Looking Back on 2025 at Creative Exchange

2025 was a big year at Creative Exchange — the kind of year that stretches, tests.. makes you think and makes you proud too. Here are some of the key moments:

A Brave Start

We started the year being bold and trying something new: launching the Emerging Exchange artists project supported by Belfast City Council, expanding into two units in A-Block, and welcoming new temporary members through an open call process. We also said (what thankfully turned out to be only a partial) goodbye to staff member Sinead O'Neil Nicholl, and began the search for someone to fill her impressive shoes as Studio Manager. Alongside this, we saw changes at board level, saying farewell to some long-standing trustees, including our former chair, Chris Armstrong.

As always, Creative Exchange's artists did what artists do best: they showed up, made work, sold work, and exhibited it locally and internationally — from Belfast to Dublin, London to Shanghai.

Growth & New Faces

In spring and early summer, we welcomed Meadhbh McIlgorm as our new Studio Manager, along with our new Emerging Exchange artists — Izzy, Nichola, Katie, Emma, Eimear and Emma — growing the studio group overall by an incredible 40%. We also welcomed studio-members Bernie, Derek and Jude onto the board of trustees, which felt like a really positive step towards shared values and ensuring the future development of Creative Exchange remains artist-led.

Behind the scenes, there was a lot of learning, a lot of adjusting, and a lot of juggling admin, funding applications and dealing with leaks and maintenance dramas. All the while, artists kept on making work and spinning the many plates of the self-employed.

A Big Summer

Summer into autumn was full-on! We mounted two collective exhibitions — Drafting as part of EastSide Arts Festival in July/August, followed by FUSE upstairs on Portview’s second floor in September which was our biggest group show to date! Both were huge collective efforts and a real moment of pride for the studio group.

A routine service brought terrible news that the heating system had failed. This was followed by a slightly panicked, slightly heroic application for ACNI Small Capital funding to fix it. As always, behind the curtains and partitions, artists were busy making, showcasing and selling excellent work, developing research projects and continuing their practices.

Ending the Year Together

The final part of the year wrapped up with lots of Open Studio events, including a brilliant collaboration with our neighbors at QSS using a new guided tour format, as well as welcoming hundreds of visitors though the doors thanks to the ever-popular Portview Markets.

The year also ended on a much sadder note, with the loss of founder studio member Ray Duncan in November. We are deeply grateful for everything he gave to Creative Exchange, and very aware that without the vision of Ray and others before us, this place and this community simply would not exist.

From top left: Sinead and peers representing the studio sector at a briefing Stormont in Feb, Open studio tours in Oct, members representing us at the ALINE networking event in Vault in April, preparing for Christmas in the studio, Ray with his work at our 2023 show fondly remembered, a newly fixed extraction flue in Dec restoring heat.

Looking Ahead

So: a year of change, growth, stress, generosity, graft, ambition, and a huge amount of collective effort. Not always easy but very real and something everyone involved should be proud of!

As we head into 2026, we’re carrying all of this with us. Cheers to another exciting year of being a stable and supportive studio space where great things can grow!