UKYA and the Young Creative Awards

Lamar Francois

UK Young Artists are committed to opening more of  doors for young artists and to ensure that more young people from the cities of Derby, Leicester, Lincoln and  Nottingham get a chance to show at and engage with our prestigious City Takeover’s and with UKYA.

As part of this commitment we will be working with Young Creative Awards Nottingham providing a showcase  for previous award winners as part of UKYA City Takeover: Nottingham 19.  We are delighted to announce the Jamal Sherrett, Isobelle Farrar, Anushka Shah and Lamar Francois have been selected. Each of the artists represents the spirit of the city and we are sure they all have an amazing creative career ahead of them.

UKYA are also offering a prize for  Nottingham's Young Creative Awards 2019 and entries are now open. The Young Creative Awards are open to anyone aged 13 - 24 who lives, works or studies in Nottingham.  Go to www.youngcreativeawards.org to find out more.

Categories include: Digital and Animation, Design and Architecture, Creative Writing, Dance, Fashion and Textiles, Film, Graphic Design, Music, Photography, Theatre and Visual Arts.  

You can win cash prizes and industry experience!

Isobel Farrar

Isobelle Farrar is an illustrator who won the Nottingham young creative awards 2017 with her set of detailed fineliner illustrated typography letters that spell out “Nottingham.” She specialises in detailed fineliner drawings and has drawn inspiration from the city of Nottingham and her love of nature. She uses various mark-making in her work and mostly works in monochrome.

Lamar Francois

Lamar Francois has been fortunate to have been discovering new ways and sights of the world around him as a photographer for a decade. Having a background working in science alongside gaining a Mathematical Physics degree means that Lamar appreciates photography as both an art and a science. This began as an outlet of creative expression and a means to help develop his confidence, and eventually has gained recognition through the Nottingham Young Creative Awards.

Jamal Sterrett

Jamal is a self taught dancer from a small area of Nottingham called St Ann’s. Typically labeled as an area of hard work, low pay and high crime rates St Ann’s is actually a place of highly talented people that resides within the heart of its community. Flexing forever is a dance piece that aims to transmute the stories of the people in my community to then exude this energy through my body in the form of dance. Using the raw theatrical nature of flex dance and the storytelling of stop motion this piece will take you on a journey of uplifting feelings.

Anushka Shah

Anushka has won Nottingham Young Creative Writer of the Year in her age category four times and has been Highly Commended once. Her poem ‘Simply Pointless’ won her the title in 2017 and was written for the theme ‘Nottingham Future City’. Through it, Anushka explores how seeming negativity can easily be spun into a more positive reality. Perspective is what counts, as reading it from top to bottom seems to show a rather pessimistic attitude but upon following the instruction to ‘now read bottom to top’, a completely contrasting viewpoint is presented. Showing this poem to people always seems to bring smiles to their faces when they realise all is not as glum as it originally seems, and that, for Anushka, is what makes this all worth it.