Ben Hunt
Chief Executive
I have been passionate about Prescap since I started working for them as a freelancer in 1997. As the company CE I feel honoured to be working in such a direct and responsible way with this company and along with Vogarth, my comic, feel this is one of the high points in my life.
I love the way we use art to work with communities and people to allow them to explore issues important to them, or to improve their lives (learning new skills, learning how they learn, discovering more about themselves). I have always felt art was one of the greatest things about our culture and the human existence! And the work Prescap does proves that – like the disabled history installation, History Zone; the volunteer at Preston FM who discovers he has a real passion for technical support work or the young person finding maths a little less scary because she had fun with her class mates as they learnt.
In the next three years Prescap is going to prove to the people of Lancashire and the North West that art is vital to a healthy and vibrant society and essential for growing human economies. Working with our partners, we are going to show how art motivates people in a unique way, be it painting, performance, radio, music, new media, sculpture or playing with ideas, as they develop their own.
I still create comics, paintings and love photography – the interplay of light, colour and humour always enthrals me, and I really appreciate art from the renaissance to contemporary, and in all its guises as entertainment, like Jack Kirby and Albert Uderzo, to thought provoking and contemplative, like Mark Rothko.
I make music and perform in beat combos; and really love the emotion and mood sound can create – though mostly I just want to make a lovely noise to leap about to! Lately I’ve been channelling electro space rock disco in the form of Quantum Beats, drawing on the powers of Hardfloor, Hawkwind, Dadam Phreak Noize Phunk, Can, Sabbath, early Prodigy and Dr Who sound tracks!
I was asked about my favourite river… I dont have one! The concept is strange to me, but will say that there have been three rivers in my life:
The Thames! Oh yes, what a powerful body of water that is! Dirty and grimy, the life blood of the capital and an empire, and the river of my birth town, London!
The Mersey! Another dirty old estuary! The river of my youth, travelling under it and on it as I’d go out to shop and party… lying between Liverpool and the Wirral, where I lived, studied and partied, learning to be a growed up
The Ribble! Dirty? Maybe… but the river I see just about every day, living in Preston.
All three are tidal! All three connect the places I lived in to the rest of the world. They have water in them and probably fish.
