The Taunton Live Team
Crucial to the strengthening of the GoCreate organisation and the ongoing development and success of Taunton Live is the involvement of the following people, each of whom has specific responsibility for ensuring the quality of particular aspects of Taunton Live.
Jenny Keogh, CEO and Festival Organiser
responsible, with Liz Hutchin, for the overall organisation, safety, delegation of tasks and management of the festival.
Jenny is the CEO of GoCreate Taunton, a local artist who also curates a pop-up-gallery for local artists, combining this with her day job as a mental health support worker and several voluntary posts. These include facilitating Art reparation for Young Offenders, supporting a well-being clinic in a local school and working with Promise. With Promise Jenny has recently curated an exhibition by both Mentors and Mentee’s to raise awareness of this worthwhile charity.
www.jennykeogh.co.uk and jenny@gocreate.org.uk
Liz Hutchin, Festival Organiser and Schools Co-ordinator
Having taught for over 30 years in Primary Schools including East and South-east London, Liz established Busylizzie Art & Literacy Ltd, in November 2013 as a way of further developing the passion for art, presentation, creativity and design that had been bubbling inside all that time!
Busylizzie Art is about bespoke and personal, from consultation to completion – creating hand-painted designs for wall spaces ranging from music studios, nursery settings to children’s rooms and conservatories as well as individualised Wedding Stationery, hand-made from original watercolour paintings.
Busylizzie Art & Literacy in schools is all about whole school staff training and Art Projects and developing children’s skills. The connection with schools is where the link with Go Create and Taunton Live 2015 naturally grew out of….
http://www.busylizzieart.co.uk/
Fran Pitt, Director
responsible for co-ordinating yarnbombing events across Taunton, working with a committee and several knitting groups.
A varied career involving map-drawing for military history publications, writing and editing. I studied at Exeter University for a BA, then MA, taking 1st with honours in Medieval Studies. Currently I continue to research, write and edit: I’m editor in chief of Corridors, a quarterly magazine for Taunton NHS Trust, discussing and familiarising staff with all aspects of dementia care. However, I’m increasingly turning towards painting – generally figurative work, and mostly portraits. I hope to make this a career move.
fran@gocreate.org.uk
James Eastwell-Keogh
responsible for design and maintenance of GoCreate and Taunton Live websites. Overall responsibility for health and safety, first aid provision and DBS cleared staff.
Graduating in 1997 with a degree in Fine Art specialising in Sculpture, Installation and Printmaking. Jim administrates both the GoCreate Taunton and TauntonLive websites and also runs a webdesign company, specialising in websites for artists. He also teaches in an Special Needs School.
james@peachywebsites.co.uk
Mark Adkins, Board Member
responsibility for marketing and design.
Having spent many years as the Creative Director of a London advertising agency, creating and overseeing work for the country’s best known brands, Mark settled full-time in Somerset in 2008 and started Oohlala Creative.
Based near Taunton, Oohlala is intentionally a small operation with the freedom to exploit different disciplines including photography and design. Whatever the brief, however, his desire is always to deliver work with oodles of passion, insight and creativity.
Away from the office, Mark is also a fervent follower of the arts and is keen to help build a stronger arts infrastructure and creative community in the region.
www.oohlalacreative.com
John Stuart
Board Member and Chairman of Fire River Poets – overall responsibility for poetry/literature and drama and the schools poetry competition.
John is retired after 30 years with City and Guilds, the vocational awarding body, and prior to that the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry Commercial Education Scheme, as it then was.
As well as chairing Fire River Poets, John organises the poetry events now running at the Creative Innovation Centre and formerly at The Brewhouse in Taunton. John is himself a published poet (Word of Mouth, Oversteps 2009) and a keen student of philosophy though he read Russian at Birmingham University.
www.fireriverpoets.org.uk
Tim Baigent, Board Member and Project Advisor
advice and assistance on design matters and popular music projects.
Tim is the creative director of small graphic design firm Glyder, which he runs with his wife Bethan. Tim graduated from the London College of Communication in 1992 with a degree in graphic design and continued to work in London throughout the 1990s – before finally moving back to Taunton to set up Glyder. Owning a small design firm means being able to provide a more personal customer service to clients and have the flexibility to balance it with an equally successful homelife, ie being a ‘hands on Dad’ to two young sons.
Tim’s other passion is music. He played in a few bands that got plenty of Radio One airtime on the John Peel show and continues to play in his ‘surf’ band today.
www.glyder.org
Steve Keniston – GoCreate member
responsible for musical performances, including country music and sits on the committee organising ‘Taunton’s Got Talent’
I have experience in performing all my life and been member of several bands. Have put together events such as The From The Heart project ( a singer songwriter presentation) which successfully ran for three years at the Tacchi Morris Arts Centre. Recently co-organised the very successful Actfest 1 and 2 and the finale for Taunton Live 2015. I run a successful Country Club every month and I am co- founder of ACT The Arena Campaign for Taunton.
Richard Holt, Board Member and Consultant
Richard is director of the Creative Innovation Centre CIC and Core Business Design in Taunton, Somerset which supports and promotes the development of the creative sector locally . www.creativeinnovationcentre.co.uk/Richard is a Fellow of Creative Enterprise through the Centre of Excellence in Teaching and Learning at Plymouth University and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
Richard has extensive knowledge in Arts and Design training, programme design, delivery, management, quality assurance, accreditation and 25 years management experience in business design training.
Marcia Hill, 2017 Yarnbombing coordinator
Managing knitting groups year round for the infamous Taunton Live Yarnbomb.
Cllr Marcia Hill is passionate about Taunton, was born and bred here and thoroughly enjoyed being Mayor of Taunton in 2015.
Marcia has been heavily involved in both the 2015 and 2016 Taunton Live Yarnbombing and was thrilled to take over the reins from previous coordinator Fran Pitt and bring new community groups on-board.