Author, curator and cultural strategist Mark Waugh has more than 30 years’ experience in the support and development of public and commercial infrastructures for curators and artists in the UK. He co-founded the International Curators Forum in 2006 with David A. Bailey, and Art360 Foundation in 2014 with Gilane Tawadros. Previous roles include; Director of Business Development at Design and Artists Copyright Society (DACS), International Commissioner for emerging Artfairs, Head of Visual Arts, South East Arts Council England and many more. He is also the author of the novels, Bubble Entendre and Come. Waugh Office is the hybrid platform he directs with Julia Waugh working with artists and artist estates. Mark grew up in Cornwall and plans to return to make his home there again in the near future.

Stella Douglass is an art historian working at the intersection of art and archiving. An alumna of the University of Arizona and The Courtauld Institute of Art, her research explores the performance of identity, ranging from feminist monstrosity to the use of queer terminology in museum databases. Drawing on experience from The National Archives and the Horniman Museum, she is dedicated to enabling public engagement to ensure underrepresented histories remain visible. Stella has undertaken two Matthew Lanyon Archive Residencies between 2024 and 2025, and continues to work with the Archive. She will attend University College London in Autumn 2026 to pursue an MA in Records and Archive Management.

Amy-May Brand currently works in AI development. She studied Art History at the Courtauld Institute of Art, where she investigated the intersections of ecology, gender, and identity in contemporary photography and painting. Alongside her studies she co-directed the East Wing Biennial contemporary art exhibition, acted as Print Editor for the student-run arts & culture publication, The Courtauldian, and founded Society Exhibition Nouveau, a student society for networking in London's contemporary art world. Amy undertook a ML Archive Residency in 2024 and has continued to work closely with the Archive; she has enjoyed researching, and cataloguing Matthew Lanyon’s photography and photocollage. Amy will return to the Courtauld in September 2026 to pursue an MA in Art History, specialising in Ecology in American Art from 1950 to the present.

Simon is a founding member and Excavations Director of the Early Mines Research Group, and has worked on excavations and geo-archaeological research at sites in the UK and around the world. He undertook research and dating on the antler pick, found during 18thc mining in the Carnon Valley in Cornwall, establishing it as the earliest Bronze Age tin mining tool of its kind found in Europe. Retired from the Archaeological Unit at Cambridge University he now edits an archaeological journal, writes and continues to work on fieldwork projects, principally in Wales. He has published several books and articles. Simon studied Geology at Leicester University, as did Matthew, but they did not meet until around 2014 in Cornwall. His talk on Friday July 3rd will appeal to anyone interested in the subject of early mining and Cornish history and will be a rare treat and it’s free. It will include an outdoor tin smelting demonstration.

Duncan is Head of Art at Falmouth University and was awarded the John Ruskin Prize in 2026 for his artwork Stratigraphy. Originally from Norfolk, Duncan recently led the collaborative Basket Shark Project in Falmouth, highlighting the dangers of plastic pollution in marine environments. He graduated from University of the West of England in 1993 and has worked as an artist, lecturer and in theatre prop design. He continues to dive and find natural history specimens to use in his work. He is interested in creating opportunities through art for voices to be heard and conversations to be had. He has five children and now lives in Cornwall but his work responds to many landscapes.

Zelda Cahill-Patten works in publishing, but her background is in medieval literature and art history, with degrees from Oxford and the Courtauld. She has held roles at institutions like the Swedenborg Society and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection. Zelda took part in the first Matthew Lanyon Archival Residency in 2024, where her primary focus was cataloguing Matthew’s poetry and researching Annunciation themes in his work. She has been closely involved with the Festival’s poetry programme and is one of this year’s judges for the Matthew Lanyon Poetry Prize. Her own poetry is widely published. 

Barbara Santi is an award winning documentary filmmaker/producer using film and digital media for positive social change. Her first professional job was at Working Title Films (1994 - 1997). She moved to West Cornwall in 1997 to pursue her filmmaking career. In 2006 she set up awen productions CIC with two other filmmakers and in 2025 Folklife Films, a new platform for showcasing their cinematic documentaries.  At the heart of her work is to raise underrepresented people’s voices through film. She has also produced films for the private, public and educational sectors and commissions include Museum of Cornish Life, Arts for Health Cornwall & IOS, Cornwall Neighbourhoods for Change, English Heritage,and The British Council. In 2020, she was one of 10 female entrepreneurs in the UK selected to take part in Creative England's Female Founders Scale Up programme. Her interest in collaborative film, and creative storytelling developed into a PhD, completed in 2023. Recent films include King for a Day; No Holds Barred, The Life and Art of Matthew Lanyon; and Gentle Angry Women (2025) which has been screened widely at cinemas in the UK.

