Artistic Director: Jo Pocock

Composer: Roma Yagnik

Vocal soundscape and sound design: Dan Fox

Lighting Design: Rob Hill

Project Director: Jackie Swanson

Lead Artists: Gavin Lewery, Ewan Hunter, Becky Bryson, Ruta Staseviciute, Faith Bebbington, Colin Eccleston, Eilidh Bryan

Technical Design: Ewan Hunter, Gavin Lewery

Producer, Writing on the Wall: Emma Hulme

Lead Writers: Lizzie Nunnery, Jeff Young, Cheryl Martin, Ash Nugent

Supporting Writers: Amina Atiq, Ginny Manning, Trisha McKeon, Addae Gaskin

Community Artists:  Becky Bryson, Austin Hewitt, Anna Ketskemity, Becky Barnett, Faith Bebington, Katy Anne Bellis, Claire Stringer, Eilidh Bryan, Holly Langley, Helen Davies.

Event Production: Tim Garbutt -TG Events

Schools and community engagement manager: Lisa Agatha

Student placements and internships: Ellen Butterworth-Evans, James Morris, Julian Taylor, Ryan Derricutt.

Artist Apprenticeships: Benyamin Raghandhi, Saskia Dammers, Joao Domingos

Jo is artistic director for the Lantern Company and works nationally and internationally as a designer, director, maker, puppeteer and teacher. Whether for theatre, dance, site specific events, carnival or visual arts, she has been exploring inventive ways of using light and shadow, animation and performance both within her own work and in socially engaged practice throughout her career. Often found outdoors, she has worked in many unlikely and challenging settings, from intimate interactions to large scale spectacle. Jo has worked for: Welfare State International, Horse and Bamboo, Macnas, Walk the Plank, English Shakespeare Co, Improbable Theatre, Cultural Industry Ltd, Scottish National Opera, LIPA, Liverpool City Council, Artichoke Trust, Manchester International Festival and Aarhus2017.

Trained at Glasgow School of Art and now relocated to South Carolina, USA, Ewan is an internationally recognised artist/designer/fabricator with a wealth of experience in design and public art, large scale multi-media fabrication, puppetry and indoor and outdoor theatre. Over the last 10 years, Ewan has collaborated with the Lantern Company, designing and building enormous lantern structures for the their most high-profile projects, as well as working as a lead mentor for emerging artists on their apprenticeship schemes. Ewan has worked with many of the UK’s leading theatre companies over the last 30 years, including Improbable Theatre, Vanishing Point, Mischief La Bas, Conflux, The Globe Theatre and The National Theatre of Scotland.

Eilidh is a Designer, Puppet and Lantern maker, based in Liverpool and specialising in outdoor events and parades. She has worked for a variety of UK Companies, creating work which had toured both nationally and internationally. She is also co-director of Headstrung puppets and delivers workshops in large scale puppets, lanterns and parade imagery.

Eilidh is a core artist with Lantern Company and has created many large scale puppets, lanterns and processional images for them during the last 15 years. She has also worked with them as a puppeteer, puppetry director, student mentor and workshop leader.

Emma is currently the Programme Manager at Liverpool’s Writing on the Wall (WoW). She graduated from the Central School of Speech & Drama in 2009 and has a passion for women’s equality and the arts with her previous job supporting women currently seeking asylum in the UK. Often silenced and underrepresented within the mainstream media Emma worked to promote and share the voices of these women through different creative platforms. She also created the hugely successful Creative English Programme for young people seeking asylum and refugees in partnership with Merseyside Youth Association (MYA). Since joining WoW she has delivered and designed many creative writing projects that have engaged marginalised communities from unemployed right through to women currently on probation.

