Announcing the CCA Ulster University Graduate Support Awards 2026

Natalie Gibson (MFA) and Áine Crawford are the recipients of the 2026 CCA Ulster University Graduate Support Awards! The Award consists of the opportunity to use CCA's Project Space, stipend and mentoring with CCA Director Catherine Hemelryk.

About Natalie Gibson

Natalie Gibson is the MFA recipient. She is a contemporary painter, based in Belfast. Her practice experiments with playful colour palettes and drawing elements to explore ambiguous figures that are instinctively discovering, navigating and interacting with their version of the rural earth alongside the nature and animals that inhabit it for the first time with a curious and innocent intention. She is keenly interested in Irish mythology and folk tales as well as landscape, shape shifting and transmigration. She graduated with 1st class honours in Fine Art from Belfast School of Art in 2022 and was a member of the Emerging Artist Programme at Flax Art Studios (2022–26) and was one of eleven emerging artists across the UK to be awarded the Freelands Painting Prize in 2022.
NatalieGibsonArtist.squarespace.com

About Áine Crawford

Áine Crawford is the BA recipient. Their practice explores moments in the everyday and mundane where the abject body is at a threshold, caught in jeopardy physically, mentally, or through sensory inputs. A foundation of this practice is an interest in storytelling and worldbuilding, which they develop through drawings described as “my ladies” existing within their void, liminal world that parallels our own. In the face of rapidly increasing femicide and domestic violence statistics in a post-conflict North of Ireland, their ladies act as narrators to explore how misogyny and surveillance directly impact female presenting bodies within the domestic sphere. They have previously been a Co-Director at Platform Arts, Belfast and have appeared in group exhibitions at Vault, Belfast, University of Manchester and performed at Belfast International Festival of Performance Art at PS2 in 2026.
@naked.wellyboots 

Supported by Ulster University. CCA is supported by Arts Council of Northern Ireland, Derry City & Strabane District Council and Garfield Weston Foundation.

Images:
Natalie Gibson, Midsummer night, Sweet delight, 2026. Oil on canvas.
Áine Crawford, Milk Factory, [2/19], He Said/She Said (2025-2026). Monoprint series on Japanese paper