The Flourish Stakeholder Group
Co-research is a collaborative approach. We are a diverse team of academics and creative practitioners combining research-driven insight with imaginative thinking for truly impactful results.
We’re listed below in alphabetical order rather than a hierarchy based on status or authority.
Philippa Carter
Philippa is a freelance heritage consultant based in North Tyneside and Senior Research Assistant for Flourish.
She has a deep knowledge of the heritage landscape having worked with Sunderland City Council as Heritage Activities Coordinator on the Bishopwearmouth Townscape Heritage Scheme.
From October 2021 to March 2023 she was Project Manager for the Rural Churches for Everyone project for Newcastle Diocese. She has also worked in two National Lottery Heritage Fund regional offices, which has given her an in depth knowledge of the application process and strategies for funding success.
Philippa has an MA in Heritage Education & Interpretation and a Postgraduate Certificate in Research Training and a PhD from Newcastle University.
Lily Daniels
Lily is a collaborative artist and experienced administrator dedicated to working with diverse communities to develop impactful art and performance initiatives.
With a strong background in arts administration, she currently holds the position of Learning & Participation Manager at GemArts, an organisation located in Gateshead committed to providing arts programming in community environments.
Dan Goodman
Ceinwen Haydon
Ceinwen lives in Gateshead. In 2015, following a career in health and social care (latterly as a practice educator), she embarked on an MA at Newcastle University. Initially she saw herself as a prose writer. During the course her focus shifted to poetry and she now writes microfiction, short stories and poetry.
She has been widely published in online journals and in print anthologies. She is a Pushcart and Forward Prize nominee. Her first chapbook, 'Cerddi Bach (Little Poems), was published in 2019 by Hedgehog Press and her pamphlet 'Scrambled Lives on Buttered Toast' is now published by Hedgehog Press. She practices as a participatory arts facilitator, mainly working with elders and intergenerational groups.
She believes that all voices count and is passionate about creating opportunities for them to be heard.
Jonpaul Kirvan
Jonpaul Kirvan oversees a multi-building project that provides a home for diverse creatives, SMEs, and third-sector organisations. Initially serving as the project and building manager and later taking on the role of Director at Ampersand Inventions, Orbis Community, and Programme Manager for Vane gallery.
Beyond the physical premises of Orbis Community and Ampersand Inventions, their activities have extended to off-site projects on regional, national, and international levels.
He believes that artist-led community projects are incredibly important as they not only contribute to the cultural and creative landscape of the region but also leave a lasting legacy. These projects have the potential to engage and empower local artists and community members, fostering a sense of ownership and pride. Furthermore, they can help in preserving local heritage and traditions while also nurturing the next generation of creative talent.
Dan Goodman is a socially engaged artist-curator whose practice explores the social world of art and what it means to be part of it. This is centred around their own lived experience of running Newcastle-based artist-run gallery, System. Dan uses System as a test site to explore different ways of being and working together through performance, karaoke, storytelling, zine making, and exhibition making. He is interested in the overlap between ideas of emotional value, the social, and the spatial within artist-run initiatives. Their recently completed practice-based PhD explores how reactivity and informality can be prime drivers in fostering identity making and community building.
They are also part of The NewBridge Programme Committee 2024-2025 and teach across Fine Art and Researcher Education and Development at Newcastle University.
Ben Jones
Ben co-founded Dingy Butterflies in 2015, after five years of developing community art projects in Gateshead. He wanted to create opportunities for artists to develop creative projects with local organisations and residents of Bensham & Saltwell.
As an artist and curator, with over twenty years experience working in the arts, he could see the strong creative spirit in Gateshead and wanted to support its development and create new opportunities for artists and the people of Gateshead.
Rosi Thornton
Rosi Thornton is a visual artist and freelance community arts practitioner who has been working across the North East for the last 20 years. Her interests combine pattern, print, paper, colour and cloth which she uses creatively in textiles, quilts, banners, puppets, printmaking, collage and handmade books.
Underlying this work is her passion for recycling, skill sharing and art within communities. She started the Rejig project in 2016 as a way of drawing her related interests together as a creative whole. She believes creative opportunity can act as motivation and springboard for positive change in communities and place.
Corinne Lewis-Ward
With over 18 years of experience within the cultural sector Corinne’s work as the Founder and Designer at Powder Butterfly, Gifted Studio, and Creative Heritage Studios CiC, represents her commitment to demonstrating the power and growth potential of arts, culture and a creative approach to business.
Corinne designs all products at Powder Butterfly and manages the entire manufacturing journey. This hands-on approach ensures the creation of products that not only tell a story but also forge a profound connection between our customers and the places they love. Her contemporary souvenir designs actively preserve heritage and history while engaging new audiences, breathing fresh life into shared cultural legacy.
She is also founder of Gifted Studio specialising in bespoke corporate gifts, awards, and murals.
As the Director of Creative Heritage Studios CiC she offers tailored creative consultancy and business training focusing on harmonising cultural and commercial activities for maximum impact.
Alexander Wilson
Alexander Wilson
Paul Stone
Paul Stone is based in Newcastle upon Tyne, where he studied at Northumbria University, receiving a BA and MA in Fine Art. Having exhibited nationally and internationally as an artist since 1990, he has also curated exhibitions for many organisations, written published reviews and catalogue essays, and undertaken a number of mentoring/professional development activities with visual artists. He is a Director of Orbis Community, an organisation that provides creative workspace in the Newcastle-Gateshead area.
