Angela Lock is the owner and director of Art Club. She has been running Art Club’s ever-growing range of classes and workshops in Stockport and Manchester for nearly five years and is even more excited about the next five years of Art Club now it will have a permanent home, in the heart of Heaton Moor.

Angela is a professional illustrator and textile designer. She has lived in The Heatons for 25 years, raising her 4 children in the community.  She has adored watching her kids play their team sports and is a lifelong Man City fan, although she detests all forms of exercising herself.

Despite her natural reluctance to break a sweat, she has spent the last year toiling over the renovations to turn our space into an Art Club Cafe that will house all different community groups. 

Alongside arts and crafts in all forms, Angela loves music (particularly when it’s live) and dancing. Once upon a time she used to be a goth, and very recently she hid in the toilets of a large music venue to sneak into a rave.

Briá Purdy is an artist and writer based in Heaton Moor. Having studied History of Art and French at the University of Edinburgh, she graduated in 2022 with a First Class Honours Degree and is a co-founder of Fairly Current, a multilingual arts and cultures blog. As a part of the Art Club team, Briá will be running History of Art classes, weekly kids' and teen art classes and workshops, as well as working at the cafe and bar.

Ella Langley is a writer, director and creative facilitator who grew up in Heaton Moor and has just moved home in time for the Art Club Cafe’s grand opening! 

She loves all things art including: Irish dancing, playing the drums, running book clubs, crocheting sweater vests, and singing out of tune. 

Ella has had her plays produced in London, Oxford and at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Her collaborative show at Wilton’s Music Hall with West End and TV writer James Graham was also published by Bloomsbury. She has previously been a writing mentor at Ministry of Stories in Hoxton and currently teaches Creative Classes for a local womens’ centre. Ella graduated from Oxford University in 2018 with a first class degree in English Language and Literature. 

You’ll find Ella at the cafe teaching her tried and tested Introduction to Creative Writing Courses; pulling pints behind the bar; or working on her next script - please say hello!