead in several pantomimes over the years. He often collaborates with Proper Job Theatre Company based in Huddersfield and has toured twice with them. Having recently moved to Kendal following his love of Lake District fells, he is looking forward to sharing his experience with local young performers.
Karen Lester enjoys working with a range of media, including painting, drawing, and printmaking, sometimes combining these to create mixed media images. Her interest in printmaking developed at Kendal College whilst completing a Foundation Degree in Drawing at the University of Cumbria. Her work has been exhibited in galleries across Cumbria and Lancashire for over 25 years, including Printfest and C-Art. Karen is a qualified teacher, with experience in the adult education sector since 2011.
Catherine MacDiarmid specialises in portraiture, typically working in oil, charcoal and pencil. She has exhibited widely; her work has been selected for show at MAFA and the BP Portrait Award, and also features in private collections throughout the UK as well as abroad. She is an elected member of The Lakes Artists Society and appeared in Sky Portrait Artists of the Year in 2014, and 2018, and reached the semi-finals in 2019. Catherine has worked as a Brewery Arts tutor for over 20 years, helping students explore a range of disciplines within drawing and painting.
Mattie Margison graduated with a first-class BA Hons degree in Dance from The University of Salford in 2020. Prior to this, he was a member of BYA, participating in both Physical Theatre and Dance groups, before becoming part of Ludus Youth Dance Company, and then making his way into Higher Education studies. Moving back to Kendal during the height of the pandemic, Mattie is keen to find opportunities to move for himself and facilitate movement for others as well.
Sophie Martin is a local artist, illustrator and educator who specialises in lively pen and watercolour illustrations often drawn on location. She studied Visual Communication at Edinburgh College of Art specialising in illustration, and now works as a freelance artist and illustrator; undertaking numerous commissions, exhibiting locally and further afield, and self-publishing a number of books. Sophie has a PGCE in Post Compulsory Education and enjoys sharing her creativity through teaching illustration, art classes, and workshops in both formal and informal educational settings.
Sarah May has an interdisciplinary visual art practice. For 12 years she ran a studio focusing on set design for a wide variety of editorial and commercial fashion shoots. Alongside this, she cultivated a personal creative practice focusing on the intimate relationship of material to the body and how one physically encounters this. She is a BA (Hons) Fashion Styling and Production Lecturer at the London College of Fashion (University of the Arts, London) alongside leading on the Fashion Futures course at BSIX College in Hackney. Additionally, she leads fashion and textile workshops with a refugee charity in London. She is growing a dye garden at her allotment and hopes to be able to create her own natural dyes in the future.
Steve Moss is the Musical Director for the Bryce Street Strummers; a community ukulele group and a smaller showband that regularly plays for organisations and public events across South Lakeland.
Lucy Nicholson is a professional dance and movement artist specialising in bodily awareness, creative practice, facilitation and movement direction. As well as her freelance practice, Lucy is a Senior Lecturer on the BA (Hons) Dance course at UCLan. She is passionate about the power of positive and responsive facilitation and the transformative nature of dance and movement in participatory settings.
Kate Reid holds an Art and Design Textiles degree from Central School of Art, London. She primarily works as a Freelance Costume Designer. Kate very much enjoys running numerous workshops and classes at Brewery Arts.
Wendy Sharrock is a professional solo recital singer who teaches singing in South Lakes schools.
Sarah Walkley trained at Vetrate Artistiche Toscana in Siena between 1994-1995. She had a stained glass studio in London for several years before settling up business in Kendal and developing a specialist fused glass range named Sarah Bibet Fused Glass, which she now sells online and to local shops. Sarah has been teaching her skills to classes for 28 years.
Amy Williams brings a wealth of experience in art, craft and design. She is a professional artist having studied for a BA (Hons) in Sculpture and an MA in Illustration. In her current practice, she works on large-scale commissions creating paper installations. She enjoys working with a diverse range of groups and developing creativity in others.
