Creative environmental art in collaboration with communities

[bio updated in July 2025]. Genevieve Rudd is from/based in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk and has been leading participatory arts projects since c.2011. This includes developing programmes with people in museums, galleries, theatres, libraries, schools, festivals and outdoor public spaces, as well as care & medical settings. Between 2018 and 2023, Genevieve was an Associate Artist/Tutor at the Sainsbury Centre [SCVA]  at the University of East Anglia, regularly designing and leading participatory projects as responses to the SCVA collections & exhibitions.

In 2019, after leading outdoor and environmental/nature arts projects for many years, Genevieve began re-training in outdoor learning skills and has a Wild Beach Leader Level 3 qualification. In 2021, Genevieve founded Under Open Sky [UoS], a not-for-profit organisation exploring the changing coast through arts, cultural heritage, science and holistic wellbeing  activity.

Post-pandemic Genevieve became intrigued by the world of arts & health academic research after many years of applied practice experience…

In 2022, Genevieve was awarded 2 bursaries to participate in the Arts Health Research Intensive. A week long programme Led by the Arts Health Early Career Research Network, with University College London, University of Florida & WHO Collaborating Centre for Arts & Health, held in Suffolk.

In 2023, Genevieve’s research proposal through UoS was nationally shortlisted for the Centre for Cultural Value’s research programme with her idea ‘The Sea and Me’ exploring the relationships between  cultural identity and the coast – whilst this proposal didn’t get through to the last stage of the process, it was an affirming opportunity to her creative practice exploring participatory community nature/blue space engagement.

In 2023, Genevieve worked as a Peer Evaluator for InFocus on a St Giles Trust project empowering women through peer support projects in Kent and Norfolk. In the same year she was also a Peer Evaluator for the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) assessing applications to a national culture & health grant fund from a lived experience perspective.

The creative projects that Genevieve leads with communities encourages participants to look closer at their surroundings and ask questions about the people and places around us; The work often happens between the intersection of the spheres of arts & culture, health & wellbeing and nature & environment. Her projects have  often taken the form of ‘walking arts’ practice…

In 2021 she attended the EarthWalks Leadership Workshop. At Green Light Trust, Suffolk (as part of project development funded by: Arts Council National Lottery Project Fund.)

After the pandemic, one of her accessible ‘walk’ submissions was accepted and published in The Walkbook: recipes for walking and wellbeing, responding to the challenges people have experienced in participating in walking – a project funded by AHRC.

In 2023 Genevieve survived severe illness and now lives with an Acquired Brain Injury (ABI). Genevieve documented her initial rehabilitation experience of learning to walk again in a Slow Ways walking story. The irony of being a ‘walking artist’ who couldn’t walk brought her a dose of gallows humour in the early days of her rehabilitation.

Genevieve’s illness meant that her work and life was on hold between late 2023 and early 2025 while undergoing intensive rehabilitation following multiple neurosurgeries and adjusting the disabling effects of her ABI. She has ambitions to bring together her past cultural project leadership experiences and her new ways of living, to connect with others living through similar challenges and to see where creativity and culture could draw out and celebrate these personal neuro/disability narratives. With support from her rehabilitation therapies, she has been testing and planning ideas in early 2025.

In May 2025, hosted ‘Internal Waterscapes’, an art residency and micro exhibition on neuro health/recovery and the coast from a beach hut in Gorleston-on-sea seafront, supported by a small grant from Norfolk County Council’s Arts Project Fund and a creative development bursary from Battery of Ideas/First Light Festival. Through Under Open Sky, she is developing Ambulatory Imaginations, neuro-inclusive arts, walking and nature gatherings with a pilot series funded by Norfolk Rivers Trust in summer 2025 in Norfolk watery/blue spaces.

Genevieve is a climate declarer, meaning she is committed to telling the truth and acting for our planet. This manifests in her local participatory nature-culture work and also globally in her support of wider actions. With theatre practitioner Lucy Enskat, she previously instigated the East of England Culture Declares Emergency Hub. In early 2023, she became a trustee for new charity Natural Habitat in Suffolk. 

Awards:

In 2022: her Yarmouth Springs Eternal project was recognised as a Highly Commended project in the Culture, Health & Wellbeing Alliance awards: climate Award category.

In 2023, she was awarded a highly commented Green Award in the BBC Make A Difference awards (through BBC Radio Norfolk).

In 2023: Genevieve was nominated and shortlisted for a Lifetime achievement award in the Norfolk Arts Awards voted by local culture sector colleagues and peers.

Genevieve has a background of using multidisciplinary approaches in her own arts practice including textile arts, drawing and early photography techniques (such as Cyanotype and Anthotype). In 2008-2011, Genevieve studied BA hons Photographic Arts at University of Westminster, London. Her inspiration is continually drawn from the natural world through working directly with plants and the weather, making on-location and utilising natural/compostable materials. Within this, she considers themes of time, place and seasonality. These themes are also linked to the body and lived health experiences.

For many years Genevieve has worked from a ‘lived experience’ health perspective on creative health projects.

Genevieve has previous experience of being active in arts leadership and governance work, including facilitating CPD, mentoring, training, and serving on management boards at local, regional and national levels.

In 2019, Genevieve co-founded the Artist Educator Social Network, an artist-led network for artists working with people in East Anglia, with Kaitlin Ferguson. Since her ABI in 2023, Genevieve has been active in on-going rehabilitation in physio, occupational, vision and speech & language and psychological therapies to learn how to live again and rebuild her life with meaning. Through this experience, she has found herself drawing upon the creative health projects she has led over the years to aid her own rehabilitation.

Since the early days of her ABI, Genevieve has found solace in reflecting through her arts practice and regularly shares updates of this, when possible, on social media. When she couldn’t talk or walk and no one could understand her writing, she was encouraged to draw and make art by medical & rehabilitation staff.

Genevieve has held membership with the following professional bodies:  AccessArt, Artists’ Union England, Artworks Alliance, ClimateCultures, Climate Museum UK (Associate member). Genevieve holds on-going up-to-date Public & Products Liability Insurance, safeguarding training and DBS checks.

Email: hello@genevieverudd.com