Artist, Curator, Participation…

Debbie is a visual artist living in the East Midlands, working nationally and internationally.

Her practice currently revolves around socially engaged practice, public engagement, photography, sound and light, and over the last few years she has worked extensively with archive imagery and oral history, drawing from these techniques to feed into her aesthetic. Debbie Adele Cooper’s work moves between digital and analogue and seeking to create new conversations between the past and today.

Debbie’s background is in participation, having worked as Participation Curator for QUAD for many years. Her interest in the public features heavily in her artwork, inviting and enabling interactions, exploring everyday moments and shared experiences, feeding public responses into the creation of new work.

Debbie writes large-scale public engagement and community projects and has recently written and delivered projects for the British Council, NHS and District Councils. In 2017 she has been delivering public engagement projects in China and India.

Debbie is currently artist in residence for; Dartmoor Prison working with inmates on a Conscientious Objector Archive project. NHS Ayrshire & Arran on a mental health photographic archive project. St Helens Council working with glass plate negatives. She also runs the Artist Development programme at QUAD in Derby and is Associate Artist at Nottingham Contemporary.

Debbie also runs regular glass plate photography workshops at Street Level Photoworks in Glasgow