Collect art fair director Isobel Dennis is to leave Crafts Council, concluding a seven-year tenure - and creating a vacancy for one of the craft community’s most exciting positions.
Isobel will leave the national charity for craft shortly after delivery of the 21st edition of the fair, taking place between 28 February - 02 March 2025 (previews take place on 26-27 February).
During Isobel’s time leading the fair, Collect has become the leading international art fair for contemporary craft and design, bringing together galleries, collectors and makers with everyday people who want to encounter the best new works in contemporary craft. As well as being an important selling opportunity for galleries and makers, Collect has become a moment to forge new collaborations and relationships – set within the fair’s cornucopia of new work, materials, techniques and ideas.
Acting also as Crafts Council’s commercial director, Isobel brokered partnerships with organisations seeking Crafts Council’s expertise in delivering cultural and place-making programmes. Partnerships with firms including Brookfield Properties and LOEWE FOUNDATION support makers and share contemporary craft with more audiences, while securing crucial funding to underpin the charity’s work with schools and communities.
The Brookfield Properties Craft Award, a part of Crafts Council’s partnership with the property organisation for the past six years, results in the winning works being acquired from makers by Brookfield Properties and then donated to Crafts Council Collection each year.
“It has been my privilege to be director of Collect,” says Isobel. “During my seven years with the fair and with fantastic people around me, I helped move Collect to Somerset House, saw it through a pandemic – ensuring it survived and thrived thereafter – and celebrated twenty years of the fair in 2024. We’re now taking it forward to its 21st edition, ready to hand over to someone new.
"Collect, more than any other fair or exhibition I have overseen, has allowed me to indulge in my passion for contemporary craft, meet extraordinarily talented artists and form enduring relationships with our galleries and partners."
During her time as fair director, Isobel has seen an exciting blurring of art boundaries, adding that the power of live art fairs as a way to share craft can only grow. “Contemporary craft and contemporary art are far more interchangeable now, providing collectors with a much broader choice of exceptional artworks and makers to invest in. Collect continues to influence the collectors' market as materiality, provenance and making with the hand is so valued in an artist's practice," she says.
“At Collect, new relationships begin, business is done, and new opportunities arise. The connectivity one experiences in the short burst of a live art fair is an invigorating tonic,” she says. “As social creatures, we value the emotional and intellectual response we have to something of beauty, enjoying the discussion and sharing in its celebration.”
Applications to the role of Collect fair director close on Monday, 3 March. Learn more about the role and explore the world of Collect art fair.