Ann Gilligan trained as a sculptor at Bretton Hall College graduating in 1989 with a 1st class honours degree. She set up Green Monster Arts in 1995 which allowed her to take on much bigger projects and to subcontract other artists to broaden the range of skills on offer.

It also meant developing administrative skills such as project management, contracting other workers , accounting and budgeting.

She has gained a wealth of experience in marketing and publicity, evaluation and report writing, liasing with council departments and other professional and voluntary organisations and developing funding applications.

You'll know it's Ann turning up to see you as she drives a very silly van covered with monsters and monkeys - we're not sure what it does for her street cred but she certainly gets noticed!

Her frequent collaborators are:

Karen Allerton a Manchester based artist who trained at MMU. Karen's a whizz with words and also reckons her cutting technique is parallel to none (well we have to admit she's pretty fast).

Rupert Griffiths a technical genius who did his degree in micro engineering and uses this background to come up with weird but wonderful solutions to project briefs. He's also rather good on a computer.

Gill Morley a drama teacher who moonlights as our performance director when we're called to anything that involves showing ourselves up! She's quite handy with a sewing machine when it comes to making costumes (and she can crochet).

Rachel Summerscales who specialises in Community Consultation and is also the woman to go to if you need help with fund raising and grant applications - she's got her own business doing it. She's also the person you need around to keep order when running riotous playschemes! You can get in touch with Rachel at rachel_summerscales@yahoo.com

Finally just to confuse people I am also in an artist partnership with Tracey Cartledge and Karen called Monkey Business which runs parallel to Green Monster Arts and tends to take the lead on bigger projects. Monkey Business will have its own website one day but in the meantime there's a bit about Monkey Business on this site and you can find more about Tracey's own artwork at www.traceycartledge.co.uk