Tom is part of The Traipse.

Tom Rowbottom graduated from Middlesex University in 2011 with a BA Hons in Dance.  At university he gained considerable experience devising his own works and performing in the works of others, including Angela Woodhouse.

Tom has toured the UK, including performing at the Edinburgh Fringe festival and the Siobhan Davies dance studio in London. Tom has competed for several years in a number of physical contact sports like Rugby, American Football and is keen to explore and develop his own creative voice and practice as a professional dance artist.

Tina is part of The Traipse.

Tina Murtagh trained at the Northern School for Contemporary Dance from 2006-2010, during which time she developed a strong interest in improvisation. As a scientist mathematician she is exploring these influences on her own creative practice

Tina has worked with Roberta-Jean in London, experimenting with various types of dancing including jive, moshing, folk dance from different countries and the boogie woogie! Currently based in Leeds she works as a free-lance dance artist and teacher and is developing her creative practice working on a project basis.

Ellen is part of the Traipse

Ellen Turner is based in Lancaster and has been touring nationally since graduating from the Northern School of Contemporary Dance in 2009. She has extensive educational experience within Ludus Dance Company, both as a teacher and dancer, devising and performing in their most recent work, Consequences, choreographed by Nigel Charnock, Yael Flexer, and Ben Wright.

Ellen is now a freelance dance artist and has founded her own company, ETC Dance, working alongside other local artists and companies in the Lancaster area, including Maelstrom Dance. Recently she held her first art exhibition in Lancaster named Move, touch, inspire, a collection of semi-realistic portraits, inspired by the moving body.  Ellen produced and directed a dance for the camera entitled Listen to youth, which was premiered at the Lancashire Youth Film and Dance Festival in 2009

Alex is part of The Traipse.

Alex Rowland is based in Hereford and graduated from the Northern School of Contemporary Dance after completing a foundation BPA (hons) in contemporary dance and went on to complete a year’s postgraduate training performing with Verve postgraduate touring company.  Since graduating, Alex has worked with 2Faced Dance Company both as a performer and a teacher,  and with Champloo and Being Frank Physical Theatre. Alex has been Breakdancing (Bboying) for over ten years and continues to nurture his creative practice by exploring different dance styles and music.

Antony will be running Sea Swim’s ‘While You Were Out’ workshops.

Antony Dunn was born in London in 1973 and lives in Leeds.  He won the Newdigate Prize in 1995 and received an Eric Gregory Award in 2000.  He has published three collections of poems, Pilots and Navigators (Oxford University Press 1998), Flying Fish (Carcanet OxfordPoets 2002) and Bugs (Carcanet OxfordPoets 2009).  Antony is a regular tutor for The Poetry School and the Arvon Foundation.  He has worked on a number of translation projects with poets from Holland, Hungary, China and Israel, and was Poet in Residence at the University of York for 2006 and at the Ilkley Literature Festival in 2012.  he also writes for the theatre and his plays include Dog Blue, Goose Chase and Shepherds’ Delight.

www.antonydunn.org

Rob will be running Sea Swim’s Sounds of our Surroundings workshop.

Rob Mackay is a composer, sound artist and performer. He completed a degree in Geology and Music at the University of Keele, before going on to complete a Masters and PhD at the University of Wales, Bangor. He is currently lecturer in Creative Music Technology at the University of Hull Scarborough Campus and is the director of the ‘Sounds of Our Surroundings’ group (http://icpcluster.org/page/sounds-of-our-surroundings) bringing together artists and scientists who use sound in their work.

He has worked in a range of different genres, but focuses on electroacoustic composition and sound art. Recent projects have moved towards a more cross-disciplinary approach, including theatre, text in performance, audio/visual installation work, and human/computer interaction. Prizes and honours include: IMEB Bourges (1997 and 2001); EAR99 from Hungarian Radio (1999); Confluencias (2003); ‘Concours Luc Ferrari’ from La Muse en Circuit (2006). His work has received over 100 performances in 16 countries (including several performances on BBC Radio 3).

