Cove Park, situated on the west coast of Scotland, is dedicated to artistic excellence and the professional development of individuals and groups working within the arts and creative industries. Its residency programme offers artists and producers the time, space and freedom to contemplate and create in its unique surroundings.

Exchange of ideas and inspiration is at the heart of the Cove Park experience. In 2011, Cove Park made changes to its creative shape and programmed an intensive 16-week period of subsidised residencies through its summer calendar. As part of a move to expand upon the new artistic riches this programming approach opened up, we supported six new Creative Catalyst residencies.

Creative Catalysts were offered to people of distinction from the arts, science, other professions or more generally from public life who came to Cove Park on residencies lasting one or two weeks each. The Catalysts were selected on the basis of a particular experience and the dimension that each would bring to the other residents, a group who made up a community of creative people from across the arts to invigorate and expand the possibilities of such exchanges.

The Creative Catalysts included:

Xiaolou Guo
Film maker Xiaolu Guo is an exciting and original writer. Having long been based in London and, more recently, Paris, she has an interesting approach towards explaining her native country, which she does without resorting to easy nostalgia or condescension. Her first three books were to some extent rooted in her experience. A native of a fishing village in south China, she made the expected journey to the big city, Beijing, and writes brilliantly on this theme of transition.

Maria Fusco
Maria is a Belfast-born writer, editor and academic. She writes for a broad range of international magazines and publications and is Director of Art Writing at Goldsmiths, University of London. She is the founder/editor of The Happy Hypocrite, a journal for and about experimental art writing. Maria was the inaugural Critic-in-Residence at Kadist Art Foundation, Paris (2008-9) and the inaugural Writer-in-Residence at Whitechapel Gallery, London (2009-10).

Jan Verwoert
Art historian and critic Jan Verwoert lives in Berlin, he is a contributing editor of Frieze magazine and he writes, among others, for Afterall and Metropolis M. He teaches at the Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam and at the Royal College of Art in London.

Roanne Dods.
Former Director of the Jerwood Charitable Foundation, Roanne has also founded, with co-directors, three organisations in the last five years; I:C Innovative Craft in Scotland, RoseOrange, Mission, Models, Money and The Work Room.  As well as taking roles on several key Boards, including Chair of BAC, board member of the Young Vic, Sistema Scotland, I:C, International Futures Forum and Vice Chair of Scottish Ballet.

Al Kennedy
Scottish writer of novels, short stories and non-fiction, she is known for a characteristically dark tone, a blending of realism and fantasy, and for her serious approach to her work. She occasionally contributes columns and reviews to UK and European newspapers including the fictional diary of her pet parrot named Charlie.

Hannah Rudman
Rudman Consulting Ltd is a consultancy practice specialising in strategic digital development for 21st century sustainability. 21st century sustainability is all about strategising for change, so Rudman Consulting helps organisations plan and manage change through implementing ICTs, e-business, mobile and digital developments.

Professor Anne Glover

Anne is Chief Scientific Adviser for Scotland, her role being to further enhance Scotland’s reputation as a science nation. Professor Glover holds a Personal Chair of Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of Aberdeen, and has honorary positions at the Rowett and Macaulay Institutes. She is an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, a member of the Natural Environment Research Council, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology. Most of her academic career has been spent at the University of Aberdeen.

Jessica Hemmings

Jessica writes essays, articles and exhibition reviews about textiles. She gradutaed with a BFA (Honours) in Textile Design from Rhode Island School of Design in 1999. She also holds an MA (Distinction) in Comparative Literature (Africa/Asia) from the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (2000). Her PhD, awarded by the University of Edinburgh in 2006, is published by kalliope paperbacks under the title Yvonne Vera: The Voice of Cloth (2008).

Jo Shapcott

Jo is a poet, editor and lecturer who has won the National Poetry Competition twice (1985 and 1991). Her Book Poems 1988-1998 (2000; reprinted 2006) consists of poetry from her three earlier collections Electroplating the Baby (1988 Commonwealth Poetry Prize for Best First Collection), Phrase Book (1992), and My Life Asleep (1998 Forward Poetry Prize Best Collection). With Matthew Sweeney she edited Emergency Kit: Poems for Strange Times (1996), an international anthology of contemporary poetry in English.

Richard Baxstrom

Richard is a Lecturer in Social Anthropology with an affiliation with Film Studies at the University of Edinburgh. He is the author of Houses in Motion: The Experience of Place and the Problem of Belief in Urban Malaysia (Stanford University Press 2008). With Todd Meyers, he is also the co-editor of Anthropologies (Creative Capitalism 2008), a volume devoted to the outcomes of the convergences existing between art and anthropology. A member of the Baltimore-based art collective Creative Capitalism since its founding in 2005, Baxstrom has participated in gallery shows in the USA, the Netherlands, and Malaysia, has worked in a variety of capacities in several films directed by independent filmmaker Rania Ajami, and has published in a number of journals and periodicals, including Esse: arts + opinions, Parachute: revue d’art contemporain, Rue Descartes, and Off the Edge. 

Frances Priest

Frances has a long held interest in clay, it’s associated craft processes and the objects that emerge from using it to make things by hand. The resulting work can reach toward drawing, printmaking, installation, participation, collaboration, design and architectural additions or interventions. Beyond the studio she works on educational and participatory projects in a variety of contexts, enjoying the opportunity to respond to new places and people in relation to her own practice.

Xiaolu Guo

Xiaolu studied at Beijing Film Academy and later in the UK’s National Film and TV School. After she received MA in Art, she’s worked as a filmmaker, poet and novelist. In 2009 she founded Metaphysical Cinema Syndicate in London, producing guerrilla style films to promote a free cinema beyond narrative conventions. Feature films and documentaires include UFO in Her Eyes (2011), She, A Chinese (2009  Locarno Golden Leopard Award), Once Upon a Time in Proletarian (Venice & Toronto official selection 2009) and The Concrete Revolution (1st Prize at International Human Rights Film Festival Paris 2005). Her several novels are being translated into 23 languages, and sahe has been nominated for Orange Prize for Fiction and International Dublin Impac Literary Award.

Maria Fusco

Maria writes fiction and critical and theoretical texts. She edits publications and contributes to a broad range of international visual culture magazines, books and catalogues. The Mechanical Copula, her first collection of short stories, has recently been published, and she is the founder/editor of The Happy Hypocrite a semi-annual journal for and about experimental art writing. In 2009-10, Fusco was the inaugural Writer in Residence at Whitechapel Gallery in London, and in 2008-9, the inaugural Critic in Residence at The Kadist Art Foundation in Paris. She is currently Director of Art Writing at Goldsmiths, University of London.

www.covepark.org