Members of Collective Nonsense have a broad range of skills and experience and include visual and performance artists, producers, designers, puppeteers, circus performers, costume designers, DJ’s, carpenters and sound engineers. Collectively they have a strong track record of facilitating innovative high quality arts events.
Vik Quickly
Vik Quickly has 20+ years experience in performance art & public events. She has been a founding member of Bedlam Boudoir, up-cyclers extraordinaire & Collective Nonsense Network, international artist directory. She studied Design as her major at The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.
Ms. Quickly is based in Dumfries & Galloway, she is an artist covering many mediums & genres. Her skill base is broad & varied. Sculpture, costume, set, props & design are all in her repertoire, mixing things up & experimenting. She works individually & with a variety of artists from all over Britain producing public art & interactive events.
Working for over 20 years, within the local community, she has facilitated & directed many different workshops & events for groups of all ages & skill levels, as well as undertaking private commissions. Drawing on the past for inspiration, Vikki uses natural elements & recycling in her work. She is a founding member of Zero Waste Space CIC based in Dumfries.
https://vikquickly.wordpress.com/
https://www.facebook.com/vik.quickly.artist/
Jo Hodges
Jo Hodges is a multidisciplinary public artist with a background in community development and social justice.
Jo’s work investigates ecological and socio-cultural systems and relationships, and explores new strategies for engaging audiences. Her practice includes temporary and permanent works, site specific installations and socially engaged projects and processes. She is a Director of Sanctuary Lab, a public art laboratory in the Galloway Forest Dark Skies Park.
Jo has been involved with CN from its inception and has worked on project development, design and production. She has filled dance floors spinning funky tunes under the name DJ Love and has enjoyed all the fun, play, exuberance and irreverence of working with the collective.
As an artist she has a shared practice with Robbie Coleman: www.colemanhodges.com
Kerry Jones
Kerry Jones is a Scottish Borders-based multimedia artist, DJ, curator, project manager and educator whose practice encompasses film, sound, archive, manipulated still images and site-specific interactions. Jones’s short experimental films are phonetic, cut and paste digital works that question communication and linear realities. She has worked for Alchemy Film & Arts, Scotland in various capacities since 2014, being part of the programming team since 2015 and most recently Festival Producer for the 2019 edition. Jones is co-founder and curator for Films For Change, hosting an ongoing series of climate and social justice themed screenings and discussions in the Scottish Borders. Her experience of working in the community spans 20 years and includes junk art projects in schools and inter-generational settings. As Creative Director of Ruffled Feathers she facilitated a number of regenerational projects such as Selkirk’s Pop up Community Museum and ‘Windows to the Future’ in Galashiels. Kerry has a passion for creative investigation, experimentation and community engagement and is an active member of The Moving Image Makers Collective and Collective Nonsense.
Robbie Coleman
Robbie Coleman is a public artist with a background in sculpture and live art. He project manages large-scale public arts projects and is Co-Director of the D-LUX light festival, co-curator of The Environmental Arts Festival Scotland and Director of Sanctuary Lab, a Public Art Laboratory in the Galloway Forest Dark Skies Park.
Robbie designed and built the solar powered dance floor for SuperNature
He has a shared practice with Jo Hodges : www.colemanhodges.com
Alison Roberts
Alison is one of the founding members of Collective Nonsense, she has played an active role in both the creative and administrative aspects of the organisation.
Alison is a skilled costume designer and maker and a core member of Bedlam Boudoir, upcycling clothes, and designing and making one off creations.
Alison also spent five years working within a travelling physical theatre group making costume and organising make up and wardrobe.
Alison lives with her partner and cats on an off grid smallholding in SW Scotland.
Brett Self
Brett is one of CN’s fix it up chappies! He is highly skilled at doing the big stuff (putting tents up, building sets etc) and seeing jobs and getting on with them.
He is an extremely talented maker of small and beautiful things working in a variety of mediums that are mostly found.
Brett lives with his partner and cats on an off grid smallholding in SW Scotland.
Elaine Dempsey
Elaine Dempsey has over 20 years of experience working in community arts and coordinating large and small scale arts events. Whether, drama, music, installation or discussion based, Elaine’s interests lie in exploring different ways of encouraging attendees to comfortably participate in events rather than to passively observe.
