Meet the Artists: Kernewek Creative Residency 2026
Choosing this year’s Kernewek Creative Residency artists was no easy task. We received 42 applications for just four places, from artists working across an extraordinary range of creative practices, each with their own ideas about how Kernewek might become part of their work.
After plenty of discussion, our panel selected four artists whose ideas really excited them, and who they felt could use this week to explore not only what they might create in Kernewek, but what might happen when the language becomes part of the creative process itself.
We’re delighted to introduce Chloé Eathorne, Ben Kernow, Catherine Olver and Mimi Attenburrow, who will arrive at St Endellion next week for the 2026 Kernewek Creative Residency.
Chloé Eathorne
Chloé Eathorne is a Cornish poet and sound artist whose work is inspired by the body, folklore and Cornwall’s post-industrial heritage. She is a member of the Southbank Centre’s New Poets Collective and has an MA in Professional Writing.
Already exploring the possibilities of Cornish within her poetry, Chloé will use the residency to take that relationship with the language further, experimenting with Kernewek through poetry and sound art and gathering inspiration from the landscape of North Cornwall.
For Chloé, the week is a chance to explore where language, landscape and sound might meet.
Ben Kernow
Ben is a Cornwall-based theatre and filmmaker and founder of Ha Hum Ah Productions. His work moves between theatre and film, combining bold storytelling with playful and unconventional approaches. From producing theatre in fields, barns and on cliff tops to touring work nationally, his practice is rooted in Cornwall while looking firmly beyond it.
Ben has worked extensively with Cornish stories and artists, but the residency offers an opportunity to approach Kernewek in a new way.
Rather than creating a piece in English and then translating it, he wants to ask what happens when Kernewek is the starting point. What changes when the cadence, rhythm and nuances of the language are there from the very beginning of making a piece for the stage?
Catherine Olver
Catherine writes for a greener future and a proud LGBTQ+ present, telling stories in prose and poetry. She loves words, wildflowers and walking the cliffs of North Cornwall, where she lives.
Her current project is both a sapphic love story and a love song to Cornish hedges, weaving two Cornish wonder tales into an ecoqueer fantasy.
During the residency, Catherine hopes to deepen her Cornish and explore how its words, meanings and linguistic possibilities can become woven into the fantasy world she is creating. She is also particularly looking forward to working alongside the other residents, trading ideas and inspiration as the week unfolds.
Mimi Attenburrow
Mimi won Cornwall Comedian of the Year in 2022 and has been dabbling in comedy performance ever since. She has hosted and performed at festivals and comedy shows and worked with Edward Rowe on a number of projects, including the Cornish-language comedy short Degemeroryon, commissioned by Screen Cornwall.
For Mimi, the residency is about finding a playful and natural place for Kernewek within her performance practice, and perhaps introducing us to a Cornish Disney princess along the way.
As Mimi puts it:
“Cornwall has helped me start to find a voice in the world of performance, so now it’s only right this voice speaks a bit of Cornish! Or at the very least, a confident ‘Meur ras’!”
See what they create
What happens when you bring four very different creative practices together, give them time, space and support, and put Kernewek at the heart of the conversation?
We’re really looking forward to finding out.
At the end of the residency, Chloé, Ben, Catherine and Mimi will share some of what they have been exploring during their week at St Endellion. The evening will also feature a selection of Cornish-language films from Screen Cornwall’s Kernow Kino series.
Kernewek Creative Residency Showcase
Saturday 26 September
Come and see where a week of experimenting, making, talking and playing with Kernewek has taken them.
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