North Star Co-Design​​
North Star Co-Design was founded in 2022 by theatre maker Louie Ingham and writer Lee Mattinson, who have worked together since 2015 on a series of socially-engaged and place-based projects. We co-create with people in a variety of settings and our process is a person-led approach to making ambitious new ideas happen.
We are powered by a co-led idea and experiment with doing things differently in curious and unmissable new ways. With a combined 40 years working in the cultural sector, we:
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- Activate cultural experiences in the most underserved wards
- Co-create with community collaborators and guest specialists
- Make ambitious, daring and bold new work
Our work often involves food and the shared experience of nourishing both cultural and physical hunger. A great leveller, we break bread with residents and psycho-geographers, farmers and specialists, refugees from Syria and Geordies from Devon. We focus on illuminating the beauty and chaos of the world we live in and believe it is the idea that binds us.
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Biogs​​​
Louie Ingham is a theatre maker and socially engaged artist with a passion for ambitious new work, modern ideas and collective processes.
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She is former Associate Director at Northern Stage and was Associate Director at The Dukes. As a freelance theatre maker, Louie has worked on new work programmes across the UK including National Theatre, Vanishing Point Theatre Company, Liverpool Everyman Playhouse, Royal Exchange, Theatre by the Lake, National Theatre of Wales, The Tron, British Council, UK Visiting Arts, Farnham Maltings, UK Arts International and York Theatre Royal.
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Lee Mattinson is an award-winning playwright originally from West Cumbria and his short film Fist (Elevator/BFI) won the RTS Award 2023 for Best Drama Performance.
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Theatre credits include: Crocodiles (Royal Exchange); Snap (Young Vic); Gary Lineker is Gay (Paines Plough); Chalet Lines (Bush Theatre); No Wire Hangers (Soho Theatre); The Kids Are Alright, I Heart Catherine Pistachio (Encounter); Me and Cilla, Jonathan Likes This (Live Theatre); The Season Ticket (Pilot Theatre/Northern Stage). Radio credits include: Me and Cilla, Tongue, Glow in the Dark, 2 Clowns, 1 Trumpet (BBC Radio 3); Magpie (BBC Radio 4); Prom, Snowglobe (BBC Radio Newcastle). TV credits include: Coronation Street (Story Associate, ITV); Scallywagga (BBC 3). Film credits include: Fist (Elevator/BFI).

Photo: David Jones @jonesfotografie
​Directors
​Stephen Pritchard
Caroline Ryan
Shelley Jackson​