She wears an eye patch and only has one nostril.
Lee Norman
Lee worked in arts administration at a leading London drama school and for the Arts Council before spending 22 years working as a childbirth educator and activist, sitting on her local Health Board’s Maternity Services Liaison Committee and advocating at a political level for improved maternity services. She has devised and run training courses for other educators whilst running birth preparation workshops, yoga for pregnancy and post natal exercise groups and support groups both independently and through the Pregnancy and Parents Centre, Edinburgh where she was a Director for many years. Lee has also worked as a midwife both independently and for the NHS.
Lee is highly skilled as a group facilitator and latterly has transferred those skills to work within Collective Nonsense and other arts projects such as “Changing Room” – a public, creative exploration of women’s experiences of the menopause.
Lee’s current focus is a forest garden project. She has an administrative role in Collective Nonsense where she has been an active member for approximately 10 years; hosting at CN’s venues and events and being a “general dogsbody”! She would love to just be a dog.
Chas Heath
Chas is a carpenter by trade and actively interested in design and creativity inspired by other materials and perspectives.
His business, ArborAntics (a partnership with Sandy Greene) uses traditional and contemporary carpentry to create unique structures. Arborantics, is a traditional craft based company which aims to improve and promote our relationship with the environment using traditional craft techniques in a fun, informative and creative way. The business offers Art and Craft Workshops, Interactive Carpentry, Living Willow, Timber Framing, Log Building, Courses and accepts Commissions. ArborAntics is involved with projects and events from community initiatives to national organisations. At festivals, ArborAntics often provides a curiosity games room space for all ages (marquee and sounds optional).
Music plays a large part in Chas’s life as does travel, multi-culture, community spirit and resourcefulness.
Tel. 07789 200587. www.arborantics.co.uk
Harry Butler
Harry is a founding member of Bedlam Boudoir, upcyclers extraordinaire, and it‘s transmogrified incarnation Collective Nonsense, with all the walkabout, staged and immersive performance art involved.
Harry is currently a director of her family’s business importing and wholesaling recycled glassware, and working as an IT programme / project manager.
Harry has been a member of the core Collective Nonsense team producing the “Gay Paris” space at The Beatherder Festival for the last 7 years.
Sandy Greene
Sandy has worked within the community education sector for the last 25 years. Her work involves promoting environmental sustainability and ways to celebrate the individual whilst promoting community.
Her latest project is ScrapAntics, Dundee’s Scrapstore (opened Jan 2016) which aims to bring people together through community engagement, creation and celebration using resources that are affordable due to being excess and otherwise waste from local industry and retail. ScrapAntics is a community led social enterprise with recycling, education and people health at its core. From a shop full of resources to design and create with (all diverted from landfill through local businesses) to music events. From women’s groups to school curriculum services. From summer camps to employment creation.
Sandy has been part of the CN creative community for many years, bringing a friendly face and a load of ridiculous dance moves. She loves camping out on her own, meeting friends, travelling afar and growing veg. She is an avid walker and cyclist, book reader and crocheter.
scrapantics.co.uk : ScrapAntics@gmail.com
Jo Tatam
Jo has been part of various CN adventures over the years, from bar work to walkabout, and her experiences there have informed her outlook, giving her a strong belief in the possibilities of anarchy and the crucial nature of creativity for survival. In her other life she is a freelance dramatherapist and also has three interlocking roles; teaching drama in a women’s prison, a role play actor and facilitator training medical students in communication skills, and working therapeutically with traumatised young people in residential care.
Gail Power
Gail Power BA (Hons) Design, is a consummate up cycler creating stylish, unique, tailored garments for her brand Gail Power Art Design. A graduate of Glasgow School of Art, Gail has developed her working style and methodology throughout her career working in theatre and television for both costume and props departments.
Gail’s work is a direct response to the waste inherent in our disposable society and with a deeply held belief that we need to shake up our relationship with consumption, Gail hopes her work can demonstrate that reuse, repair and creative repurpose can offer sustainable, and stylish, solutions to our mounting levels of waste and pollution.
A love for live performance has led to collaborative projects with CN, where Gail has enjoyed creating costumes, props and installations. She has also been known to grab a costume for a bit of performance too.
