Artistic Explorations

An honours graduate from The University of Winchester with a degree in Digital Media Design, Kate has always been drawn to all aspects of television, film and theatre production. Being a queer, disabled, feminist, Kate has a strong interest in creating and designing theatre that highlight the stories of the underrepresented, particularly any story that demonstrates the intersectionality between the Disabled and LGBTQIA+ communities. Kate describes herself as an open minded, curious, and creative individual.

Stephanie Castelete-Tyrrell is a BA (Hons) graduate from the University of Portsmouth and a MA graduate from the University of Bristol in Film and Television. She is an actor, filmmaker and company director of Four Wheel Drive Productions, a disabled-led production company. Stephanie has produced two award-winning documentaries through her company, one of which was screened at Pinewood Studios. Stephanie’s films all focus on telling stories from disabled people, including sports and current societal issues. 

Tatum Swithenbank is a working-class, disabled performer, producer, and facilitator from the Midlands. Approaching their work through a queer crip lens, they are passionate about shaping narratives that centre community, culture, and accessibility. Their performance and theatre practice includes collaborations with CRIPtic Arts, Camden People’s Theatre, and the Roundhouse. Tatum has produced powerful storytelling for BBC Radio 4, Audible, and BBC Sounds, including the award-winning series WITCH. Across disciplines, their work explores the threads between identity, folklore, and the obscure.

Christopher Samuel is a multi-disciplinary artist whose practice is rooted in identity and disability politics. Often echoing the many facets of his own lived experience as a Black disabled man, his work tells stories, highlighting the often unseen experiences of his day to day life and those of others in similar circumstances. His practice includes small detailed ink drawings, film, print, audio, research, and large installations. Samuel works alongside galleries, museums, archives and other institutions to address missing representation in our cultural spaces.

Rachel Gadsden is a British visual artist whose work is presented nationally and internationally. She develops solo exhibitions and performances that explore universal themes of humanity. Her work has received support from major public arts organisations, including Arts Council England, Arts Council Cymru, British Council Arts and Unlimited. Her artworks are held in significant private and institutional collections, such as HM The King’s Royal Art Collection, UK Parliament, Mandela’s Walk to Freedom in South Africa, FIFA in Switzerland, The National Paralympic Heritage Trust, Hyundai in South Korea, and Roche in Switzerland. She has been awarded major commissions across six Paralympic Games—Beijing, London, Sochi, Brazil, Tokyo and Paris—and has completed four commissions for UK Parliament. Gadsden was named CRIPtic Arts Breakthrough Artist in 2024 and is currently commissioned by UCL for the “Words Matter” project examining historical and contemporary eugenics. She recently developed PostHuman, a live visual and sound performance with composer Freddie Meyers, presented at the Barbican Centre in November 2024 and within UCL’s “Words Matter Exhibition” (Nov 2025–Feb 2026). She is undertaking PhD research at Loughborough University on embodied constriction and Disability Arts and received an Honorary Doctorate from London South Bank University in 2016. 

Liberty  Bligh is a disabled, queer multidisciplinary artist and lived experience advisor, and is currently completing a BA (Hons) Fine Art (Sculpture) at Gray’s School of Art. Liberty works across a broad range of materials including ceramics, plaster, steel, bronze, wood, ink drawings, collage, printing, and found objects. Her practice centres crip perspectives, identity, and respiration within the Anthropocene, examining how deforestation, air‑pollution, and climate change impact human breath. Liberty's critical interests span environmental justice, disability studies, crip theory, and the ethics of co‑production, and she regularly collaborates with fellow artists, community researchers, and peers with lived experience. She draws on her own lived experience of chronic respiratory failure, acquired brain injury and language loss from prolonged mechanical ventilation, tracheostomy and daily non-invasive ventilation to reveal the symbiotic relationships between machines and bodies. Liberty also contributes her lived‑experience insight to research and policy through several advisory roles. She is member of the Lived Experience Advisory Panel for Asthma and Lung UK, a participant on the Diverse Experience Advisory Panel for the UK Mental Health Foundation, and has been a lived experience advisor for the Poverty Alliance, Trussell Trust and Nourish Scotland, and with the James Lind Respiratory Research Partnership.