Creativity, Curiosity and Celebration

Dr Lucie Bea Dutton

'Anything I have achieved has been in the teeth of the disease': Hilary Mantel, Stitching Cromwell, Endometriosis and Me

Lucie Bea Dutton, textile artist and independent scholar, was awarded her PhD from Birkbeck, University of London in 2018 for her thesis about the early career of British filmmaker Maurice Elvey. She has published on Elvey’s silent films Nelson (1918) and Hindle Wakes (1927), and on the 1950 film adaptation of Georgette Heyer’s The Reluctant Widow. She incorporates her research methodology into her stitching and has been working on a project inspired by Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell Trilogy since 2014, supported by correspondence with the author. Stitching Cromwell was the subject of a well-received paper at the 2022 Huntington Library Overflow of Meaning conference, and has been featured at various public history events including exhibiting and lecturing at The Hive as a guest of the University of Worcester in 2026, and compering the 2024 and 2026 Wolf Hall Weekends. Her textile work can be found at https://thethreadofhertale.substack.com and www.stitchingcromwell.com

Dr Andrew Edgar

'Ithell Colquhoun - the Making of Sacred Landscape'

Andrew Edgar taught philosophy at Cardiff University until his retirement in 2018. During his academic career he published widely on contemporary German philosophy (including the work of Jürgen Habermas and T.W. Adorno), the philosophy of medicine, political philosophy, and the philosophy of sport. He also published research on, and taught, the philosophy of art, with a particular interest in the theorising behind modernist art movements. Since retirement, he has moved to East Sussex (returning to old stomping grounds, having completed his doctorate at Sussex University in the 1980s). He is continuing to research British modernist art, and particularly the interwar period. He is a church warden for St Mary the Virgin, Ringmer.

James Priestman (whose nom de plume is James Pendle)

'A recital of poems that reimagine stories from the Bible'

James has been a member of SOFN since 2018. Under the nom de
plume James Pendle, he writes poems that reimagine stories, poems and
prophesies from The Bible. His poems have been published in respected
poetry magazines (Ambit, Acumen) as well as Sofia.

James has a BA Hons degree in Biblical Studies (University of Sheffield)
and he is the Director of the Festival of Biblical Literature.

He hosts seminars on the Bible for Woodbrooke, the international Quaker
learning and research organisation and performs as the Poet of
Paddington Station every Friday morning (approved by Network Rail). He
has performed his poems on BBC London Radio and at festivals including
Greenbelt.

James has been a Quaker (Religious Society of Friends) since 2014. He
works for three days a week as a Social Worker in an Early Intervention
Psychosis Service.

Youtube: @JamesPendle-nv4cj / Instagram: @JamespendlePoet /
Facebook: @jamespendlepoet / BlueSky:@jamespendlepoet.bsky.social /
Tiktok: @james.pendle.poet / Substack: @jamespendlepoet

Paul Wright

'Fine Art and Colour Management'

For the past 24 years Paul has worked as a self employed Fine Art
Printer / Photographer. His work mainly involves the scanning or
photographing of fine art works for reproduction as limited edition prints
on to paper and canvas. In 2014 he gained accreditation with
Hahnemühle as a Certified Studio.

In his work he uses a system called colour management which ensures
that the colour that he captures from an original painting is reproduced
as accurately as possible on his computer monitor and most importantly
in the prints that he produces for his customers.

He works between two studios, his home garden studio and his main
studio situated in The Biscuit Factory art gallery in Newcastle.

Robin Richardson

'Creativity and Story in Imaginal Space - planting and tending a virtual scrapbook'

Creativity is required in gardening, planting and tending as in many
other kinds of making, including the making of a religion or of a cosmos,
or of a relationship, household or home, or a work of art or science, or
an organisation, campaign or institution, or even of a scrapbook,
archive, website or life-story.

Makers form the things they create, but also the things they create may
shape, in certain ways, the makers themselves. Creativity entails
therefore, of course, a collective and cooperative process, not something
private or individual. And in various ways it may help the evolution of
resilience and resolve in the midst of wars, racism, colonialism, threats
to democracy and rule of law, migration, climate collapse and climate
justice.

Robin Richardson has been a teacher, researcher, inspector and
consultant, and the editor of national reports by various committees and
commissions, including Islamophobia, a challenge for us all (1997), The
Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain (2000) and Living with Difference, religion
and belief in British public life (2015). Latterly he has been the curator of
an autobiographical website entitled Patience & Passion, an archival
scrapbook, at www.patience-and-passion.org.uk