Kate Stewart is a creative business practitioner with a wealth of experience in the design, regeneration & learning sectors. She is well known for her work supporting projects and people to create public spaces, buildings & community events, particularly in the city of Liverpool where she lives. She believes a stakeholder-led approach to projects is essential for sustainable outcomes.
All of Kate’s work is about the right partnerships & collaborations with other creatives, individuals & businesses with different skills. She has a background in theatre, business planning and project management and sector specific business support for the creative sector, she also runs a small Jewellery brand – Factory Floor Jewels, in homage to her time spent in her dad’s engineering workshop as a child.
In 2016 her collaborative social engagement piece Rio Visivel: Podio was commissioned by Multiplicidade Festival in Rio de Janeiro
As one of the founders of Friends of the Flyover, Kate successfully led their crowdfunding campaign for feasibility funds and now as CEO of the social enterprise We Make Places, she is leading the creative, community and learning programmes on The Flyover Liverpool
Kate was the Artistic Director of the ambitious Flyover Takeover 2016 project, closing the Flyover to traffic on 6 Sundays throughout the summer and filling it with workshops, performances, commissions and events. Kate has recently been successful in gaining BBC Children in Need funding to involve young people with mental health problems in collaborations with artists to co-curate some of the Flyover’s cultural programme over the next 3 years.
Having created the role of Artist Provocateur for the Flyover and it’s neighbourhoods, Kate is currently enjoying collaborating with and hosting the Scottish/American artist Carron Little and exploring Carron’s Spare Rib Revisited project within the communities adjacent to The Flyover, telling their stories through the lives of women who live and work in the neighbourhoods; this is a 16 month project.
Kate joins the Cultural Producers International programme hot on the heels of curating The Maverick City Symposium for the second year, in which she brought together artists and other changemakers from Rio, Chicago, Italy, Latvia, The Netherlands and the UK to discuss themes of Home, Co-Living, Art in Public Spaces and Collective Making. An exciting addition to this year’s programme was that the speakers and audience were invited to spend the second day working on a community construction project in a local neighbourhood – an exhausting, humbling and joyful experience for participants and recipients alike.
Having been self employed for over 30 years, Kate has won various accolades as a entrepreneur – from being a Cosmopolitan Woman of Achievement, Social Entrepreneur of the Year to more recently, being named as one of the Leaders of Liverpool & as Independent Business Champion of the Year at the Merseyside Independent Business Awards 2014. This year We Make Places was shortlisted for a SE100 Award.