Since its founding year of 1997 he has been a Director of Vane. Having staged the majority of exhibitions and events in temporary venues until 2003, Vane opened a permanent gallery space in Newcastle city centre in 2005, moving across the River Tyne to its current Gateshead base in 2021.
Vane represents a group of critically engaged artists from the North East of England, across the UK, Europe and the USA through projects at the gallery and elsewhere.
Alexander is Lecturer in Urban Planning in the School of Architecture, Planning & Landscape, Newcastle University.
He has degrees in both town planning and computing, and recently finished his PhD (within the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Digital Civics) that explored how technology can create the means for an open dialogue around place, and how through these technologies, more meaningful discussions can happen about the future of cities.
He is CO-PI for Flourish.
Paulina Malowaniec
Paulina is a freelance illustrator, designer, and researcher. Her practice is focused on social impact, combining design with literary works and social mobility. She regularly works with Northumbria University as a designer, workshop facilitator and researcher.
She designed The Story Chair Toolkit, the result of a collaborative project between Changing Lives, National Trust and the School of Design aimed at designing, facilitating, and reflecting on creative group interventions for women in touch with the criminal justice system. Paulina had an opportunity to work on projects where she researched Life Story books, created an identity and conference materials for the 6th International Symposium of the Death online, designed the visual identity for Gendered Violence and Abuse IDRT and did a live illustration for Design Council.
Currently, she’s developing a good practice toolkit for a better online experience for eating disorders and distress support as a part of the RHED-C project and developing her practice as an NE cultural freelancer.
Agi Orban
Agi Orban is a Playback Theatre practitioner, facilitator living in Hebburn, South Tyneside and working in Gateshead in cooperation with The Central Bar. She is the organiser and facilitator of the Playback Theatre movement locally and her mission is to populate and teach this form of improvisational community theatre to people for their own and for their communities benefit. She is committed to community development through theatre/ drama and listening to voices and stories of ordinary people to build connection.
Playback Theatre is created through a unique collaboration between performing team and audience. Someone tells a story or moment from their life, and then watches as their story is honoured in a stage enactment using improvisation, giving it artistic shape and coherence.
Agi is originally from Hungary and has been practising Playback Theatre for 15 years, she started in Budapest and lived and worked in London and in the last 2 years she has started building her Playback Theatre practice in the North East. You can find out more about this heartfelt improvisation through the Facebook page Playback Theatre North East UK .
Rebecca Prescott
Rebecca’s passion for research focuses on the relationship between place and (specifically creative) practice. She is a Assistant Professor in Entrepreneurship at Newcastle Business School, Northumbria University.
Thanks to 10 years’ experience working across sectors as a practitioner, lecturer, researcher and consultant, she has a sustained, deep and extensive grounding in questions of creative practice and its relationship to wider issues of identity, inclusion and design.
A core element of her research focuses on identifying the fundamental features of artist-led organisational development and the processes that both promote, and constrain, creative practice.
She is CO-PI for Flourish.
Ali Wilkes
Ali is a surface designer and lives in Gateshead but works across the whole region as a freelance participatory artist. She is also the Centre Coordinator at The Hearth Art Centre in Horsley, Northumberland.
Within her own practice, she is inspired by the nature surrounding her but also enjoys responding to places that she visits using multiple techniques and mediums.
Since graduating from the Northern School of art as a mature student, Ali has developed and delivered many workshops and also developed her Sketch and Connect project which was funded by the Arts Council. Ali is passionate about supporting and encouraging people at all stages of their life to develop their skills and confidence in their own creative adventure.
Emma Coffield
Emma is a Lecturer in the School of Arts and Cultures at Newcastle University and the Deputy Degree Programme Director for the MA programmes in Curating Art, Museum Studies and Global Heritage Management. She has an AHRC sponsored PhD in Museum Studies, an MA in Art Museum and Gallery Education (both from Newcastle University) and a BA (Hons) in Fine Art (Painting and Printmaking) from the Glasgow School of Art.
Emma's research focuses on artist-run/led initiatives and forms of self-organisation in the arts. This has led to a number of recent projects on and around the issue of meanwhile space in the arts, and the ways in which 'employability' might be understood and experienced by students and recent graduates in the cultural and creative industries. She led work on Meanwhile Spaces and Creative Central (previously the Clayton Street Corridor).
Jeff Dean
Jeff is the non-executive Chair of the board of Trustees at Gateway Studio, a black-led community-facing and professional organisation for education and performance in dance and related arts, and with strong heritage objectives. He is also chair of the Trustees at the Newcastle-based Surface Area Dance Theatre CIO, which works to develop opportunities for people in the D/deaf and disabled community, and is a creative associate of the Geraldine Connor Foundation in Leeds.
In his professional career, Jeff was formerly HR & OD Director at Gateshead Council, where he helped to formulate the Council’s initial strategy for Arts and Culture. Prior to that, his professional career was in Financial Services and the Water and Electricity Supply sectors.
Previous arts involvement includes chairing Dance City, the NE Region’s lead dance organisation. Jeff was also a board member/Chair of the touring theatre company Actors of Dionysus in Brighton and Phoenix Dance Theatre in Leeds.
