Hull has a radical history of creative resilience and collective labour.

Join me in conversation with Stewart Baxter as we dive into the issue of access.

Stewart is a self-taught musician, visual artist, and the Creative Director of Hinterland Creative, a Hull-rooted art and creative direction studio. Rooted in the UK's DIY punk scene and widely known as the drummer for the critically acclaimed band LIFE, Stewart has spent over two decades championing grassroots culture. Through Hinterland, he merges national-level music, film, and design campaigns with a fierce commitment to mentoring emerging working-class talent in the city.

Across the North, support groups and collectives are reclaiming access to creative practice and fostering safe spaces for people to explore their own creativity in relation to the world around them amid the chaos of the modern working world.

Join me in conversation with Flock Foto, a female and non-binary photography collective that are quietly reshaping what it means to practice photography - dismantling hierarchies, gendered assumptions, and barriers to access.. Flock have created a space where women and non-binary people can create without competition, move at their own pace and celebrate the possibilities of their own creativity.

Find out more about Flock here, maybe attend one of their workshops, and immerse yourself in a community where individual brilliance need not come at the expense of collective success.

Across the month of August, musical messiahs, Ozzy Moysley and Fergus Quill took over the basement of Hyde Park Book Club with their Jazz for Adults ensembles, raising money for Leeds Assylum Seekers Support Network.

Cosey Fanni Tutti took the world by storm with her wildly controversial artworks, music production, and experimental theatre performances alongside her collective, COUM Transmissions. Tutti broke boundaries, defied stereotypes, and injected the art industry with anarchy and liberation. Working in the sex industry, corporations, domestic spaces, her labour and her body were central to her practice. An icon and pioneer of modern feminist art. And it all began in Hull.

Out of 80 educational institutions across the country that offer an art-history A-Level, only two are located in the north. Only one of them a state school.

This disparity reflects how much art education is undervalued in northern communities. A domino-effect from institution, to teachers, to students, to communities, who are made to believe art is not a serious subject.

Access: Art Education looks at this horrifying figure to try and understand the true effects this has on our young creatives. Fear not, it also features a conversation with Will Clarke, an up-and-coming pioneer of art education access in the north. I promise his passion will reassure you and inspire you and prove that things are about to change around here.