This 2025 we are celebrating 30 years of Photoworks! As part of our birthday programme, we have partnered up with MPB to launch R&D Seed Grants supporting artists to develop their practice and make new work. From over 450 applicants, six awardees were chosen to receive seed grants to support the development of new work.
The awardees of the Photoworks X MPB – R&D Seed Grants are:
- Nick Ballon
- Timon Benson
- Jessica Bernard
- Thomas Duffield
- Claire Sunho Lee
- Lorna MacKay
Each artist will use the grant in different ways, below we learn more from the artists:
Nick Ballon
Nick Ballon grew up hearing family legends about his ancestor, Mancio Serra de Leguizamón. In this ongoing project, Nick travels to Spain, Peru and beyond, following the thread of Serra’s contradictory career of greed and piety, bloodshed and repentance, cultural obliteration and remembrance of what has been lost. This grant will support forthcoming trips to Euskadi and Bolivia, where a twenty-year Democratic and Cultural Revolution steered by Evo Morales, the country’s first Indigenous leader since the time of the Incas, is currently faltering.
Timon Benson
The photographs are from a longform photographic project documenting our special father-son bond. Homing in on my father’s experience as a first-generation immigrant in the UK, the project unravels themes of health, displacement and family care. The project bridges the family archive, with an ongoing documentation of his present life, and behaves as witness between his two homes – both Kenya and the UK. I explore the juxtaposition between his solitary life in the UK, compared to his extraordinarily different personality in Kenya, whilst feeding in the nuances of family dynamics and English life.
Jessica Bernard
“The Photoworks X MPB grant will cover studio time for me to explore work around play and illness – providing space both to create imagery and also for reflection.”
Learn more about Jessica's work
Thomas Duffield
“The seed grant will enable me and my grandfather to work together in a way that invites sound and moving image into a new project that documents the passage of intergenerational knowledge between us both. Engaging my grandfather in light hearted yet practical conversations about his horticultural experience, I plan to make an accessible and engaging record of his nuanced knowledge of traditional farming practices.”
Claire Sunho Lee
“This grant will support the continued development of Tell Me What I’m Remembering, a project exploring my childhood illness that was hidden from me – leukaemia – and the fleeting, fragmented nature of memory and its connection to personal and collective histories. With this support, I plan to acquire an on-camera flash, props, and materials essential for creating additional work. I envision the new work to deepen the project’s engagement with themes of care, trauma, health, and memory, while strengthening its visual language.”
Learn more about Claire's work
Lorna MacKay
“During a recent commission with Newcastle City Council, I spent some time making portraits with Patchwork, a community youth project founded by local residents to help and educate young people aged between 8 and 25. The seed grant will enable me to spend more time making work with the group, celebrating the people behind Patchwork as they approach their 25th anniversary, as well as facilitating photography workshops with the young people who have been brought together through the project.”