Gail divides her time between working on upcycling projects in fabrics and found objects and facilitating upcycling workshops in community settings across Glasgow.
Phil Daube
Phil is a self employed woodworker from Germany and has lived in Scotland for 20 years. He has worked with CN on a regular basis since 2007 and is part of the technical crew who help transport and install CN’s ever changing installations as well as supporting the fab outdoor dance floor and stretch tent hire. He has been spotted in the past as Timmy the tiger trainer, a disco mole and has been seen on a unicycle.
#phildaubewoodwork on Instagram
Nicola Pogson
Nicola Pogson is an artist and performance artist AKA Pogstar. She studied Hair Design, Graphic design, Art & Design, and Environmental Art. She lives in an off grid community alongside her partner Michael Cheesbrough and their home educated son Jago. They have both travelled extensively and have 20 years experience in public events and festivals and between them. In the last 10 years they have brought various skills to CN ranging from prop design and build, carpentry. welding, rigging, aerial bartending, backdrops, sculpture, costumes, walkabout, hair cutting and electric solar installation. Upcycling, recycling and action art are at the heart of their work. They have their own family Business, The Pirates Pantechnicon Travelling Stage show…. stage, mobile bar, LED lighting, P.A , pop up barbers, Aerial bartending.
Cate Ross
Cate Ross is a multi-discipline artist; she’s a master printmaker, art education and creative action research specialist, physical theatre and dance trapeze professional, costume maker and community arts activist since 1995. Her portfolio includes a range of physical performances, applied collaborative creative practices in the community, 3D installations, public art works and 2D visual art forms.
Cate graduated from the Edinburgh College of Art with a BA (Hons) Applied Art (Illustration) Degree in 1995, then gained a Post Graduate Certificate in Community Education (Moray House Institute of Education, 2000). She went on to win a 3-year Teaching Assistantship and Graduate position in Fine Art Printmaking in The Franklin School of Arts and Sciences – Lamar Dodd School of Art at The University of Georgia, USA graduating with a Master of Fine Art (MFA) Degree in 2004.
Cate is a founding member of Collective Nonsense, helping to shape the social benefit orientation of the group and lending her costume art, textiles and installation skills with integral performance buffoonery to CN projects. She has been Igor the Lithe a wonky Russian circus ringmaster, Madame Bibelot (incognito), Penny Pop-On the burlesque acrobat, and the fabulous moustachioed Sabrina.
www.cateross.weebly.com www.aethaerialarts.com
Hanna Casement
DJ and Disco Diva – Hanna specialised in costumes and stage design when doing her drama degree at Goldsmiths. She went on to spend several years creating costumes and performing with the Firenoise circus group which was based in Oxford. After moving to Scotland she diverted her creative energy into putting on themed fancy dress events in her local area providing much needed entertainment to the local rural community. Out of this developed her role as a DJ with a creative flair for costumes and performance as she plays, taking on the flamboyant persona of Shakti Mama Disco Diva.
Hanna has taught yoga for the last 22 years. She also teaches hula hooping tricks and hoop dance classes which she brings to communities around the region as well as teaching at festivals such as Glastonbury and Eden. In her spare time she practices aerial arts.
Kyna Ray
Kyna graduated from Glasgow School of Art in 2017 with a 2.1 in Communication Design. Creatively she works with one of the oldest photographic processes called wet plate collodion and her practice combines photography, sculpture and connection/collaboration. She exhibited with Spring Fling in 2018.
Kyna has continued her personal and professional development, attending courses such as ‘Training for Transformation’ and first aid certification. She has recently completed a year working as an artist curator with Blueprint100 at The Stove Network in Dumfries.
Currently she is developing a cycle powered community photography project, ‘Speeding Backwards’ and is focusing her time and energy on an all woman’s hut build with a community of feminist creative’s. She brings a strong set of arms and enthusiasm!
https://kyna-hodges.com
Jack Roberts-Self
Jack can build you pretty much anything (and make it safe) with a long track record of events and build work. He’s been an integral part of the construction of many a stage. As well as being a climbing monkey man, he also drives plant machinery, he’s a capable problem solver and hard grafter. Jack has also worked in live theatre as a rigger and counterbalance. He lives with his partner in their van and he’s always been a part of CN.