Roma is a composer for film, television, dance and installations whose diverse client list includes BBC, Sky, EMI, National Geographic, NBC, Discovery Channel and Tate Britain. Her work on site specific / outdoor events include Great North Star (closing ceremony of the Great Exhibition of the North), Undaunted and Beautiful Thing (both for Greenwich and Docklands International Festival 2018), Erimus (Robby Graham’s Grand reopening of Middlesbrough Town Hall), Freedom on the Tyne (Dir. Tim Supple, Martin Luther King commemoration) and Enchanted Parks. Roma is delighted to be part of Liverpool’s City of Light. www.romayagnik.co.uk 

Artist, Mechanical sculptor, Fabricator, Pyrotechnician, Gavin has been involved in the world of performance art and large-scale outdoor events and spectacle since childhood. Gavin has worked with the Lantern Company as an associate director since its inception, regularly in lead design/build and fabrication roles. He has extensive skills and experience working with lightweight parade materials as well as wood and metal and is an accomplished blacksmith and metal fabricator. He has an established reputation as designer/maker of large-scale lanterns, parade images, giant puppets and kinetic devices with many internationally acclaimed companies including Macnas Theatre Co, Welfare State International, Theatre of Fire, Dragonfire, Walk The Plank, Dodgy Clutch, B-Arts, And Now, Merlin Fireworks, Alchemy Fireworks.

Colin graduated from the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts with a BA in Theatre and Performance Design in 2011. He has worked extensively as a member of the Lantern company’s core team, making a wide range of large scale illuminated puppets and lanterns. In 2011 Eccleston also made it to the finals of the UK’s most prestigious award for theatre design, the Linbury Prize.

His illuminated design work has taken him across the world, performing in places like Hong Kong, Bucharest, Oslo and Aarhus. Beyond his work with the Lantern Company, Eccleston is part of Liverpool’s creative collective, Kazimier Productions, and is also the scenographer for Norwegian contemporary dance company, Oslo Koreografiske.

Dan Fox is a sound designer, installation artist and musician. In 2008 he formed Sound Intervention with the work taking many forms: film, installation, sound, street performance and music. Mixing-up engineering, imagination, cutting-edge technology and age-old techniques, Dan creates site-specific and touring work, often outside and increasingly off-grid. His recent work includes festival gigs with the BoomBike mobile sound system and performances with Boom Bike Bourrée medieval hip-hop band. He created mobile projections with two Light Bikes and he recently turned Middlesbrough Town Hall into a musical instrument. Dan regularly composes and designs sound for illuminated trails with recent work at Kew Gardens, Wakehurst and Croxteth Hall for the Lantern Company. This year he is making an audio-visual installation created over a year on the river Crake where he lives in south Cumbria.

Ruta graduated from Theatre and Performance Design (BA) course at Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts (LIPA) in 2011 with an award for Creative and Technical Excellence. Since graduating she has worked on numerous projects with the Lantern Company including Lumiere London and Hong Kong Arts in the Park. Ruta has also worked as an artist / maker for Walk the Plank and Beijing International Puppet Festival and has made puppets and props for festivals, theatre shows and short films. Her puppets have been exhibited in Vilnius Puppet Theatre, Lithuania and her work as set and costume designer includes Blue Stockings, Arabian Nights, Mater and Margarita, Inspector Norse and Romeo and Juliet.

Liverpool-based artist Faith is establishing a national reputation for her sculptures made re-using waste materials. She has worked with Veolia, the environmental waste management company to create sculptures for campaigns and projects across the UK, as well as recycled pieces for The Football Association at Wembley Stadium. 

Locally you may have seen Faith’s temporary sculptural installations such as the Super Rat that visited the Baltic Triangle and The Ships Cat with Rat Mischief at the Royal Albert Dock. Created for the Tall Ships Regatta, The Ships Cat with Rat Mischief utilised thousands of plastic milk bottles.

Jackie has a wealth of over 30 years’ experience in celebratory and community arts. Her roots have spread from the exploration of ritual performance at free festivals to the project and production management of all of the Lantern Company’s projects and events from 2004 to date. Jackie is the behind the scenes glue that sticks it all together. Alongside managing the Lantern Company Jackie enjoys working on Community growing and health projects and events.

