We’re delighted to confirm that Maddi Nicholson, freelance Artist and founder director of Art Gene, a visual art charity and Arts Council NPO in Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria is joining our panel of judges for our Community Arts Award 2025.
Art Gene’s research remit extends across a program of environmentally aware placemaking, socially engaged art projects, residencies, exhibitions, and education work focusing on the role and engagement of artists and communities in the revisioning of their social, natural and built environment.
As an Artist Maddi produces challenging work for varied and diverse situations nationwide, video, cast iron and stitched works to huge paintings, signage and inflated and recycled plastic sculptures.
Works range from an inflated replica of a Barrow terraced house due for demolition, in ‘Going home from here’ which toured beauty spots in Cumbria, to a set of cast iron enamelled terraced house models, commenting on the lives of 18th and 19th Century working class women in Spinningfields Manchester in ‘a place lived’.
Her Art Gene art works include the Roker Pods for Sunderland City Council: spherical mobile eco off grid pods on the beach and the prom, as café, education and events facilities. The Peoples Museum on Piel Island, for Barrow Borough Council; including a cabinet of curiosities, repurposed engraved tables, beer maps and the islands of Barrow Map. Seldom Seen Maps and Mobile Apps walking tours for coastal areas of Cumbria and Lancashire. Razzle Dazzle bird hides as education resources with interior artwork interpretation for Cumbria Wildlife Trust. Walney Island Nature reserve, mobile App walking tour and non civic war memorial gate and sculpture for Natural England’s North Walney Island national nature reserve.