Greener Lavelle celebrates 20 years in business
Image description: Kim a white woman in purple and green tailcoat facing right and smiling whilst holding a big, lime green 2 and 0 balloon in a wooded area.
She works across cultural sectors and has increasingly developed skills, knowledge and experience within the community carnival sector since 2008, building large scale puppets and structures and establishing relationships with local authorities and members of the public through community group engagement. Kim has supplied costumes to the 1770 festival parade in Australia.
She has produced costumes for museums throughout the country and costumed many theatrical productions. She is also a costume mentor and has worked as dresser for Birmingham Royal Ballet, produced illustration for Peter Kay’s Phoenix Nights- Comic Relief and done wardrobe duties for Sir Tom Jones.
Image description: close up of a large scale monkey lantern puppet with Kim in silhouette touching the face.
In 2016 she was chosen for the official Small Business Saturday Small Biz 100. In 2019 she was one of the Top 100 Female Entrepreneurs in the #ialso campaign.
In 2017 she was awarded an Arts Council project grant for Middlesbrough Reindeer Parade which included working with 10 students from the Northern School of Art.
Kim engages in continued professional development such as environmental training from Julie’s Bicycle, Disability Train the Trainer course form Little Cog and LGBTQIA+ Training form Curious Arts.
Being autistic means Kim combines learned knowledge with lived experience to inform her own professional practice and advise others on access and inclusivity.
She was a panellist on the BBC bitesize schools tour and delivers talks about her creative processes and navigating freelance life as an autistic artist.
It means self-employment is the most viable route to work for Kim who said,
“It’s not always been easy, but if freelance is the only way that works for you, you make it work. I am super lucky to do a job that allows me to work in a world of costumes and characters, puppets and illustration, the magic of theatre, the history of museums and the spirit of the community. “
In 2022 she was shortlisted to top 5 for costume design for Beauty & The Beast at the National Pantomime Association Awards and attended the awards at the Trafalgar Theatre in London.
“It’s not always been easy, but if freelance is the only way that works for you, you make it work. I am super lucky to do a job that allows me to work in a world of costumes and characters, puppets and illustration, the magic of theatre, the history of museums and the spirit of the community. “
In 2022 she was shortlisted to top 5 for costume design for Beauty & The Beast at the National Pantomime Association Awards and attended the awards at the Trafalgar Theatre in London.
Photo Credit: Kev Howard
Image description: Photograph of Kim a white woman with rosy cheeks wearing a sage green 18th century style shirt looking down at a sepia brown stop motion hare puppet who wears a plague mask.
Kim was awarded a Developing Your Creative Practice grant form Arts Council England to bring her sketchbook characters to life through experiments in stop motion animation.
She said, “when I don’t know how to fit in the world, I invent characters and spend time in theirs”
As a legacy of the grant, she has had 3 solo exhibitions of the work which has been well received across ages with feedback including, her ability to make something beautiful out of the overlooked or discarded and the work makes people feel OK to be different.
Image description: 3 character illustrations depicting a hare in a plague mask, a red capped toadstool with singular eye and teeth and a fish hanging on vintage coat hangers.
Most recently she was creative director and provided access consultancy for the Redcar Illumination Christmas Parade, production designer for Full Circle’s Stomping ground with Little Cog and designer, access mentor and creative director for Adventurous Coaching on a year-long schools mental health program and mask making for Paul Millar’s upcoming production of The Gingerbread Witch.
To get in touch with Kim-
Email: kim@greenerlavelle.co.uk
More images (high res) available on request.
Kim McDermottroe (she/her)
Creative Director
Greener Lavelle
Tel: 07979933366
@GreenerLavelle