Every month Brave Island runs a Young Creative of the Month fund, where we spotlight a local young creative with an interview on our blog, and support them with funding of £100. For February, it’s set and costume designer, Emma Wyeth. This fund launches at the beginning of every month, you can apply to be Young Creative of the Month for March here.

Please can you tell us about your creative practice?
I work within a range of creative practices, mainly performance design projects which include costume and set design for both theatre and film. 

Throughout 2025, I worked on a ‘Nouveau Folk’ Costume project where I designed a range of brightly coloured ‘ceremonial’ costumes inspired by British Folk stories. With photographer Lemon Williams and Artist Sophia Jones, we took these costumes to ancient burial grounds and mesolithic stone circles in both rural Dorset and South West Wales and shot a series of photos in context of these ancient spaces.

In 2023, I joined midlands-based film company ‘Forgotten Birthday Films’ where I was brought on as a costume designer. I have since worked on four productions for the company, designing, sourcing and making costumes for a range of characters and scripts. One of my highlights from film work is exploring challenging rural environments and being able to travel across the country. 

I recently graduated from the Arts University Bournemouth with a degree in Design for Costume and Performance, this was a fantastic course that has given me all sorts of opportunities in the arts, even a year after graduating. 

While studying in Dorset, I was able to join an emerging ‘New Folk’ Morris dancing group called Ray Collective where I was able to collaboratively design costumes for the group, which we performed on the summer solstice 2025.

Who or what are your biggest inspirations for your work?
I find myself constantly inspired by ancient British history, archaeology and folk stories. I like the idea that our culture has always been shaped by the constant movement of people migrating north and settling here, like a metaphorical sedimentary rock of cultural influences.  I think folk stories are integral to a sense of collective identity and don’t always have to be static and rooted in tradition, as artist Lucy Wright states in her Folk Manifesta,

‘Folk happens when people, alone or together, and regardless of anything engage in culture they create for themselves.’ 

– Lucy Wright 2021

 I think this current wave of folk revival in our country is very exciting for the British Arts and inspires me to explore this on the Island within my own practice in costume design.

Do you have any projects coming up that you’re particularly excited about?
I’m about to travel back to the mainland to resume filming a second unit of a feature length film entitled ‘I am King Vernon’ directed by Brian Okechiukwu and produced by Forgotten Birthday Films. 

I’m also excited about bringing my creative practice back to the island and exploring more projects here, where I’m from. I’m currently planning a folk costume project inspired by some old English ballads, set on the West Wight coastline. I’ve been designing some interesting, elaborate costume pieces for this and I hope to photograph it when the spring comes round and the weather picks up!

I’ve also just begun a painting project exploring two stone age axe heads my dad found when he was ten down Thorness Bay, they’re really beautiful carved pieces of flint that were made by our ancestors during the Mesolithic period which I am planning to paint on large scale canvases. 

Where can people find your work if they’d like to support you?
I have an Instagram page @kitsch.obscene where I post my work and projects, I also have a website.

Ray Collective’s work can be found on Instagram at: @ray_collective_

Forgotten Birthday Film’s work can be found on Instagram at: @forgottenbirthdayfilms