Receiving the bursary would be transformative for my artistic practice, allowing me to overcome significant barriers, elevate & expand my work into the Northern community & art world.
As an award-winning artist from the North East, my unique perspective is often limited by challenges related to autism and dyslexia, which impact my ability to network, obtain opportunities, and connect my art with others. This funding would address these hurdles, allowing me to share my new work with the North East & beyond.
My primary goal is to create a new body of work, increase the visibility of my work through exhibition, performance, and online presence and to involve the community in creating cultural attire & attending a ‘culture party’.
To achieve this, I need the support of producers and marketers who can help plan, arrange, communicate, market & navigate the complexities of creative projects. The bursary would enable me to hire this crucial support.
The work I intend to make is focused on developing new cultural patterns from such things as NE intertwined North East Style wave forms, and culturally specific sculpture with lighting & musical effects, such as mosaic decks actually pre-used in raves at that stand upright as monoliths that can be used to play tracks. They appear oddly tribal & ancient in this context.
These works have multiple lighting effects that link to the local rave culture & the alternate dimension the rave culture creates. Effects such as Fluorescence, Glow in the dark & 3D & colour changing) each art work has these three elements. Which are very attractive to a wide audience of NE Ravers, ND people who are sensory seeking, children & families and those who enjoy sensory excitements.
I would invite people from across the Darlington community to participate in workshops where we develop cultural attire to wear at the culminating party that will be held in the exhibition space. This gives us the opportunity to develop our culture & to contribute to it at a cultural social (tribal) gathering.
This drives our ownership over our culture & the development of it & fosters a diverse tribe to come together & create our culture together.
This project could breathe new & electrifying energy into Darlington (& beyond) in regards to the arts, our own culture & creativity across a wide range of audiences, ages and communities.
It also gives us the opportunity to consider & develop our culture, creative selves & personal & regional identity together & for our selves.
This boosts Darlingtons creative profile from the inside out, hopefully fostering long term engagement with the arts for more people.
The themes of the exhibition are relevant to local people & the sensory nature of the artworks & party atmosphere is very attractive, accessible & fun to a wide range of people, of all ages. (I have unexpected interest from community members aged 60 and up for my shows/partys for example).
Music of local NE Style Producers from Darlo can show their music during the exhibition via artworks that allow you to listen to their music, or even allow you to choose tracks. This could be artworks such as the Mosaic DJ Deck hooked up to speakers playing out music.
Using North East Style music, we make a direct connection to council estate culture which significantly dissolves the barrier to entry to ‘fancy’ Art Spaces that still lingers (perhaps the Crown Street Gallery may be a good venue).
This will be marketed to a wide audience via the press, online & posters. The energetic, party, local & sensory nature of the project may also garner press attention.
make all kinds of sensorily exciting work from music to mosaics, & continuously experiment with new materials & equipment to create new & challenging art works.
My work involves northern culture, culture making, supporting the innate creativity of others, local nature, the mysterious energy of life & creativity & state altering sensory experiences.
I was born in Sunderland & grew up in Washington Tyne & wear, on a council estate called (Barmy) Barmston. Council Estates have their own culture. This erroding place is home to much turmoil & toxicity, yet brims so brilliantly with the timbre of northern voices & the utterly electrifying sound of Makina (Spanish techno), now North East Style Makina.
My work & culture is interwoven with Makina. Brought to Northern shores in the 90s, Makina music became a deep, integral part of northern culture.
Since then ‘North East style Makina’ has developed, being made across the NE & beyond. Spear headed by my partners Record label (Rewired Records), courses & tuition. My partner (Ste Bruce/ DJ Infinite) & I make music & perform together (see. Video 1, image 2). We create North East Style Makina/ Pop hybrid music & performance that seeks to disrupt the current cultural tide of addiction, intolerance, violence & crime & provide different more empowering & healthy cultural content, identity & narrative.
In ‘My Culture is Beautiful’ 2009 I performed at the Laing for the first time taking my culture and our music into a respected Art Space.
Since then I have continued to put local culture in these spaces & in spaces where it is respected, in order to celebrate our culture & directly invite in more local people who may not otherwise feel as confident, welcomed or safe to enter & engage (sometimes people feel out of place or silly when they look at art), to experience our local culture in a new light.
Some of these shows include: Makem Geordie Magick, Radgie Magick, North East style & Public Record.
I also work with the community to support others to connect with their innate creativity & recognise our creativity as a region.
My newer work involves texture & light effects (UV, 3D, glow & colour change), essential patterns & developing new NE cultural patterns & markings.
Yes I studied at Sunderland Uni, BAHons Fine Art, 1st 2008
Yes I received an arts council grant for ‘Mackem Geordie Magick’ at the NGCA. I went on to receive the Journal Culture Award for ‘Artist of the Year’ for the exhibition in 2017.
I previously won a Journal Culture award for ‘Newcomer of the Year’ for ‘My culture is Beautiful’ at the Laing in 2010.