Sampada Ladke is a London-based creative practitioner working at the intersection of art, space, and curation. She holds a degree in Architecture, certification in UI/UX design and an MA in Curation of Contemporary Art and Cultural Management from the University of Exeter. She has undertaken two Residencies with the Matthew Lanyon Archive since 2024, contributing to digital documentation, including developing a material-based timeline across the artist’s works. She has also interned with the Sharjah Art Foundation, where she was part of March Meeting 2024. Sampada brings a multidisciplinary perspective to archival and curatorial practices. Her practice focuses on creating and engaging with creative spaces shaped by memory and experience.

Eleanor is studying for her Masters in Library and Archive Studies at the University of Manchester. She is passionate about archives, and the preservation of localised arts and culture. In her residency with the Matthew Lanyon Archive in October 2025, Eleanor focussed on cataloguing and digitisation of pieces and materials from the collection. The experience of working with Judith has significantly influenced her professional practice and will continue to inform Eleanor’s dedication to care-centred archival work from her new home in The Netherlands.

Luke is a writer and publisher from Cornwall; he is founding Co-editor of the award-winning poetry publisher Guillemot Press. His own books include Doma-Doma Blum- Blum Conversations with Other Animals (Ortac 2024); Treasures of Cornwall (2023) and Singing about Melom (2020).  Luke is also Course Director for the MA in Professional Writing at Falmouth University. Luke will be presenting the inaugural Matthew Lanyon Poetry Prize on behalf of the judges.

Ellie Porter is Head of Archives and Estates at A/POLITICAL. She was previously Head of Programme at Art360 Foundation which supported artists and their families with the creation of archives. Ellie has also managed Gifts and Bequests at Art Fund, transferring private art collections to public museums including works by Matthew Lanyon. Ellie worked with the Matthew Lanyon Archive between 2021 - 2024, developing a legacy strategy, generating new visibility for the documentary film No Holds Barred and launching an ongoing archive residency programme in Penzance.

Emily Roberts is a contemporary figurative artist. Trained in traditional oil painting in Italy, where she also taught painting and drawing, she now works across painting and sculpture with drawing and materiality central to her practice.  Her ongoing project, No Mans Land, explores an imagined world on the banks of the mythical river Styx, where souls wait in dilapidated towns to cross bodies of water and wind turbines stand sentry, guardian angels transitioning power, an echo of the old church spires. Hidden spaces and those who get lost in them are represented in myriad materials- classical myth peeks from the edges of the A30. Emily teaches Fine Art and Ceramics across Cornwall. She is Senior Technician for Life Drawing and Painting at Falmouth University. She has worked with clay, mud, foraged pigment, botanical inks, pressed flower petals, waste metal, seaweed, stone, bronze and oil paint, letting the subject matter work in dialogue with the material that forms it; a constant experiment in how best to make the internal, external. Her experiments feed her teaching and this dialogue with students and colleagues in turn feeds her research.  Emily has taught in studios in Antwerp, Basel, Florence, Firle, London and across Cornwall. She has a long standing relationship with both St Ives School of Painting and Higher Spargo School of Art as a workshop facilitator. Her work is held in private collections across Europe, India and North America.

Andrew Whittle is a Cornwall-based artist and community practitioner working across environmental art, ecology, mythology, and public engagement. His work focuses on transforming marine waste and discarded materials into large-scale sculptural pieces that reconnect people to landscape, folklore, and collective environmental action. Rooted in ideas of animism and the living spirit of place, Andrew’s practice explores how myth can be used as a contemporary tool to navigate climate anxiety, ecological loss, and humanity’s relationship with the natural world. Working with Beach Guardian since 2022, Andrew has helped expand the organisation’s creative outreach nationally through workshops, sculpture, land-based projects, and environmental education. His practice combines mythology, ecology, regenerative land work, and participatory making as tools for connection and environmental stewardship. His work has been exhibited at Kew gardens and he regularly installs at Glastonbury festival.