Hi! My name is Lesley Taker (she/her). I am a freelance writer, curator and arts producer based in Liverpool, UK. All of my work centres on creative practice, especially around questions of access, belonging and in creating spaces that allow art to happen. Not coming from an arts background, I often use other cultural outputs and media to access and understand the art world. Usually, this takes the form of gaming and books, but also sometimes films or pop culture, and I get particularly excited when I get to use all of them. Things which keep popping up in my work are fear, play, haunting, the Gothic, roleplay, liminal spaces, discomfort, and blurry boundaries (and bodies). These are all united by an attempt to bypass the veneer of seemingly glossy, fixed presentations, to dig up the shifting realities underneath. My experiences of becoming both chronically ill and a mother have made these ‘research topics’ even more integrated into all areas of my practice, merging my theoretical and lived realities even further.
Links and things
This is my CV. And here are some of my favourite / recent undertakings in project management, artist development, writing, talking, and curating. Also, a policy highlight I worked on at FACT with artist Jack Y Tan was this easy-read contract.
I’m currently setting up a Curatorial / Arts Production agency called Uncommon Things.
I’ve also been playing around with horror writing.
Since becoming freelance in 2025, I’ve worked as a writer / curator / producer with Corridor8, Abandon Normal Devices, Peckham Digital, Heart of Glass, FACT, Dada, and At the Library. I’ve supported artist applications to Arts Council England, Immersive Arts, Creative Scotland, and Hugo Burge Foundation.
My professional bio can be found here.
My areas of expertise
- Storytelling and world building – from curating exhibitions to helping artists create new digital realities
- Words – anything from short stories to interpretation, press releases, or funding bids. Most of my writing is around magic realism, monstrosity, haunting, sensuality, and the body.
- Digital arts (from funding and commissioning to exhibition), as well as wider digital culture – especially gaming
- Artist mentoring – especially supporting artists to think about their practice more holistically, and leading residencies / development programmes
- Seeing the wider picture and making connections (i.e. working on strategy with organisations)
- Making ambitious ideas into reality and creating frameworks which allow them to operate properly and with care
- Being able to work between divergent approaches and find somewhere in the middle where we can collaborate
Things I want to work more on
- Research, writing and sharing around digital arts and culture, specifically how notions of play (especially from gaming and horror) can create alternative understandings of, or ways into, an intimidating environment
- Creative and critical writing (or an experimental mash-up of the two)
- Individual artist support and mentoring
- Consultancy within cultural institutions to support their digital programmes, or helping them to work in more artist-centred ways
- Artist / Curator development and residencies, especially with digital or newly digital practitioners
- Developing new (or supporting existing) regional art networks
- Access support (either if you’re an artist and need support for applications, or if you’re interested in offering this as part of your open calls)