Although I don’t undertake projects alone, I do put forward my ideas to Art & Culture Teams I am in contact with.
Examples of this are, multiple projects at Baltic where I have trained someone who has taken refuge in the NE to lead workshops sharing their cultural art, culminating in them leading their own workshop with me as support.
I proposed a ‘Sunderland City of Culture Community Creativity & Connection’ project. That worked to connect Sunderland resident’s to the City of Culture Bid, to understand it & to create a channel for local creativity into the project.
I connected with residents through a speech & performance in The Bridges shopping centre along side a huge Sunderland Colouring Banner that everyone passing through could colour in with me as I spoke to them about the Culture bid.
We made a second banner from drawings by residents in a series of workshops across Wearside. This was residents opportunity to make their creativity stand for us, our culture & win a better future for ourselves with it, such is its power. We did not win but we came close!
I was commissioned by The Laing straight out of University (2009) to produce the performance & film ‘My Culture is Beautiful’ featuring me dancing in ‘Gallery D’ with the ‘posh’ paintings in my trackies to Makina.
The Baltic Commissioned me to create a young people’s Neon Rave & Art Party Night called ‘Late Mix’. 2019
Sunderland Culture – Creativity Day & a Community Banner for the Sunderland Culture Bid outreach, & performances at Sunderland Tall Ships 2018
Newcastle Council 2022 – 2023 – Ukrainian community sessions to support them to settle & integrate with an exhibition of Ukrainian artworks and culture at the end.
NGCA Sunderland & Washington Arts Centre 2017 – ‘Mackem Geordie Magick’, an exhibition celebrating North East Identity.
National Theatre 2025 – ‘Public Record’ Theatre Show about North Culture & Sunderland specifically, at Sunderland Fire Station this show was also centred on writing our own narrative & Public Record.
Yes The Laing Art Gallery purchased the ‘My Culture is Beautiful Film’, I believe it may have been their first piece of video art to become part of the collection.
Although not purchased The Mayor of Newcastle has a piece in their collection, that the public can visit. The piece is titled ‘Ukraine & Newcastle’ & was made with a group of Ukrainian refugees who arrived in Newcastle throughout 2022 & 2023. This group became a close knit community. The piece is constructed from traditional Ukrainian embroidery patterns (which are a big part of Ukrainian culture & national adornment, glass rhinestones & a blending of Cultural Symbols of England, Ukraine & Newcastle using Ukrainian embroidery as the foundation (e.g the swallow pattern which is a Ukrainian symbol, was the foundation pattern for Newcastle’s Magpie. See images in video upload 1) , surprisingly the red rose & poppy are both very prominent symbols for both cultures! Also! Red, white & black are Ukraine traditional colours! Which is the same as Tyne & Wears more modern colours (football colours)! So the cultural nexus in this project were incredible! (I like to discover cultural nexus points & use them to encourage unity & connection between cultures, and often find amazing results!
My work has been featured in local newspapers multiple times.
I have also appeared on the regional News for ‘Mackem Geordie Magick’.
I have been featured in publications such as ‘Neru Phuyt’ by Artist Ross Taylor & publications made during residencies about me & my work.
I have also modelled for HOMME+ London, Mens High Fashion Magazine, representing my self & my work.
Magazines such as Narc have written Artist profiles about me, althoigh they are a bit out dated in relation to who I am now.
I am not currently represented by a Gallery.
I was represented by by WorkPlace Gallery after Uni & had many exhibitions Nationally & Internationally.
Although I was undiagnosed Autistic at that time & didn’t have the support I actually needed to manage this oppurtunity, so I had to eventually leave sadly.
This is something I am now open to and can do with support for my recently diagnosed life long disability.
Dundee – researched and experimented with the link between spirituality & council estate culture & presented as part of a group show to culminate.
Breeze Newcastle – Created work for ‘North East Style’ Exhibition. Including textiles, costume, live NE Style & Makina, sculpture, live performance, video, digital art prints &
The opportunity to play vinyl bought second hand on the rave scene.
I added some of my partner’s music & art to the exhibition. These were digital images in the style of original Makina vinyl covers (90s), using new technologies. This is part of the essence of NE Style – using new technologies to develop arts in relation to Makina; & illustrates the very interesting & valuable alternate dimension that Makina generates. This dimension is woven into the fabric of Northern Culture.
The Tetley Leeds – Radgie Magick & Radgie Readings – celebrating northern identity, making cultural markings, creating my own deck of oracle cards & giving private readings designed to support & empower to the public who signed up for them. Also performed NE Style song.
Monk Fish Gateshead – Focused on bringing people & families together across the community through creative sessions, that culminated in a party. People from across communities attended & enjoyed together, local DJs played our music for the wider multicultural & religious communities while we made things together.
Newcastle Council – Ukrainian Residency.
Email: sophielisaberesford@gmail.com
Address: 24 Canturbury Road, Redcar, Redcar, Redcar Cleveland, TS10 3QE, GB
Local Authority: Redcar & Cleveland
