Salon 005 

15th July 2025

The fifth Salon of Doubt will start at 18:00 pm 

Address: The Art Workers’ Guild,  6 Queen Square, London WC1N 3AT

Further details of this event will be available shortly.

To reserve Tickets please click HERE

The Salon of Doubt was up until now  a free event, you could reserve a seat via an eventbrite  link, the evening was always popular and sold out very quickly. Unfortunately, quite a large proportion of people who reserved seats never turned up on the night and as such people who really wanted to attend the evening didnt get a place whilst there were many empty seats in the hall.
Hopefully this new policy might deter people from booking and not attending. The funds from ticket sales will go towards the Art Workers’ Guild Outreach department and will be used to fund future projects with our community.

Click on name or photo to be taken to the speaker’s website.

Jade Chanel P

Jade Chanel P is a tattoo artist living and working in London. She is not a Brother of the Art Workers’ Guild.

In her own words.

Hi! I’m Jade, a tattoo artist based in East London, celebrated for my intricate fine-line black and grey designs that exude precision and a delicate, feminine aesthetic. My artistic journey began in 2015 with an apprenticeship at Lowrider Tattoo in Bethnal Green. I am the founder of Vaporwave Tattoo est 2018, a vibrant and inclusive studio, which I recently closed. The studio reflected my personal style, drawing inspiration from my 90s upbringing, and served as a creative hub for essentially for women to flourish. My commitment to fostering a supportive space underscores my dedication to both my craft and the tattoo community.

I will be speaking about ‘Breaking the Ink Ceiling: Misogyny in the Male-Dominated Tattoo Industry’

Sally Pollitzer

The pursuit of colour through paint and glass - a long , unresolved journey.

I am a child of the 1960s free to choose any direction, but freedom comes with a cost. Apart from teaching there was time to doubt in those chilly shared studios, with cigarettes to hand. My flat, colour-drenched canvases were crying out for resolution via solid form and craft. Anxiety from exhibiting might be avoided by taking commissions where I might I feel useful, loved and satisfied? ‘Stained glass’ obliged and painting became secondary. Church commissions eventually evaporated - but what a relief! Whether my paintings are of value is doubtful, and
‘costly’ new materials seem indulgent in a warming world.

Maria Ryan

I am a musicologist currently writing a book about music and slavery in the British Colonial Caribbean in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. At the Salon of Doubt I will be talking about my uncertanties about writing histories centering enslaved people from an often hostile historical record. When do histories become stories? What is the ethical obligation of the historian? And how does music fit into violent histories?

Stafford Schmool

Stafford Schmool, Consultant Bricoleur. I do all sorts of things, almost always working with great clients.My last big project was Toklas Restaurant and Bakery, where I designed the interiors, furniture, lighting, garden and terrace bar. Most of the furniture is vintage, much of the material reclaimed, & the food is great!

I currently find myself six years deep into my lockdown/sabbatical ‘PhD’ on Eileen Gray, a truly independent Irish woman; designer, architect, artist and maker, 1878-1976. To my great surprise I started to actually discover things early on in my research… photographs that had never been seen… unpublished drawings… did no one ever look in that box?!?

I’m not an academic; do I want or need a PhD?

Pete Gomes

I am a filmmaker, visual artist and musician. In 2024 I got my Macumbista Benjolin - an analog modular ‘chaotic’ synthesiser. It is a handbuilt electronic instrument which was customised for me. With its switches, dials, wires and plug board it would not look out of place on the set of a 1950’s science fiction film.

The machine has seemingly infinite variables, combinations and possibilities, no keyboard, no way of finding specific sounds or keys, or storing settings and no instructions.

Attempting to play it feels like trying to tame an animal. It required patience, experimentation and developing my own methodologies and processes, which in turn led to new forms of notation and graphic scores.

This presentation uses my Benjolin as a vehicle to reflect on learning, uncertainty and the value of ‘not knowing’ as part of a creative process; Exploring improvisation and intuition, I’ll consider how productive doubt can generate openness to possibilities and new creative discoveries.

Abi Meats

Hi, I’m Abi Meats — co-founder of Rude, Everyday Sunshine, and I Am Creative. I’m an artist, idealist, educator, and activist, passionate about forging vibrant, inclusive connections between young people and the creative industries.


I’d love to share my new book and movement: I Am Creative. Frustrated by the shrinking space for arts and creative thinking in schools, I began an after-school art club at my kids’ school around 2010. Watching children light up as they explored different creative disciplines was magical — it sparked curiosity and confidence. That journey became a book concept, once almost published by Thames & Hudson. But it languished on Dropbox, and I doubted it would ever see the light of day. Then, when Rishi Sunak declared all kids must study maths to 18, a fire was lit. I raised £25k, we published a first edition, and now Hachette is launching it this September. The dreams are big — but doubt is always part of the path.   

Anna Dickinson

I am an artist workingprimarily in glass.

At the Salon of Doubt I will be talking about growing up in the 60s as an undiagnosed dyslexic child and how my different way of seeing things vreated a world of doubt and fear, particularily academically.

I found comfort in creativity. It enabled me to express myself freely in a way that made me feel good.

Quite recently I had brain surgery followed shortly after by a stroke.

This experience had a positively significant effect on my way of thinking and my work, opening up areas and creating an inner confidence to explore very different narratives I had perviously felt out of reach.

Jenny Dyson

I’m Jenny Dyson and I am a creative being based in London. I spent many years working in magazines and print as a writer, photographer and editor [Vogue, Elle, Teen Vogue...plus Rubbish, my own fashion Magazine, to name a few]. 

I then moved into digital and brand publishing and storytelling with PENCIL, my creative agency. As the ruler of Pencil I made newspapers, magazines, websites and films for fashion, beauty, lifestyle and luxury brands and I also founded and published the official newspaper for London Fashion Week for many years.

Strictly outside of my day job (I work in gaming and have done since 2020), in my down time I fell down a crazy rabbit hole of making images and ceramics using AI. In my case the AI was Artist’s Imagination [mine] and Artificial Intelligence [machines]. The ceramics and prints I have made are beautiful, and crazy, and would never exist if I hadn’t begun a dialogue with the AI machines. Honestly, I doubt they would exist were it not for me dreaming them up. So does my exploring ideas with AI negate the work? I’d like to bring this question of doubt to you and share the work I have made. I will share how I have used AI in my creative process and how I am bringing the imagined unreal works into the real, physical realm by working with human craft, working currently on an exhibition of sculptures created originally by machines following my brief, and now are being made by human hands.

If you are doubting this, all the more reason for you to join me, who is constantly doubting myself at every turn.