Melissa Appleton
Melissa Appleton is a producer, curator and spatial designer based in the Welsh Borders. Melissa is currently participating in de Appel Amsterdam’s Curatorial Programme 2022.

Previously Creative Director of Peak, an arts organisation based in the the Black Mountains, Melissa worked with artists and young people to undertake ‘the gentle work of the future’* in dialogue to the complexities, languages and colonial histories of this border region.

Melissa has a background in architecture and has developed programmes where spatial interventions act as mechanisms to access alternative histories, dream states or languages. These include Writtle Calling/2EmmaToc (2012), a radio station in an Essex field, Tonight the World (2019), a collaboration with Daria Martin for Barbican Curve, London & CJM, San Francisco and Quite Suddenly Your Smile is an Architecture (2017), an itinerant exhibition of the publishing projects of poet Jeff Nuttall.

Between 2008-12 Melissa co-directed Post Works with Matthew Butcher, a collaborative architecture studio making environments for dance and live performance. She previously worked for Office for Metropolitan Architecture (NY) and as an art fabrictor for Prototype New York.
Melissa taught at the Ruskin School of Art between 2011-19 and has also taught on art and architecture courses at the Royal College of Art, The Bartlett (UCL) and Nottingham University. 

* words by Owen Griffiths 
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Hinterlands Wales 

A programme of artist-led commissions, research and community structures on the Monmouthshire & Brecon Canal featuring a floating art school Performance Butty, a habitat creation project Pont-y-Ddol and Ahoi! What Grows Here, a proposal for a slow food highway. 

Location: Monmouthshire & Brecon Canal 
Collaborators: Owen Griffiths, Ella Gibbs, Sam Makumba, Stefhan Caddick, Rebecca Chesney. 
Partners: Peak Cymru & Glandwr Cymru 
Date: 2018 – 2021 
Website: ahoiwhatgrows.com
arts programme