Becky Bryson has been working as a professional artist and maker for the last 15 years. She completed her degree in 2004 and graduated with a 1st Class Honours in Fine Art. Shortly after graduating she began working with a number of companies specialising in outdoor spectacles, carnivals and parades. She soon realised what a deep impact art and making could have on communities. Since then, the main focus of her work has been community-based workshops and making sculptures and puppets for parades, outdoor events and installations. She has been an associate artist with the Lantern Company since 2006, both making and facilitating community workshops in a plethora of settings.

Rob works as a freelance Lighting Designer and production manager, specialising in bespoke lighting design, installation, set building and technical prop making. Over the last 20 years Rob has worked internationally with companies in Portugal, India, Finland and Holland, and nationally with companies such as Welfare State International, Walk the Plank, Combustion and B-arts. Rob is Lighting Designer for City of Light and has been Lantern Company’s main Lighting designer for 10 years. He worked on the Turku

(Finland) Capital of Culture opening ceremony, Sculptural lighting systems for the Rugby World cup, Hillsborough Memorial Installation Liverpool and the 10th Anniversary of the Wales Millennium Centre.

Ashleigh Nugent is a rapper, writer and programme director at RiseUp CiC. He uses rap and spoken word to open people up to honest discussion, make learning more accessible and promote personal development.
RiseUp CiC use the arts to introduce prisoners, and others, to techniques that aid stress reduction, conflict resolution, future planning and much more.
Ashleigh worked with a group of 15 prisoners in HMP Liverpool to create pieces of spoken word for the City of Light soundscape. We would like to thank them for their hard work, their generous spirit and the poignant and powerful work they produced.

www.cherylmartin.net
@cherylalaska

Recently Guest Curator, Liverpool’s Homotopia 2018, Cheryl’s also Co-Artistic Director,Manchester’s Black Gold Arts Festival; writer, touring shows Rent Party [5-stars, The Stage, Gay Times, Gay UK] and Contact, Manchester’s I am because we are about Africans living with HIV. She’s been Contact’s Associate Director, New Writing/New Work and a Manchester Evening News Theatre Award winner as both writer [musical Heart and Soul, Oldham Coliseum Theatre] and director [Iron by Rona Munro, Contact]; and co-producer/director for Traverse Edinburgh Fringe First winner [The World Is Too Much]. Her new show One Woman has been shortlisted for an Unlimited commission and the R&D sharing featured in HOME Manchester’s 2019 PUSH Festival.

Lizzie Nunnery is a scriptwriter and songwriter, working in theatre, radio and film. Her

first stage play Intemperance (Liverpool Everyman, 2007) was awarded 5 stars by The Guardian and shortlisted for the Meyer-Whitworth Award. Narvik (Box of Tricks Theatre, UK Tour 2017) won Best New Play in the UK Theatre Awards 2017. Other work includes The Sum (Everyman 2017), The People Are Singing (Manchester Royal Exchange 2017), The Snow Dragons (National Theatre 2017) and To Have to Shoot Irishmen (Almanac Arts, UK tour 2018). She is currently developing an original feature film script with Blue Horizon Production and BFI.

Over the last 30 years Jeff Young has written 35 radio dramas, essays and drama documentaries and more than 40 pieces for the stage, including most recently ‘Bright Phoenix’ for Liverpool Everyman. He works on site specific and installation collaborations and his work has been performed in spaces such as a submarine dock, an abandoned power station, Swan Hunter shipyard, beaches, a train station, quarries, lost gardens, a cobbler’s shop, lantern carnivals – for Liverpool Lantern Company – and ruins and derelict houses. His sound art has been broadcast internationally and he has worked extensively in high-rise blocks, subterranean spaces and on billboards.

Amina Atiq is a Yemeni- Scouse writer, spoken-word performer and activist. She explores identity and politics in her work. She has been involved in national and international projects, working alongside Roots & Routes international, Ice and Fire theatre, Writing on the Wall, The Arab Arts Festival, ORT Gallery many more.

