Executive Summary:

Modern Painters, New Decorators Evaluation Report July 2026

By Meghan Goodeve

---

This report covers the period from September 2025 to June 2026, in which Modern Painters New Decorators (MPND) was managing huge organisational development, including moving into a new building, developing new artistic programming, and fostering community relationships. In only 10 months, they have achieved an enormous amount of output and consolidated their place in the Loughborough arts ecosystem. Through the evaluation process, it is clear that their work has great strength and is best understood through three themes of community, access and inclusion, and artistic excellence.

100% of visitors thought their visit was ‘good’ or ‘very good’. 45% of visitors were first-time visitors to the gallery, and 12% of visitors were first-time visitors to any cultural event. 20% of visitors were from Loughborough East and 7% from Loughborough Southfields. 19% of visitors were disabled, and 26% of visitors identified as neurodivergent. 12% of visitors identified as Asian/Asian British.

It is clear that MPND have an important role to play in Loughborough and is one of the only spaces in the town presenting audiences with contemporary art and newly commissioned work. The work MPND has done with artists and young people has had a lasting impact on those who have been involved in the programme. A number of them can immediately see the difference in how they approach their work or a clear increase in their aspirations.

Jessica Ashman:

Chimera Island

Chimera Island, a solo exhibition by Jessica Ashman, inaugurated our new venue with a vivid exploration of landscape, belonging and ancestral memory. Through textiles, animation, sound and natural dyeing, Ashman reimagined rural and ecological spaces as sites of resistance and reconnection.

Studio at 17:

Greatest Hits

Greatest Hits brought together eleven artists from Studio at 17 to celebrate more than three decades of inclusive, community-driven creativity in Loughborough. Formerly known as Albert Street Artists, the group has supported artists with lived experience of long-term mental ill health for over 30 years.

Artist Network:

Artist Mentoring

Through an ongoing mentoring partnership, MPND supported Studio at17’s artistic and organisational development through group crits, one-to-one mentoring, invitations to events, practical guidance on future direction and the design of a new website.

Artist Network:

Artist Gatherings

Gatherings supported members to share practice, gain feedback and build peer connections. Sessions explored care within artistic practice, communicating access needs, boundaries and sustainable ways of working, alongside informal artist presentations and group discussion.

Joshua Jones & Sheila Ghelani:

Artist-Led Walks

Our artist-led walks used drawing, storytelling and shared observation to explore time, ecology and our relationships with place. Along Loughborough Canal, participants considered deep time and Earth’s mark-making; in Southfields Park, black mirrors revealed overlooked views of the landscape.

Emergence Magazine:

Shifting Landscapes
Film Series

Four films followed an artist responding to profound changes in their landscape—from a melting glacier in Iceland to the vanishing song of the nightingale in southern England—offering new ways of seeing and being in connection with the Earth.

Janhavi Sharma:

My Molten Sky

My Molten Sky, a solo exhibition by Janhavi Sharma, explored how stories of place, memory and loss were formed, fragmented and remade. Drawing on folklore, repetition and performative retelling, the exhibition constructed a loose, location-less mythology where images drifted between remembering and forgetting.

Issie Martin:

Futile Acts

Futile Acts, a solo exhibition by Issie Martin, explored our relationship to water, the body and the limits of control in the face of the climate crisis. Martin developed a series of poetic, impossible gestures—mopping the sea, tracing coastlines by hand, attempting to contain water in dissolvable vessels.

Learning Programme:

Family Workshops

Our Family Workshops are free, relaxed, creative sessions where children and adults can make, play and explore together. Led by artists, each workshop introduces new materials, ideas and ways of making, creating a welcoming space for families to learn, imagine and create side by side.

Learning Programme:

Art Club

Art Club is a free, creative programme for young people aged 11-16, with regular workshops across the year. They explore varied making processes and develop their artistic ideas alongside each other and with contributing artists. This June, they presented an exhibition, Art Club Now, as part of our Celebration Day.

Phil Root:

Flat Earth

Flat Earth, a solo exhibition by Phil Root, presented new ceramic works that explored the limits of traditional processes. Working with foraged and industrial materials, Root developed a process-led approach, allowing materials to shape themselves through heat, pressure and time.

Jamie Seymour:

The Sick Rose

The Sick Rose, a solo exhibition by Jamie Seymour, brought together paintings, drawings and sculptural assemblages exploring queer anxiety, visibility and control. Taking its title from William Blake’s poem, the exhibition drew on symbolic language to reflect experiences of being seen, surveilled and made vulnerable. 

David John Scarborough:

Earth-Stepper

Developed through David John Scarborough’s practice-led research at MPND, Earth-Stepper explored how virtual worlds, folk narrative, sound & moving image can hold experiences of loss, ecology & renewal. The resulting digital installation was presented online with Fermynwoods Contemporary Art.