Clare Gough
Clare has a media studies degree and is passionate about sustainability and gardening especially along permaculture principles. She is a womble at heart and loves reusing and revamping rubbish and old junk.
Clare home educated many moons ago and maintains a love of inclusivity of all ages in a creative process. She can generally be found in the kitchen, as a happy dinner lady, serving nourishing delights in a homely environment to aid the busy team.
A general dogsbody, always happy to be told what to do by our artistic geniuses, she’s willing to be winched into any creative monstrosity and is a dab hand at applying false eyelashes and has always loved being part of such a bonkers and creative team.
Fern Griffiths-Cole
Fern is fairly new to Collective Nonsense, but has a long record of festival, events and arts work. Fern’s done it all, from build and break to immersive performance, prop and set making to climbing about on scaffolding with a drill. Fern’s a good visualiser, she can draw, design and make it. Fern lives with her partner in their van.
Susannah Pallinder
Susanna’s main role with CN is logistics and stage management However, a spark of joy comes when she inhabits a character, preferably an offensive older ex military, a princess of the realm, a Victorian era fairground barker, a know it all bunny, or an irate pensioner with attitude.
Neil McLachlan
Ray is often the life and soul of the party, with his charismatic and infectious personality. He’s been a CN stalwart since the beginning, working on set up, 12v power and logistics.
He is as comfortable front of house as he is behind the scenes.
Outside of Creative Nonsense, Ray often works with Greenpeace and is personally committed to low carbon living. He likes a good game of backgammon.
Macky McCormack
Macky has lived and breathed events for over 15 years, involved in music, venues, structures, logistics and catering. Also a computer wizz, Macky can turn his hand to most tasks practical, technical and I.T. based. Other experience includes carpentry, electrical and general building work. With travelling and festivals in his blood, this guy thrives in a field; in fact, there’s nowhere else he’d rather be. Macky’s dream is to bring more festival and event time into his life, and introduce his son to this unique and liberating area of life.
makimakmusic.com
https://www.facebook.com/makimak.music
Cass Cassidy
Cass is a hard working perfectionist with a wide range of skills.
He is an experienced climber and arborist, a mechanic with an extraordinary gift of being able to fix almost anything, an experienced rigger and marquee erector and great at tessellating lorries and trailers.
He is a drummer in a punk band, a DJ for over 20 years and a regular judge in a “Stars in their eyes” talent show.
He brings a mighty force of stamina and fortitude to the team.
Abi Mordin
Abi is one of the original CN DJs, going by the name of Random Selecta and bringing an eclectic mix to the dancefloor. When not behind the decks she’s often in front of the speakers.
She’s a general mucker in-er, getting involved with site bulid, décor and character parts. Moving Things From One Place To Another is under ‘Special Skills’ on her CV
Outside of CN shenanigans, Abi is a passionate sustainable food systems activist. She’s an experienced vegetable grower, campaigner and food policy thinker.
Glasgow Community Food Network: www.glasgowfood.net
Propagate; Rethinking local food www.propagate.org.uk
Peppy Tropicana
DJ and costumier – Peppy Tropicana’s love of deep chunky bass, soulful female vocals and highly addictive beats influences all DJ sets, whether she is playing disco, reggae, global beats or classic hits. Also partial to a fancy hat, shiny lycra, long lasting nylon garments and animal prints.
By day Peppy works in programme management and funding for humanitarian aid organsations, by night she delights in bringing the best sounds and sights from her travels to your dancefloor.
Emma Shrub
Emma is a DJ more commonly known as Spunky Junk and is a founder member of Leeds based club night Riff Raff, which in February 2020 celebrated its 20th anniversary. With over two decades worth of experience she has performed at clubs and festivals around the UK and also internationally, including Burning Man in the Nevada Desert. Emma has been involved with a variety of Collective Nonsense projects over the years and more recently she has become an active member of Bump City who host a music area within the Beatherder festival. Residing in Bridlington on the East Coast, she also creates multi-media collages with found objects and materials inspired by subcultures and alternative lifestyles….making what you could call spunky stuff out of junk!
Collective Nonsense 