He has most recently been collaborating with percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie on the Ruskin Rocks project, led by a team of scientists and musicians at Leeds University who have created two new stone instruments (lithophones): www.leeds.ac.uk/ruskinrocks.

Rob has played, written and produced in a number of bands and ensembles, including the Welsh Hip-Hop collective ‘Tystion’ with whom he collaborated alongside John Cale on the film A Beautiful Mistake’, as well as recording two John Peel sessions on BBC Radio 1 and supporting PJ Harvey. More recently, he has done session work for Gowel Owen and Euros Childs, and is enjoying playing in the Welsh Afrobeat collective Drymbago.

6 CDs including his electroacoustic compositions are available, as well as over 10 popular music releases. More information and pieces at: www.myspace.com/robflute and http://www.digital-music-archives.com/.

Rachel will be taking up residence in the Sea Swim beach huts and running the Light and Line workshop.

Now specialising in architectural glass, Rachel originally trained in fine art (painting and printmaking), gradually gravitating towards glass through a lifetime fascination with all things transparent, translucent and reflective. In 2009 she completed a Masters Degree in Glass at the University of Sunderland, graduating with a Distinction. She undertakes public art projects as well as creating artwork for corporate, domestic and gallery environments. Recent commissions include creating glass panels for lifts in York Hospital and producing large wall panels for the boardroom of Saint Gobain Glass UK who also sponsored Rachel’s business development activity following her graduation. She also has extensive experience in arts project management, curatorial and informal art education.

Katie will be running some of the Sea Swim Minnows Workshops this summer.

Katie Braida is an artist working predominantly in clay, using hand-building techniques such as pinch-pots and coils to produce the forms, all of which are white, the clay producing the final colour.  Katie has many years experience teaching ceramics in both school and workshop settings.

Memory, physical experiencs and loss are currently important themes in her work and most recently, she has taken inspiration from an x-ray of her sister’s pelvis – throughout her childhood, Katie’s sister had many operations and some of Katie’s earliest memories are related to her sister being in hospital.

Recent experiments with print-making have added another dimension to Kate’s work, helping her to develop a language for exploring ideas linked to the experiences of both herself and others.

Paul’s exhibition of photographs at The Mercer Gallery, Harrogate, runs from 21 January – 5 June 2012.   We met the man behind the camera to find out more.

What do you do?

I was a van driver in London for about six years before moving to Yorkshire. When we moved north my partner persuaded me to develop my interest in photography and packed me off to college.

I think I am more of an intuitive photographer meaning that I rarely go to a project with a clear cut idea of how I am going to produce the work. I am usually groping around trying to find how best to make images work but my focus is always on the intricacies of ordinary life, using a mixture of portraiture and landscape that blend classical compositions with contemporary issues.

What gets you up in the morning?

Our cat usually! Work-wise, what I loved about driving a delivery van was meeting people. Each day you would dip into people’s lives; a quick chat or a joke, a bit of gossip and a week later you would get the next instalment. Now I have a job where I still have the joy of meeting people without the stress. Finding something that I love doing that allows me to communicate and be creative is what gets me up in the morning.

Tell us more about Different Strokes: Extraordinary Stories

I was invited to take part in ‘Extraordinary Moves’, a project looking at changing perceptions of disability, partly because I had won the 2009 National Portrait Gallery Photographic Prize with an image of a young disabled swimmer I had photographed. Jane Grant, a woman who had lost her leg in a motorcycle accident four or five years ago wrote to me to say how much the picture had meant to her and so the idea formed.  I decided to photograph a small number of disabled swimmers to explore what swimming meant in their lives.

The exhibition, part of the Extraordinary Moves programme, explores the stories of three women with disabilities, who are passionate swimmers. Different Strokes is at Mercer Art Gallery until 5 June and one of several imove projects that explore a love of swimming and how it can make us feel.

For opening times and further details go here .

If you like this, take a look at Sea Swim & Synchronised