Finn

Finn is profoundly Deaf. Finn was also born with a degenerative eye condition. He studied at the London International Film School. With his passion for story-telling, he studied a Masters in computer animation.

He directed “The Long Knife” which was developed when he joined creative pioneers at NESTA. The film won Best Non-Narrative Film in 2007 at DeafFest.In 2014 he made an award-winning documentary called, “The Big Decisions”.

In 2017/18 Finn was a recipient of DASH mentoring project, Cultivate, for disabled artists in West Midlands and was mentored by Senior Research Fellow David Prytherch PhD, FHEA, HFGE; a glass engraver/sculptor, who introduced Finn the subject of haptic (touch) interfaces. DASH matched Finn with artist Dean Melbourne, who continues to mentor Finn and network him into the West Midlands Visual Arts scene.

In 2018 Finn received an Arts Council Grant to make digital drawings using a large touch screen. Sunney Sharm, Sense Arts & Wellbeing Coordinator was delighted with Finn’s art-work and offered Finn the opportunity to exhibit ‘Patterns’ at TouchBase Pears Birmingham, this was followed by another exhibition called “An itch and a scream”.

Finn is currently commissioned for an R&D project by National Arts Award for Deaf and Disabled artists, Unlimited to develop a virtual fish tank that the user explores using HaloLens and Haptic technology. It’s dependent on partnership with Coventry University and in kind support from Tech company UltraLeap. Finn research is timely given that the current situation means we've suddenly lost the freedom to 'touch'.