Biography

Kate Burnett is an award-winning theatre designer, creative producer and curator of performance design. She has worked with UK regional, national and touring theatre companies, also schools and community performance projects with orchestras, opera companies and art galleries. From 2003-2018 she was Reader in Theatre Design at Nottingham Trent University.
Since 1994 Kate has curated and co-curated five national exhibitions and catalogues of design for performance for the SBTD. Selections from these have been exhibited at the Prague Quadrennial (winning a Gold Medal in 1995, Golden Triga in 2003 and Special Jury Award in 2015), in regional UK galleries and at the V&A, London in 2007 and 2015. For World Stage Design (WSD) 2013 in Cardiff Kate was editor of the accompanying catalogue. For WSD2017 in Taipei she was a member of the exhibition selection panel and Final Jury.
Kate was elected Chair of the History & Theory, now Research Commission of OISTAT from 2007

A project to restore an 1811 Wesleyan Methodist Chapel in the Peak District as a spiritual and community resource for local and visitors’ use. Edale is on the east-west drovers’ trails across the Pennines. 18th C peripatetic Methodist ministers used these routes, establishing chapels in small rural communities. This one was founded in a snowstorm in 1759, local farmers collaborating to build a permanent chapel in 1811. Since then its use has diminished, but its simplicity and peace make it popular with locals and hundreds of visitors who walk the same trails now. This journeying and need for places of respite is our inspiration. My role has been / is in seeing the contemporary potential of this place, researching its vernacular style, designing in the elements that will make it accessible (water, toilets, kitchen, archive, community garden, restoring the original gallery (Image2), co-ordinating a wonderfully creative professional team, collaborating with as many who wish to share the journey – and raising the funds to do so. We are on our way, watch this space, better still come and visit!