Immersive Verse

Co-Motion is a CIC in Cornwall connecting neurodiverse artists with creative technology through collaboration and play. From our company directors to our workshops – everything we do is co-designed by the artists, who want a platform in the South West to share stories with audiences.

Our projects flow from the hand-drawn to new virtual spaces with our imaginations at the forefront. We are excited to explore how immersive tech can harness and also articulate our unique sensory processing experiences in completely new and ground-breaking ways. Collaboration is the key; connecting artists, ideas and technology for an accessible future.

Lou has worked since the early 1990’s in socially engaged arts and film, from facilitation and project producing, to fundraising and strategic planning.

Following a Master’s degree in Television for Development Lou worked with Brighton-based women’s film co-op WideEye to deliver video clubs for vulnerable young people, harnessing the creative authorship offered by video as a new, non-academic and democratic medium. This led to producing roles in a DFID-funded community film project in Ghana and public art engagement projects in Kent for Strange Cargo Arts Company. She also worked to set up Screen South, the newly devolved screen agency for the South East region.

She began working as an arts facilitator, project producer and strategic fundraiser for pioneering inclusive arts charity Shallal in 2014, establishing Shallal’s visual art studio with Phoebe Barnicoat five years later and collaborating closely with artists with diverse needs. She left Shallal in 2024 to set up Co-Motion with artists Phoebe Barnicoat and Eden Harrison to explore creative tech as a tool for new creative voices and perspectives.

Hannah Stephens is a Cornish actor, theatre maker, director and creative facilitator. She is one third of Trifle Gathering Productions and an Associate Director of Miracle Theatre, specialising in Youth & Community. She is passionate about the arts as a powerful tool for social change, especially when it comes to celebratory community action!

Most recently she has created the Young Fishers Podcast (Miracle Theatre), co-hosted HomesGrown: Shine On – a karaoke storytelling project (Trifle Gathering/Wildworks) and released a campaign song and music video with WILD Young Parents (Trifle Gathering). Hannah is also into modes, pranks, collaborating, being silly, being serious, and she’s in the all-female punk band Shagrat! Rock and roll baby!

Phoebe Barnicoat has 14 years of experience working with neurodiverse artists with complex needs, collaborating with leading inclusive art organisations in the UK, including ActionSpace, Shallal, Outside In, and Project Ability. She is a Winston Churchill Fellow, researching platforms for artists who are homeless, have mental health issues, or have learning disabilities in the US and Canada, visiting organisations such as Creative Growth, The Los Angeles Poverty Department, and Gallery Gachet. She went on to share her findings with the Museum of Homelessness as a core team member in their early years.

In 2019, Phoebe partnered with the long-standing inclusive art charity Shallal in Cornwall, where she co-founded their pioneering art studio that offers access to marginalised artists. It was here that Phoebe met artists Eden Harrison and Lou Brett, and together they identified a critical gap: the need for a platform for neurodiverse artists in the creative technology sector.

Alongside her role as co-director at Co-Motion, Phoebe is an artist, educator, and facilitator. Her painting, drawing, animation, and sculpture – summoning life’s absurdities, banalities, and otherworldliness – have been exhibited at The Centre for Recent Drawing (2022), Christie’s (2019), and the Fleming Collection (2013), among others. She is a graduate of the Royal Drawing School and Glasgow School of Art.