Our Artists
All our artists work in the community, all of them are women, most of them are mothers and some of them have been through the Shine course themselves in the past, ensuring this is a really safe, protective and understanding environment.
Meet some of our artists below:
Becky Kimberley
Becky is a community artist and experienced practitioner with lived experience of anxiety and postnatal depression. Her Creative Women workshops encourage openness and creativity in a warm and inspiring environment, with a focus on healing. She says: “I love bringing wellness and personal confidence to the group through mixed-media creative-play and curiosity!”
Sadie Rowlands
Sadie is a mosaic artist based at Victoria Works Studios in Chalford. She says: “Sharing and teaching others has become very important to me and a big part of my life. I feel so lucky to work with the mums at Shine. It’s really wonderful to see how much they enjoy working with mosaics and be able to help those who insist they are not artistic to make a piece they are proud of.”
Lindsay Viner
Lindsay is an artist and maker who draws inspiration from the natural world, folk traditions and literature, using symbolism to explore notions of home, place, family, mending and story. She is passionate about encouraging others’ creativity, and about the potential role for art and craft in our mental wellbeing. She says: “I have lived experience of mental health struggles, through which my art and craft provided not only a tool for relaxation but also a means of emotional expression and processing.”
Anna Marshall
Anna runs her Peace & Craft workshops in and around the Cotswolds, and specialises in simple, satisfying crafting sessions with tactile, unusual materials in peaceful inspiring environments. She runs dedicated sessions designed to welcome new mums with babies for some crucial TLC for soul and self in the earliest months of motherhood. She loves working with wire, paper, felt, vintage fabrics, fibres, buttons, corks, feathers, wax or household hardware.
“Strength doesn’t come from what you can do. It comes from overcoming the things you once thought you couldn’t.”
Emma Johnson
Shine mum and drop-in volunteer, Emma is a writer and journalist and runs our blackout poetry workshops, helping mums create new meaning from old words, and finding a way to voice the pain inside. She lives in a cottage in a small village near Cirencester with her daughter, twin boys, husband, cat and chickens. She says: “When I did Shine, that time with those women was life-changing. It’s such a privilege to be able to spend time with mums now, hearing their stories and sharing their experiences.”