Emma Edmondson is an artist and organiser from Southend-on-Sea. Studying and graduating during the 2008 financial crash, alternative economies, precarity and utopian community are at the centre of her research and practice. She works with sculpture, print, text and education and is interested in how recessions and austerity shape how we survive creatively. She always works collaboratively, believing in collaboration over competition and the power of people coming together to change sector policy, systems and rules. She is currently a PhD candidate at Northumbria University.
In 2016, she set up TOMA, an accessible artist-run education model, which is currently the only postgrad-ish level art programme in Essex after all others were stopped by their host universities. TOMA sits outside the traditional institutional model and was born of and has been shaped by austerity and the decades-long businessification and dismantling of creative education. These are the politics that brought TOMA into existence and formed the basis of the recently published, and sold out, book How to set up an art school.
Joshua Uvieghara is a painter and educator whose practice explores the philosophical and material thresholds of painting. His work investigates how meaning, perception, and materiality intertwine through processes of transformation and assemblage. As a tutor in studio-based Fine Art practice, he has taught across foundation and postgraduate levels, most recently at the University of Brighton and City & Guilds of London Art School.
A member of The London Group and Contemporary British Painting, he has contributed to the artist-led community at Phoenix Art Space and was part of the steering group for Grey Area Gallery in Brighton. His ongoing work considers how the conditions of the studio—within and beyond the art school—can generate spaces for enquiry, reflection, and transformation.
Christian Mieves is a painter and Senior Lecturer in Fine Art at Newcastle University, UK. His work has been exhibited internationally in the UK, Germany, Spain and Mexico. His work deals with ideas of erosion in painting in different aspect. He is co-editor of the book Wonder in Contemporary Artistic Practice (Routledge, 2017). He is editor of the special journal issue ‘Erosion and Illegibility of Images’ (Journal of Visual Art Practice, 2018) and has published articles in journals such as Journal of Contemporary Painting and European Journal of American Culture.
He also instigated the research initiative ‘Dirty Practice’ (with Maggie Ayliffe from 2015). The initiative sets out to explore critically current artistic frameworks where manual skills and studio-based practices are denigrated in an increasingly institutionalised HEI environment (see ‘Dirty Practice: A Painting Workshop and the Hidden Curriculum’ in Teaching Painting, London: Black Dog (2017)).
Giulia Shah is an artist and artist development curator, or Host, based in London. She is the founder of Residency 11:11, a queer artist-run initiative committed to creating sustainable opportunities for artists to foster research, reflect on their practice, and connect with peers. Residency 11:11’s ethos is to host peers in ways that counter the competitive structures perpetuated by the system of capitalism and often experienced through traditional art education. Her interests lie in hosting practices and exploring art as an alternative form of knowledge production. When time allows, she collaborates with Alex Bell as part of the artist duo Abel Shah. In a system that values the commodification of art over its societal value, sustaining an art practice can become an act of resistance in itself.
Alongside running Residency 11:11, Giulia has been supporting artists and makers through her role as Deputy Director at Blackhorse Workshop. She has facilitated workshops and advised on The NewBridge Project’s development programme The Collective Studio, and was a guest tutor and lecturer at Goldsmiths University and Chelsea College of Arts. She was a member of UP Projects’ 2023 Constellations Cohort.