Meet the Team

Kate Adams is an artist, advocate and activist. She is Director & CEO of Project Art Works and has curated many responsive, collaborative projects with neurominorities, families, care services, artists and galleries.

Kate co-founded Project Art Works in 1997 to explore an expanded concept of art that was and continues to be influenced by Paul Colley, her son, who has complex support needs. Their work embraces personalised studio practice, peer support and award-winning films, art actions, installations and exhibitions. Kate’s practice disrupts preconceptions about what people can and can’t do, who they are and how they live, revealing other ways of being in and seeing the world.

In the work Cosmology of Care, Kate visualizes the possibilities and barriers of social care systems that many individuals and families rely upon. Find out more here.

Leila McMillan is a jack-of-all-trades and mistress-of-some. With a background in fine art and a degree in sculpture she is also an accomplished knitter, seamstress and fiddle-smith.

She moved to St Leonard’s-on-Sea in 2005 and made contact with Project Art Works whilst looking for activities for her daughter Eden – a keen artist with learning disabilities.

After first working as an artist on a few projects she is now the resident archivist – although she loves getting the occasional chance to spend time in the studios with the makers.

Her daughter Eden Kötting develops her creative practice at Project Art Works studio.

Georgie Scott is a photographer and artist with a degree in photography from the London College of Printing.

Since graduation Georgie has lived both overseas and in the UK regularly working with vulnerable communities to explore ways to enable stories to be told through still and moving image, audio recordings and participatory workshops.

People have always been central to Georgie’s work, first as a press, travel and portrait photographer and later whilst working with Save the Children, ActionAid, British Red Cross and Age UK amongst others.

Over the last decade Georgie moved to Hastings to be near the sea, her photographic practice has evolved to include ceramics and sculpture and she continues to explore socially engaged collaborative ways of working with others.

Georgie has worked with Project art works since 2016 as artist facilitator on the Explorers & Art Freedom Care programmes and as a Lead artist on Art Breaks programme. Georgie also has the role of Project & Family Support Officer for the Support Collective.

Oliver Crowther is an artist working in range of media. Through his practice Oliver considers the role of the artist in contemporary society, exploring issues of agency and autonomy through image-making, sound and built environments. Before joining Project Artworks Oliver was a lecturer on the Hastings Foundation Course for four years before returning to education to study. He is currently enrolled on the MFA Fine Art program at Goldsmiths University, London.

I make foxes, swim in the sea, and draw every day.

I love those moments when you notice the wild in the corner of your eye. These encounters are at the heart of my work. In my ‘Skulk’ Project, I record each fox I see, then recreate it in clay, carefully matching its colours and markings. I’ve recently completed my 500th fox, all of which have found new homes.

I sketch daily, and my ‘Observered Books’ series helps me develop drawings of animals into larger works.

More recently, I’ve been making life-sized artworks, painstakingly rendering every strand of fur or feather.

I have a Masters in Sequential Design and Illustration at Brighton University and studied Fine Art Printmaking at Loughborough University.

Dion Downes is an Artist and specialist support worker, who lives and works in Hastings. He has been studying health and social care specifically relating to individuals with learning disabilities/difficulties and supporting them to develop and maintain their independent living skills since 2012. Dion does this alongside practicing art with a focus on optical illusions and experimenting with dimensions.

Dion is passionate about social inclusion and personalisation and is a keen advocate for spreading awareness regarding neuro-diversity.

Annis Joslin has worked with Project Art Works as Lead Artist Associate since 2003. She is an artist and filmmaker with a collaborative approach, making work through conversations and participatory encounters with others exploring lived experience in a playful and reflective process leading to creating lens-based digital artwork. She also collaborates with artist Sarah Cole, as Cole & Joslin and is co-director of Corridor, a social arts organisation based in the South East that connects artists, people and places through collaborative lens-based visual arts projects.Annis has shown work in the UK and internationally with projects and commissions with organisations including People United, The Royal College of Physicians, The National Trust, Tate Exchange, The Women’s Library, and The Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool.

Tom Lepora is an artist and painter and maker and breaker.

He has a varied working background from: mental health (ICU and community settings) to boat restoration and third sector environments.

Tom’s own art practices focuses on interpersonal relationships with people who have been marginalised in society. Making those connections and building trust is key to his work. He uses found materials to produce objects that are either kept, recycled or gifted to the person who enjoys them the most.

Tom also runs workshops for people who are in home education. These are centered around making and collecting materials that can be made into something or broken, depending on what is wanted.

Magda Patza is an Inclusive Arts Practitioner who works collaboratively across the arts alongside people from diverse and marginalised community groups, both in the UK and Romania. She is interested in scaffolding ideas and processes to create opportunities for self-expression and connections through movement, sound, and mark-making. Over the years, she has worked with people of all ages and abilities, in the different roles of facilitator, support worker, artist, collaborator, creating performances for film, photography and sound installations. Magda also has a background in education, in developing and delivering combined arts training programmes for care staff in Romania.

Peter Quinnell studied at Chelsea and the Royal College of Art and has been working with collage and assemblage for 30 years, both as an artist and illustrator. From 1984 -1999 he was half of the pioneering collage duo Archer/Quinnell. His work has appeared in hundreds of magazines, book jackets, record sleeves, shop window displays and advertising campaigns in the UK and internationally, and he exhibits his fine art pieces regularly.
He teaches at University Centre Hastings and is active in adults’ and children’s community projects and workshops with Radiator Arts.

He lives and works in Hastings.

Maya Shapiro Steen studied painting at the Slade School of Fine Art before going on to complete her MA in the Anthropology of Visual and Material Culture (UCL).  She is interested in social and cultural practices and contexts of making – exploring their uses and their boundaries.

Working in Arts Education and as a facilitator, she enjoys examining, stretching and expanding these boundaries in order make our innate need to interact expressively with our material world accessible and meaningful.