Older Artist Seminar with The Baring Foundation
This online seminar will rethink what we mean by an emerging artist. It will focus on the opportunities that can arise from finding a new creative career or developing a new artistic direction in later life.
We’ll be joined by three artists, David Taylor, Liz Bertram-Gossam and Christine Kydd, who received a Luminate Older Artist Bursary, funded by The Baring Foundation. They will share details about what this support has enabled them to achieve.
This event is open to artists, cultural organisations and policy makers based internationally as well as in Scotland.
The seminar is free and places are limited. It event will take place via Zoom and joining instructions will be sent to you in advance of the session.
Speaker biographies
David Taylor
Following retirement in 2015 from a career in theatre management and, latterly, in arts policy and funding, David took an MA in Creative Writing with the Open University.
Writing as Don J Taylor, his short fiction has been published in Scotland, England, Germany and the US, online and in print. He has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and long-listed for several international writing competitions.
Liz Bertram-Gossan
Liz is a self taught ceramic artist. Her artistic journey began at 19 with a 1 year foundation course, but chose to pursue a different career path, stepping away from formal art education. On retirement 5 years ago she purchased her kiln and began to really experiment with clay. She creates individual ceramic pieces, using slab building techniques which are fired to stoneware temperatures.
Liz lives and works near Biggar in an amazing isolated place with rolling hills, wildlife, nature and tours around other beautiful places in Scotland observing sea and landscapes throughout the seasons, all of this inspires her work. Her most recent work is inspired by weathered holey stones found on the beach and Barbara Hepworth’s abstract sculptures. Her pieces explore the interplay between organic curves and sharp lines, showing the contrast of softness and rigidity, much like the forces of nature that shape the stones.
Christine Kydd
Christine Kydd is a multi award- winning singer, twice nominated for MG Alba Scots Singer of the Year at the MG ALBA Na Trads. Inducted into the Scottish Traditional Music Hall of Fame (2018), her latest critically acclaimed release, Shift & Change (2019) merited ‘a collection that showcases one of Scottish Folk Music’s timeless treasures’ (Living Tradition).
Christine’s current projects include solo, working on projects with a number of acclaimed musicians in various line-ups, including a project on Lucy Stewart with Tripple; concerts with Alan Reid from Battlefield Band; award- winning academic, singer and fiddler Jo Miller, and an upcoming album of new songs produced by Boo Hewerdine. With Luminate support, 2025 sees her explore a creative work inspired by her experiences from diagnosis to receiving life- saving treatment for cancer.
This event is supported by:
