Staff

Creative Director

Jon Blyth BA(Hons) PGCE MA FRS

Jon is a creative practitioner and educationalist in photographic culture. He is a part time lecturer at University College Falmouth and Plymouth College of Art. On gaining a First Class BA(Hons) in Photography from Nottingham Trent University in 2000, Blyth then worked as a researcher at the university and as a photographer for Lief Interior Design and Dance Four before moving to France to follow his interest in teaching through Czech Republic and Poland. After completing a PGCE in Secondary Education Art and Design at Oxford Brookes University in 2006 he was then awarded support from the Arts Humanities Research Council and moved to Cornwall to study MA Photography.

In 2007 he co-founded POST Journal for Arts Culture and Research, a bi-annual publication that focuses on the creative arts in the SW of England with the emphasis placed on the creative culture of postgraduate study and research produced from University College Falmouth and Dartington College of Arts. Blyth has exhibited work at Norwich Arts Centre in the Norwich Open, POSK, Polish Centre (London) and his underwater series Re-Enchanting Photography at Photo Stroud, Festival of Photography 2007 (Stroud). His contemporary visual practice evolves through a long-standing interest with the phenomenological aspects of water, memory and photography. Blyth works with photographic archives and the contemporary histories of swimming communities across Devon and Cornwall with the aim of creating new visual and oral heritage.

Creative Director

Matthew Pontin BA(Hons) MA

Matthew has lived in the South West since gaining an MA in Photography in 2005 at University College Falmouth. He is a lecturer in photography on BA(Hons) Photography programme at Plymouth College of Art, also teaching at UCF and University of Plymouth. In 2002 he received a First Class BA(Hons) in Photojournalism from Swansea Metropolitan University (University of Wales) and soon after was awarded the Welsh Graduate Photography Prize culminating in the publication and exhibition 'Ha-Ha: Margam Revisited' for Ffotogallery (Cardiff). In 2003 he received Millennium award funding to publish 'Street Pigeons' which was launched alongside an exhibition in Swansea.

Pontin's personal practice often explores the notion of contemporary travel and social mobility, working across fine-art and documentary and developing collaborative projects with specific communities. In 2006 he curated the successful Arts Council England show 'Unravelling Photography' at Quay Arts (Isle of Wight) and was commissioned as artist in residence at Centre for Contemporary Art and the Natural World (CCANW, Haldon Forest). He continues to exhibit nationally, in 2007 at Bargate Monument Gallery (Southampton) and G39 (Cardiff) and in 2008 as part of 'Cultural Memory' exhibition at the University of Kent (Canterbury) and most recently at Bath Arts Fringe 2010. He has had critical text published in the University of Alberta journal 'Space and Culture' and continues to write about photography and visual culture.