She has been featured on various artistic platforms such as BBC five digital, Skinny, Bito Lito, Ummahsonic and British Muslim TV @thewarehouse. Recent work involve co-writing a play alongside Christine Bacon, What Do I Know for Ice and Fire theatre which was premiered at Liverpool Arab Arts festival this summer.

Alongside performing, Amina has worked closely with community events, such as Squash- Food for Real festival leading her own creative workshops. She has plans to work closely with young people to inspire and support their own creative journey.

Artistry manifests itself in many forms, and Addae’s mission is to engage with it, manifest work through it, and share it.  As a multidisciplinary artist his work is a provocative gesture to the often painful and bewildering experience of Caribbean people.

An award-winning Carnival artist born in the twin island paradise of Trinidad & Tobago; top 100UK food blogger with www.doubledarkrumaftermidnight.com; he expresses his true calling as a creative and a thinker with the ability to engage with audiences on an intimate level.  He’s set off on an examination of love, to regain himself and share it with the world.

Ginni is a playwright, theatre maker, writer and facilitator from Liverpool. She completed the Everyman Playwright Development Programme in 2014. She’s a member of the Lantern Writers, based at the Unity Theatre. In 2018 she participated in the Scenic Route Theatre Lab and is developing the full play from the project. She appeared at the Action Transport Theatre Writers’ Ball and assists the ATT Young Writers’ group. She performed at the 2017 Cradle of Creativity in Cape Town and as a result is currently writing in collaboration with Lalu Mokuku, a theatre maker in South Africa. She completed the W.O.W. Write to Work in November 2018 and is working with Jeff Young on the City of Light Project.

Trisha McKeon was born and raised in the west of Ireland and has lived in Liverpool since 2014. She started writing ten years ago.

She has mainly written short fiction and in January 2017 she was a member of Merseyside LGBTQ+ Writing Group, when they self-published an anthology, titled Made Up.

Trisha has taken part in two writing courses with Writing on the Wall in Liverpool, ‘What’s Your Pride Story’ and ‘Write to Work’. Both courses produced anthologies which feature her work.

Trisha’s first novel ‘Twister’ has reached the final in Writing on the Wall’s Pulp Idol.

Holly is an artist/designer from the Lake District. She studied Art at Lancaster Art College then went on to complete a degree in Theatre and Performance Design at Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts in 2005. Since then she has been working freelance as an illustrator and for many theatres and arts organisations both nationally and internationally. She enjoys working with people, sharing skills, hearing stories and working together creatively on projects.

Katy-Anne has been an associate artist with the Lantern Company since 2007. She has worked in a number of roles from puppeteering and performing to delivering workshops. She is a creative producer and theatre maker and has been developing quirky performances that have toured the UK and Internationally. She is the Artistic Director of The Birdcage Stage and a core member of Headstrung Puppets. She has also worked with And Now, Walk the Plank, Whaley Range Allstars, HOMEMcr, Proper Job Theatre and Everyman and Playhouse theatre as a visual artist, puppeteer and performer.

Claire is an artist based in Liverpool and has worked for the Lantern Company on many events and projects since 2005, delivering many creative workshops in community and school settings, as well as large scale lantern commissions. Claire has also worked on Production for two of Lantern Co.’s Halloween Events. Other work includes Visual Minutes, working within a team of artists, using illustration to capture events, meetings and conferences as a way of making information more accessible, and has led Claire to develop other skills such as animation. 

Anna was brought up in St Albans and Lagos by her father and stepmother. After initially studying Architecture, she came to Liverpool to study Fine Art, where she currently lives and works as an exhibiting visual artist, based at Arena Studios. Themes of home and the everyday recur throughout her work which utilises found pieces of wood in paintings, constructions and installations. The resulting works are often playful and, by contrast, melancholic as they reflect on the nature of human existence.

Julian is a former professional musician now working as a videographer and audio engineer in Liverpool. He signed to Island records with his first band, Starclub and although world domination did not materialise, it led him onto becoming the bass player in post Britpop outfit Rialto, with whom he enjoyed chart success. 

