This year, Redeye teamed up with CVAN NW’s Critical Writing Programme to sponsor one bursary place for a writer that will write solely on photography. That applicant is Katrina Houghton, an emerging artist and reporter from Greater Manchester.

About Katrina:

Since graduating in Fine Art from Sheffield Hallam University, she has been working as a freelance arts journalist with creative venues, festivals and galleries across the North West and Yorkshire, whilst exploring her own practice that seeks to investigate her half British/Maltese cultural identity through performance, film and photography. 

Recently she has worked as a video journalist for Redeye Photography Network at the National Photography Symposium in Birmingham and most notably as a Digital Reporter for Cornerhouse and HOME. Usually carrying a pen, camera and microphone she works to capture live audience reaction at exhibitions, writing reviews and photographing candid rehearsal moments of new theatre such as ANU Productions ‘Angel Meadow’ and Walter Meierjohann’s ‘Romeo & Juliet’.

Katrina applied for the programme as she felt it would help nurture her abilities, teach some new skills and set her ‘firmly on the artistic career path’ she ‘longs to follow’.

Katrina writes: 
What is particularly exciting about the programme is its aim to use our writing to engage a wider audience and network of artists in and around the North West, whilst offering the opportunity to develop my writing on a professional platform.  With our creative landscape ever-changing and moving towards the virtual I believe photography is one of the most important arts of our time and I endeavour to capture the essence of this in my writing and shine the spotlight on photographers in our region.

Emma Fry of CVAN NW added: 
Katrina is one of 25 emerging to mid-career writers chosen to participate in a regional Critical Writing programme initiated by Contemporary Visual Arts Network North West (CVAN NW). The programme offers participants a £300 bursary award, attendance at six critical writing workshops plus specialist mentoring and editorial feedback. Designed to increase the quantity and quality of critical writing for the visual arts in the North West, the programme is delivered in partnership with Manchester Metropolitan University, University of Central Lancashire and four of the region’s leading critical writing platforms - The Double Negative, Creative Tourist, Art in Liverpool, and Culture on a Shoestring.

The programme forms part of a two-year Arts Council funded project that invests in a number of development opportunities for artists, arts organisations and art professionals in the region, build audiences, and increase connectivity across the North West visual arts sector.

Keep a look out for Katrina's writing on photography that will be added to the Redeye website as the course develops.