Commissions

Tabatha Andrews – The Gifts

The Gifts is a socially-engaged, multisensory sculpture made for and with learning-disabled and neurodiverse communities of Exeter to form a lasting community legacy. It is commissioned by Exeter Phoenix as part of her wider, Arts Council funded project, The Slightest Gesture, a sculpture, dance and film project, which will unfold throughout 2025.

Green Phoenix Visual Arts Commission – Adam Garratt

Working mainly in sculpture and print, Adam is a queer working class artist whose practice has evolved around constraints of space, the use of material and repetitious making processes. Much of his work is made on reclaimed materials from building sites and is specifically made to expand into an installation when it is not neatly folded, stacked and rolled for storage in the garden shed. Conscious not to make extra waste, Adam chooses carefully which materials to make work with. They come with their own history of use and bare the marks of an embodied labour, often with holes, creases, tears, dirt and stains.

Artists Moving Image Commission – Libby Bove: Roadwytch

Libby Bove is a multi-disciplinary artist, designer, and folklorist whose work places folk customs and magical practices at the heart of everyday life. Blending archival research with documentary approaches, her practice moves fluidly between fact and fiction. Using traditional craft processes, she constructs believable myths by transplanting rituals and customs into imagined pasts and speculative futures.

‘Roadwytch’ is a hybrid art film and pseudo-documentary offering an intimate portrait of a roadside magic practitioner in a world where mysticism was never lost.

Tiana Linden – Youth Club

Tiana is a writer and filmmaker who loves creating weird films in conjunction with weird people. She makes shorts, music videos and content for brands, focussing on dark comedy and bold female characters. She also loves working with young people and facilitates groups in writing and filmmaking. This commission brings both passions together, all alongside the Exeter Phoenix film crew – an opportunity to create some artistic chaos and one she’s most appreciative of.

A spirited youth worker’s quest to revive her Friday night club spirals into obsession as she infiltrates the real lives, and real youth club, of the teens she’s trying to reach.

Sinead O’Toole – Sunbeam

Sinead is a freelance video editor based in Exeter. She has worked with small film and video agencies for seven years, editing content for local and global brands. In recent years, she has also helped out various local filmmakers with their short films and is currently working on her first feature film edit.

‘Sunbeam’ is a light-hearted comedy that explores how we find joy in our everyday lives. It looks at the overwhelming nature of social media advice and the value of knowing what works best for you.

Sam Cox – On The Same Earth

Sam is a filmmaker and aspiring DP collaborating on local narrative films, music videos and working freelance creating commercials. Completing the award winning short A Vampire’s Reflection and his other historical short Wish, Sam is passionate about history, creating unique stories, immersive visuals and sound.

For the commission Sam will create a historical short film exploring Celtic and Saxon lives in dark age Devon, their languages and putting the camera in both their perspectives so an audience can connect more easily and emotionally understand each character. Sam is keen to experiment with cultural interactions through history and with this project aims to bring to life this rarely recorded era and changing point in history.

Elinor Lower – Dawnbreaker

Elinor Lower (they/them) is a director and writer for theatre and film, and member of filmmaking collective ratbird. Their work grapples with ideas of autonomy, interdependence, tenderness and place. As part of ratbird, their first micro short DEAD WIFE HUG won ‘Best 48-Hour Film’ at Two Short Nights Festival 2025.

Dawnbreaker follows post-menopausal recluse Gill who, ground down by years of ritual, is forced to begin the process of handing over her life’s work to a sceptical child. That work? Ensuring the sun rises and sets, so the world doesn’t end. Exploring the tensions between science and belief, the film explores what it means to have the foundational belief of your life tested, and what freedoms / joys / pains might be found in letting go.

Toby Parker Rees – Gabriel-Ernest

Toby is a filmmaker from Exmouth. He wrote the half hour film Wet Look, starring Tanya Reynolds (Sex Education) and Iwan Rheon (Game of Thrones), broadcast on Channel 4. It was Critic’s Pick in every UK paper, including The Guardian (‘sweet and smart’) The Times (‘cleverly used [mythology] as a metaphor for disability’) and The Observer (‘an imaginative, left-field affair’). It was nominated for Best Single Drama at the Broadcast Awards and Best Debut Writer at the Edinburgh TV Awards. He won the Beyond Award commission from Film and Video Umbrella to adapt my play ‘the great dog, Pan’ (written and directed on attachment at Bristol Old Vic) into a short film. Toby was also part of BFI Network’s South West Directors Lab last year, and just wrapped a BFI short.

‘Gabriel-Ernest’ is an adaptation of a short story by Saki, who lived in Exmouth nearly 150 years ago.

Pippa Marriott – Oxtoby

Pippa Marriott is a born-again film maker: her last film was a documentary in Belfast in 1988, made with teenagers from both communities. The excitement and challenges of that project led her to a career in teaching. After her Masters in 2019 documenting the creative writing group she established in Exeter Prison, she has facilitated, written and directed a wide range of initiatives, and co-founded Word Kitchen.

She understands the importance of hearing and amplifying marginalised and unheard voices. Her 3-minute commission showcases forgotten artist David Oxtoby, friend and contemporary of David Hockney and the one with the more promising career (six one-man shows while still a student.) While Hockney currently enjoys a massive retrospective in Paris, the other David languishes in a care home. This film offers a rare encounter with Oxtoby himself, and the rock’n’roll stars and their dangerously exciting music that he captured so brilliantly on canvas.

Libby Bove – Roadwytch

Libby Bove is a multi-disciplinary artist, designer, and folklorist whose work places folk customs and magical practices at the heart of everyday life. Blending archival research with documentary approaches, her practice moves fluidly between fact and fiction. Using traditional craft processes, she constructs believable myths by transplanting rituals and customs into imagined pasts and speculative futures.

‘Roadwytch’ is a hybrid art film and pseudo-documentary offering an intimate portrait of a roadside magic practitioner in a world where mysticism was never lost.

Green Phoenix Performance Commission

The Hedgesong Collective

For the commission, Maz McNamara and Emily Unsworth-White will create an interdisciplinary performance exploring our folkloric relationship with trees and plants of the British Isles. They will bring together rich harmony singing and instrumental music, poetic storytelling, and the use of a crankie theatre – a traditional form of visual storytelling using a scroll wound between two spools. The show will be a captivating 30-minute mythic journey through the seasons, providing a gentle opportunity for an audience of all ages to connect with the more-than-human world.