Meet the Artists
Lisette Auton
Based in Darlington, Lisette is the author of three middle grade novels published by Puffin/Penguin Random House The Secret of Haven Point, The Stickleback Catchers, and Lights Up which have been shortlisted for five major awards, achieved Sunday Times Book of the Week, Observer book of the month, and a Guardian Book of the Year. Her fourth book is forthcoming in 2025.
Lisette is the lead author for 2024 Imagine a Story, Southbank Centre, London – writing/editing a book with 2515 school children; touring Summer 2024 nationwide.
She has made regional and national appearances at book festivals and school tours. In 2019 Lisette was awarded the Early Careers Fellow for Literature at Cove Park. She is also a graduate of Write Now, the Penguin Random House development programme for underrepresented writers and received an Arts Council Developing your Creative Practice grant which enabled her time to write her debut novel.
In 2018 Lisette won a Creative Future Award and was featured on the TSS Publishing list of Best British & Irish Flash Fiction. She is an Associate Artist with Blue Cabin, and has been Crossing the Tees festival poet in residence, commissioned by and shown in galleries including MIMA, the Courtauld Institute, DASH Arts, and Kirkleatham Museum. She wrote, directed, produced and starred in the Writing the Missing water trilogy series of short films, commissioned by Durham Book Festival over three years. She was Winner of The Journal Culture Award 2021 for Performance of the Year for WRITING THE MISSING – A RIVER CYCLE.
Lisette has been commissioned to write for four full length plays with runs of performances over the last two years, from Live Theatre Newcastle, Alphabetti Theatre Newcastle, Unfolding Theatre at Arc Stockton, and Queen’s Hall Arts Centre with a 4-star review in the Stage.
Lisette’s live art includes a major national commission from DASH and the Ampersand Foundation for WAIWAV - We are Invisible, We are Visible, achieving national press coverage in the Guardian and featured in a publication distributed at Tate Exchange museums nationwide.
Claire A Baker
Claire’s creative practice is a shared dialogue with communities. Through her artworks, materials, and the blending of digital and hand-rendered techniques she shares messages of love and legacy, heritage and hope. Through stitch, her small acts of activism bring unseen things to light.
Claire recently completed a practice-led PhD at Northumbria University where her research was focused on communicating through embroidery, with a tiny community of Babushkas (aged women) who still live in the isolated Chernobyl zone, digitising, contemporising and extending the life of some of their traditional embroidery motifs. This work built her national and international profile, where she undertook opportunities in other countries and with many different audiences, including both public and academic, the youth, the elderly, women, military groups and charity organisations. Claire has had six articles published in research journals to date and had textile artworks included in specialist books by major authors.
Two of Claire’s major pieces have been acquired by MIMA for The Middlesbrough Collection and the Baltic Archive Permanent Collection holds work by the 26:86 Collective. Claire was a finalist in the North-East Culture Awards: ‘Visual Artist of the Year’ Finalist, 2022, The Dover Prize Finalist in 2019, Dorothy Waxman Textile-Design Prize Finalist, 2018 Acquisition Prize, Contextile Winner in 2012.
Andy Berriman
After graduating from the Met Film School in 2008 he returned to Stockton and started to film festivals, such as SIRF, gigs and music videos. In 2015 he was commissioned by BFI Network via Creative England to make his first short A Six and Two Threes, which was shot in stockton on a budget of £7000. The film went on to play in multiple film festivals around the world, won awards and was long-listed for a BIFA for best short film.
Andy wants to tell authentic, funny, touching and illuminating stories that shine with the unique grit, humour and heart of his homeland. In 2018 he received further funding from Creative England to make Elsewhere and this year he is directing another BFI funded short Giants. He has also been commissioned to direct a BBC Three Laugh Lesson, comedy sizzle reels from BBC Comedy and Fulwell 73 and a number of music videos for artists such as Saint Savoir which have had hundreds of thousands of views.
His film Mortal won the Northern Film prize in 2023. He is also a well-established commercial filmmaker focusing on capturing the region’s local festivals, events and cultural attractions.
