Emily Oldroyd
Engagement Manager
HOME Manchester
With the Royal Exchange (where I was Community Producer April 2023-Sept 2025) I worked with Martha in a number of capacities - as a visual artist, community facilitator, and as one of our local Ambassadors for the community programme Local Exchange.
Martha has a huge range of skills and an impeccable attitude and professionalism. Martha has great big-picture strategic vision, understanding the impact the arts can have on communities, its role in community cohesion and personal development, and how organisations (from grassroots to Local Authority) can work together to make change. She is aware of organisational priorities, very practical in her creation, and aware of the importance of environmental sustainability in her work.
She in a talented artist who comes up with creative and inspiring plans for workshops, design, creative interventions and programmes. These included working strategically with the Engagement team to create resources for creative evaluation, a large-scale venue takeover for families and taster workshops to introduce people to The Den Festival.
Martha draws on her extensive experience working with young people, adults, those with SEND, and the wider public alike - creating purposeful and joyful engagements indoors, outdoor, from intimate moments to lighter touch wider engagement. A kind, thoughtful, professional creative throughout - and equally a joy to work with planning behind the scenes, that running activity on the day.
I think Martha would really benefit from funding to push the boundaries of her creative ideas and potential - especially as I believe it would bring a real concrete return to the variety of Manchester arts organisations, institutions and communities she works with. As I now moved to HOME Manchester (Engagement Manager) I am keen to bring Martha into the programming here to strengthen our community and family offers.
Jane Harris
Community Engagement Lead
Global Grooves
Martha provides intergenerational craft workshops in her own community at The Vale. She delivers with groups from 10 - 60 participants.
Martha makes people feel at home and importantly relaxed and safe so that they can explore their artistic and creative curiosity. She manages to connect with people very quickly which helps to reduce anxiety about engaging with art by people who don't consider themselves as artists or have low confidence in their skills. She builds trusting relationships which means people can be free from judgement.
Martha has been key to the development of the community programme at The Vale in Mossley. In an area where low/cost creativity for families is hard to find she has developed open access sessions that have allowed young people and family groups to see themselves differently and their relationship to local arts provision as important to them.
Martha is such a warm person who seeks to make art accessible and relevant. Her professional experience in formal education and as a Forest School practitioner gives her a breadth of skills that reduces barriers to artistic play.
Sarah Hardacre
Visual Arts & Cultural Producer
I have known Martha for almost twenty years, during which time I have followed her artistic practice with great interest and admiration. Over this period, our relationship has developed from peers within the arts community into a long-standing friendship and professional collaboration. I have had the pleasure of commissioning Martha on a number of projects that I have produced, and through this work I have consistently experienced her as a thoughtful, rigorous and deeply committed artist.
Martha demonstrates a clear and sustained dedication to the continual professional development of her practice. She consistently channels energy into expanding her skills, refining her artistic voice, and responding meaningfully to audiences and local cultural contexts. Her approach to practice is both reflective and forward-thinking, and she actively seeks new ways to engage with cultural programming, adapting her methods and developing new competencies in response to changing creative and community needs.
What distinguishes Martha is not only the quality of her work, but her commitment to learning, experimentation and responsiveness. Research and development time is clearly central to the way she works, and I am confident that the opportunity to focus on this through Arts Council support would significantly strengthen and extend her practice.
I have no hesitation in recommending Martha Distin-Webster for Research and Development funding, and I believe she would use this opportunity with care, ambition and integrity.