In 2004 he co-wrote and performed on the single ‘For Lovers’ with Pete Doherty which earned him an Ivor Novello nomination. He has played with artists such as Robert Plant, Paul Weller, Pretenders, Oleta Adams, and Justin Welch (Elastica).

After a break from the music business he is currently finishing a degree in Audio and Music Production at Liverpool John Moores University and working on various film projects in the city.

Ryan Derricutt is a LJMU student filmmaker, artist and graphic designer who has worked on a variety of community-based projects. Ryan’s internship has involved both sound recording with Writing on the Wall’s writers and film documentation of the city of light project.

Ellen is a second year Theatre and Performance Technology Student at Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts. She is particularly interested in lighting design. On her placement with Lantern Company Ellen has learnt vastly about LED Technology and it’s uses as well as how to wire it and power it to it’s advantage. She has also had the opportunity to learn about lantern design and lighting them, also how to use light creatively for puppetry and installation artwork.

James is a second year Theatre and Performance Technology Student at Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts, with a particular interest in sound design. On his placement with Lantern Company James has worked with low voltage lighting and learnt about how to wire it safely. He has enhanced his skill set by learning how to use various hand tools and also learnt practical skills in lantern making. He has very much enjoyed working in this way with Lantern Co. and has found the process very rewarding.

Benyamin is a sculptor from Iran. He was trained by his father, a master sculptor and painter. Benyamin has lived in Liverpool for two years, during this time he has had two exhibitions at the Tate Gallery with Sola Arts. Currently he is creating small art pieces at home.

Saskia graduated from Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts with BA hons in theatre and performance design. Since graduating she has been involved in projects with the Lantern Company as a volunteer, and in an apprenticeship role, assisting in making large scale lanterns and supporting with community-based workshops and events. Saskia has worked on some small projects around the UK through independent creative teams as a maker, designer, and puppeteer expanding contacts, skills and knowledge. 

Joao is a human rights activist from Angola and has been in the UK for 5 years, during which time he has volunteered with a number of cultural organisations such as Squash Nutrition, Brazilica, The Brink and Lantern Company. A prolific writer, he has taken part in Writing on the Wall’s writing programme for City of Light, as well as assisting with community workshops and the larger scale buildings with the artist team.

Asylum Link Merseyside is based in St Anne’s presbytery next to St Anne’s Church in Overbury Street, Wavertree. It is a safe space for Asylum Seekers and Refugees, to meet, relax and find out about the community they have been dropped into. We offer a wide range of services which are centred on the principles of Friendship and Welcome. These include access to other agencies delivering refugee services on site, the Merseyside Refugee Support Network MRSN, Merseyside Network for Change, MNfC, and the Greater Manchester Immigration Aid Unit, GMIAU.

You can get everything from a cup of tea and a chat, access to well-being programmes and advocacy, and help for the destitute. To find out more info or to support please go to https://www.asylumlink.org.uk/about/

SMLLCA’s Senior Citizens Lunch Club

Twice a week, a group of senior citizens from across Liverpool come to the Old Police Station on Lark Lane to enjoy each other’s’ company and a simple three course lunch and where friendships are forged and stories are shared.

Lunch is served at 12.45 pm on Tuesdays and 1:00 pm on Fridays. We also provide transport to and from the centre for many of our members, but at the moment the bus is full and there is a waiting list for this service.

To find out more information please go to http://www.larklanecomcentre.org.uk/groups-clubs/senior-citizens/

Many Hands One Heart is a network established in March 2016, to support people seeking asylum and refugees living in Liverpool and the surrounding areas who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual and/or trans.

We provide a safe, supportive and confidential space, bi-weekly, for LGBTQI+ people seeking asylum and refugees to meet one another, talk and receive advice, support and information from professionals, services and each other. The network is led by Sahir House and supported by Mersey Care Mental Health Trust, The Armistead Centre, Liverpool Community Development Services.

LGBT Asylum – Many Hands One Heart