Born in Yorkshire and educated in Hull and Cambridge.

 

After working as Head Teacher of the smallest village school in remote North Yorkshire and lecturing in Bradford Art College Sue evolved to be:

 

• an author,
• performer,
• secular celebrant,
• cook,
• saxophonist,
• truck driver,
• co founder of Welfare State International (1968-2006)
• and grandmother.

After WSI was archived she was, for one year, Director of Ceremonies

for Lanternhouse International.

 

 

From 1998-2006 she was the course leader for WSI's groundbreaking MA in Cultural Performance created in partnership with Bristol University.

 

She is an Honorary Fellow of the University of Cumbria.

 

She was invited to be Celebrant for the Ceremony of Remembrance for Great Ormond Street Hospital (2001)

 

Co-author of the Dead Good Guides  - books on Funerals and Baby Namings.

 

Presently leads Rites of Passage Summer Schools across the UK with Gilly Adams, and works as a secular celebrant for weddings and naming ceremonies and funeral officiant, particularly for woodland burials.

 

 

 

Born in Hull. National Service in West Africa, Hons Degrees in PPE at Oxford and Fine Art in Newcastle.

 

After lecturing in art colleges co founded Welfare State International in 1968( with others) and was Artistic Director, until he archived the company in 2006. Printmaker, poet, author, artist, theatre director, occasional musician, lecturer and cultural provocateur with numerous awards for “ innovative contribution to the arts”. 

 

He is  an Honorary Fellow of both the University of Cumbria and the University of Central Lancashire.  July 2009    Invited to become a Companion of the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts  LIPA.   October 2009      Invited to become a Fellow of

the Royal Society of Arts in recognition of his award-winning contribution to the arts,

as well as his role as founder of "The Weather Station" ecological installation.

 

His large woodcut triptych, commissioned by English Estates 1998 is a permanent mural in The Trinity Enterprise Centre in Barrow in Furness .

In 2006 at Arts 06 he received the first Arts Council England (NW) "Life- Times Achievement Award " and an Artist  /Time/Space /Award for his cross disciplinary research project “Pick up Sticks". Retrospective exhibition “Graphics and Gifts" of his woodcuts and linoprints for Mid Pennine Arts. “ 

 

Eyes on Stalks “ his roller coaster autobiography about WSI was published by Methuen in 2002.               Co–author, with Sue Gill, of the Dead Good Guides.

 

"An immense influence on three generations of artists, teachers and administrators, both in this country and throughout the world."

Northern Electric Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Arts 

 

June 2008 - 11 Awarded Senior Research Fellowship in the Creative and Performing Arts by Arts and Humanities Research Council ( AHRC) with the Lancaster Institute for Contemporary Art (LICA) at Lancaster University. It explored ecology, place and performance on the shoreline of Morecambe  Bay.

Quick time "movie" by Johnny McGee.  Studio view. Click here.