CONTEMPORARY COLLAGE MAGAZINE LIVE! • FRIDAY 19TH SEPTEMBER 2025 • Stoke-on-Trent, UK
Join us in Staffordshire this September for an unmissable one-day celebration of collage. From analogue to digital, editorial to experimental, Contemporary Collage Magazine LIVE! brings together leading voices in the world of collage to share their processes, stories, and passion for the cut-and-paste medium.
The event will take place in the Film Theatre at the University of Staffordshire and there are just 180 spaces available, so be sure to book early!
In partnership with…
Get Excited!
🎙 9 Guest Speakers
🎨 Creative Inspiration & Artist Insights
🧠 Thought-provoking talks and panels
📍 Networking with fellow artists and creatives
PLUS!
🛍 Every attendee receives a free tote bag packed with hand-picked collage goodies worth over £50.
✂️ Exclusive access to two exclusive collage workshops on Saturday 20th Sept — limited to just 16 places per session. Only open to conference attendees!
Our speakers…
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Les Jones is the creator and editor of Contemporary Collage Magazine, which he launched in 2021 with his daughter, Molly Campbell. He is also an established collage artist with works held in a number of prestigious collections. He is also a photographer and designer.
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Adolphus Washington is a Black American collage artist from New York, now based in London. Rooted in history and politics, his work explores the complexity and resilience of the Black American experience. Using collage—a medium he sees as both democratic and improvisatory—he infuses his art with the spirit of jazz, hip hop, and cultural memory. His practice aims to provoke dialogue, deepen understanding, and advocate for reparative justice.
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Jimmy Turrell is a sought-after graphic artist and video director who combines a love of handmade collage, drawing, screen-printing and painting alongside digital techniques to create memorable graphics for record covers, music gigs, fashion-shows and advertising. His clients include Nike, The New York Times, Green Peace, Esquire, The Prodigy, Channel 4, The Guardian, and Glastonbury Festival.
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Sonia Boué is a multiform artist, collagist and writer. Boué’s early work explored a heritage of forced migration, leading to a BBC Radio 4 programme and a Tate Britain short film. Boué has subsequently responded to a late-autism diagnosis by developing a transformational photography and collage-based practice called Neurophototherapy, funded by Arts Council England. In 2023, she published Neurophototherapy: Playfully Unmasking with Photography and Collage.
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Miranda Millward is a Contemporary Collage Magazine Award winner and her work has been featured in a number of books and publications. Miranda has exhibited her work in the UK, Europe and the USA.
Outside of the studio Miranda works for Oxford University GLAM where she runs a creative programme for children with complex special needs.
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Freya Gowrley is an academic and writer who works on the cultural lives of images and objects. She is based at the University of Bristol, where she writes about the relationship between art and identity from the early modern period to the present day. She is the author of Domestic Space in Britain, 1750–1840: Materiality, Sociability, and Emotion (2022), and Fragmentary Forms: A New History of Collage (2024).
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Gareth Davies is the National Sales Manager at GF Smith paper merchants. He has been instrumental in promoting the creative possibilities of G.F Smith's beautiful coloured papers, commissioning and supporting a number of high profile projects with leading artists.
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Cecil Touchon is a renowned and influential collage artist and painter based in Albuquerque. Touchon's work was exhibited in the 2001 and 2009 Venice Biennale and can be found in more than 45 corporate and international museum collections including the MOMA, The Getty Research Institute and The Tate Modern. He also published a much followed Substack page called ‘The Touchonian’.
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Photographer and collage artist Justine Laeufer creates unique analogue works using her own images, exploring identity through deconstruction and reconstruction. With roots in fashion and beauty photography, she challenges conventional standards by crafting new personas that question how we define and perceive beauty. Her work frames identity as a shifting play of masks and mirrors—reflecting and revealing its deeper tensions.
Collage Workshops!
If you’re planning to make a weekend of it, we’ll also be hosting two collage workshops on Saturday 20th September, only available to Contemporary Collage Magazine LIVE! ticket holders!
Morning workshop • 10am - 1pm
Creating New Narratives with Fashion Photography
Using high-end fashion magazines as source material, leading collage artist and fashion photographer, Justine Laeufer will explain how to develop different narratives within your collage work. She will also introduce you to different cutting, ripping and layering techniques and demonstrate how creating and keeping a collage sketchbook can inform your practice.
The Vintage Magazine Challenge
One vintage magazine - 5 creative briefs. In this fast-moving workshop, CC. Magazine Founder, Les Jones will show how you can use self-set parameters to stimulate your creativity. He will challenge you to explore different visual approaches and techniques in response to a number of collage prompts, but with the limited resources of one vintage magazine. You might even find your work being featured in a future issue of Contemporary Collage Magazine.
Afternoon workshop • 2pm - 5pm
Additional Information
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The day will run from 10am – 4.30pm with a drinks reception to follow!
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All attendees will receive a Contemporary Collage Magazine LIVE! tote bag packed with exciting collage goodies.
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Time permitting, you will have the opportunity to put your questions to our speakers.
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On the Saturday following the conference, we are running two collage workshops - so why not make a weekend of it? (additional fees apply)
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Tea and coffee will be provided on arrival.
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Books, magazines, prints and original works will be available to purchase from the artist speakers on the day.