Miki Rogers

Website: https://www.rubyandblue.co.uk
Profile: Miki Rogers Outreach Curator Miki has been with Tees Valley Arts since 2014 as Adults Officer, then Projects Officer before becoming Outreach Curator in 2020. Her work involves the curation and ongoing support and management of projects which include the Great Place suite of projects, and projects with the organisation have included film, music, craft, festival and many other projects with local communities of all ages, and from diverse ethnicities, cultural and economic backgrounds. 2019 was an example of busy year with the Real Tees Valley Film Project and Steel Gala happening concurrently as part of Great Place alongside the many other activities and projects being produced by the organisation. Miki has a diverse background, working in Fashion Design, as a Teacher in Primary Schools, Exclusion Units and Prison settings, and with her own arts and making practice. Her interests in this area lie in the difference she has seen creativity and culture make to otherwise disparate communities, and how group friendship support and encouragement in making and doing give people the ability to have feel they have choice, purpose and dignity. Before Tees Valley Arts, Miki was working with her own creative businesses, the making Business Ruby & Blue and tea shop/community and gallery space SkyBlueRed Studio, supporting people with Special Educational Needs as well as providing a cultural, community and meet-up space for locals and visitors to Guisborough. Miki has involved herself in activism at a local level for much of her life, setting up and running community groups, independent markets, shop local schemes and cultural events. She stood as a candidate in local council elections in 2019. In what’s left of her time, Miki has the tea blending and retail business, ‘Whole Lot of Rosie’ selling at farmers markets and food festivals. She continues with her own practice, working for organisations such as Middlesbrough Council and The Auxiliary, and enjoys a huge range of creative and craft activity, as well as digital illustration, developing her practice during the period of lockdown in 2020 and 2021. Miki lives in Guisborough with her husband, a driver and musician, and rescue dog Polo and has two adult children who are also creatives.