Cockpit Arts Award 2022

In 2022, Needlemakers began an association with Cockpit Arts providing a bursary for a craftsperson.

Liveryman Martin Francis joined the interview panel to select the winner of the Needlemakers Award in November.

Martin reported on his day:

I walked up to their Bloomsbury studio site in Cockpit Yard from Liverpool Street. I arrived just before midday alongside a couple of the applicants. I think I was more nervous than the artists, as my needlework skills are limited to sewing buttons on shirt collars!

I met the rest of the panellists, Maxine Clark, Project Coordinator, David Crump, Head of Business Incubation and Hannah Refaat, an award winner in 2018, who is a textile designer and embroiderer based at Cockpit Arts. They all introduced themselves to me, explaining their history and roles within Cockpit. We then reviewed the four finalists before greeting the first candidate. Each candidate had sent in a detailed application form at the start of the process. This gave me the opportunity to look at some of their work before the day itself. All four candidates had creative and inspiring collections to present to us, and all the judges were certainly impressed. David asked us all to judge each candidate on seven criteria. I was a little worried about the responsibility, as all the candidates were good and deserving of support. I was pleasantly surprised that all four of us scored similarly on three of the candidates and after further discussion, it was felt that Archana Pathak would receive the award.

You can see some of Archana’s work on https://www.archanapathak.com , her Instagram page is @archanapathakartist . Archana has already accepted her award and her studio experience will begin in January. 

Cockpit are holding their “Winter Open Studios” events in Bloomsbury and Deptford, which are worth attending and open to the public, details here https://cockpitstudios.org/cockpit-winter-open-studios/ .