Lifetime of Creativity Award

Every year at the Arts Festival, Executive Producer Sheila Gaiman presents a trophy to the artist who has contributed extensively in their communities through their art during the past year.

Amanda Ambrose

2008 — At last, after many years it seemed, the Festival was able to welcome Naomi Kerr and pay tribute to her mother, Amanda Ambrose.

In the early days of the festival, Amanda was a star attraction, both for her concerts and her Voicercise workshops. For this year’s festival her daughter arrived to continue the tradition.

Naomi accepts the prized Lifetime of Creativity Award on behalf of her mother, the late great jazz singer, Amanda Ambrose, who always supported the Arts Festival in person. A filmed performance gave the audience a taste of the immense talent and beingness of the lady whom Naomi described so movingly in her acceptance speech.

Vincent Magni

In 2005, the prize went to French artist Vincent Magni who also created the stunning painting on the cover of this year's program. Vincent's sculptures are so huge that he had great difficulty finding a place to have them fired and so built his own! He is touring an exhibition of these sculptures, and visitors have to be taken between them by bus!

Vincent has started the Positive Art Movement in France, the aim of which is to make people feel happier through what they see. He has bought a hamlet in France which he is setting up as a rehabilitation centre for artists.

Vincent gave a workshop entitled "How to Become a High-Profile, Best-selling Painter that Impacts his Era through his Aesthetic Quality". Artists learned how Vincent achieves his success by personally demonstrating the saleability of his work and personally marketing it to those who could sell it for him. Vincent did a write-up of how he became successful as an artist and put it on his website so that anyone can use it.

Vincent started on the streets of Paris as an artist, applied the technology developed by L. Ron Hubbard to his career and now he can't paint quickly enough to supply demand. His success is remarkable, enabling him to create a huge local impact in the field of art in his country.

Cathy Bird

In 2004, Deputy Executive Director of the Festival, Cathy Bird, was the recipient of the award for her extensive work rehabilitating children and young people as artists. She taught Art and English at Greenfields School for many years and there are uncountable revitalised artists who were taught by her now operating in the field of the arts.

Cathy says that being involved in the Festival has helped her to revitalise her painting career, becoming so successful she was invited to participate in a massive artistic endeavour in Honduras. Cathy created a mural on the subject of the value of children, which was painted with the help of local children. She has since been involved with similar projects in England.

She holds annual exhibitions at her home in Kent which are well attended by the local community, and sales of her work are rapidly expanding. She is now taking an MA in Fine Arts at Canterbury University, and she is still tutoring young artists individually.