Behind MarketPlace Arts is a small, core team of just five people, you can meet them below but we are also creating a wider network of others like us, who are ambitious for what the arts can do in Fenland and West Suffolk.
Maddie Exton
Creative Director & CEO
Claire Sawford
Programme Manager
Claire joined MarketPlace Arts in November 2022. She has an extensive background working across the arts and creative industries in project programming and management, event delivery, audience development and marcomms roles. She has devised and delivered community engagement projects, educational initiatives connecting students across the globe, art exhibitions, fashion shows, film and literary festivals. Organisations she has worked with include the V&A, Royal Academy, Crafts Council, Cockpit Arts, Cole & Son (Wallpapers). Most recently she delivered Newnham College, Cambridge’s 150th Anniversary Festival. She is inspired by the beauty of our landscape, history and heritage.
Janet Robertson
Creative Producer – West Suffolk
Carly Robinson
Creative Producer – Fenland
Carly joined MarketPlace Arts in July 2024 following the completion of her PhD at Birkbeck, University of London where she also held an Associate Tutor position teaching English and creative writing. Her research interrogated how a practice of reading experimental literary forms could inspire readers to become engaged with modes of activism and social change. In 2022 she was successful in obtaining Wellcome Trust funding to curate an exhibition and programme of events at the Peltz gallery Birkbeck, on the theme of creativity as reparation. As a writer, creative and lover of books, she is motivated by engaging people with the power of literature and creative practice. Through her work at Cambridgeshire Libraries she runs creative writing sessions and pop-up book club events. She is part of the Neotists collective and most recently was involved in the organisation of the 2024 St Neots Festival, curating and managing the new Theatre Zone.
Kirsten Parriss
Engagement Manager
Kirsten joined the team in July 2025. She worked as a primary school teacher in and around Peterborough, Huntingdon and Lincolnshire for fifteen years before taking on the role of Associate Producer with Peterborough Presents, then progressing to the role of Engagement Manager with MarketPlace Arts. A lifelong musician and lover of literature, she sings with her local choir and has performed all over the UK, including at the Edinburgh Fringe. She is passionate about facilitating engagement with the arts for underserved communities and has a keen interest in accessibility and inclusion, particularly with regard to the disabled and Neurodivergent communities.
Our Board of Trustees
Katherine Nightingale, Chair
Godfrey Smith
Patricia Norris
Mark Haydon