Katy is a Writer/Artist and Creative Director at Wieden+Kennedy, where she has been merrily wandering around for 10 years making BIG TV ads for BIG brands for your BIG telly. She’s is also a BIG believer that being CrE@tIv£ is a horrible marvellous gift, and that your task while being alive is to experiment. Find your weird place in this mad world & give the demons a day off.
Her career* started in Set Design. But, after three years running around covered in glue in the Art Department for Film, TV & Editorial she got a cracking case of shingles, had a lie down, and moved into Advertising (okk fineee, she was always secretly jealous of the people who got to have the ideas on set. Plus, they looked so clean).
Alongside Ads, she’s always kept her own visual practice**. But she started writing “things longer than 30 seconds” a couple of years ago after lying on a really hot rock on an Art Residency in Colombia. That, making this, and a very long stint on a Documentary led to the huge realisation that the future of Writing And Advertising And Basically All Creative Stuff - is not just commercials (ouch***). Although she does really love making Commercials. Like, truly.
Her first comedy sitcom script made Finalist at The Funny Women X BBC Funny Parts Comedy Writing Awards and she has not stopped writing since. Did you know characters could develop? Wow. She recently got the glue sticks back out and Directed her very first very short Animated sketch “Worms on Dreams” which has been selected for Female Pilot Club 2026 . She has a backlog of sitcoms and shorts in the (very slow****) works.
She is currently working on all the above, her actual job and her absolutely banging allotment in Croydon. She is obviously balancing none of that very well. But isn’t that the beauty of this whole being alive thing?
She is, quite clearly, Neurodiverse.
*This is a lie she actually started selling earrings to her mum’s friends when she was about 8.
** Art stuff. She had a piece in the RA and the World Illustration Awards everything. Ooooh.
** Painful! For her. Everyone else already knew that. She is very slow sometimes.
****Told you.
Below is far too much sensible information but if I don’t put it here I will forget it happened and by god do I make stuff happen.
Know that if I could format this into columns, I would. Also know that if it was easy to update the other sections of my website, I would do that too.
Super shiny Writing Stuff:
0800 Deadline - Adult Animation Pilot - Finalist at Funny Women / Scriptapalooza/ Genre Blast & Quarterfinalist at Screen 32 New Voices in Animation
Good Rain - Live action Pilot - Top 4% of applications for the London Library Emerging Writers Programme.
Super Shiny Art Stuff:
My Art Prints and Cards are published by EastEndPrints and they’ve got ‘em into ridiculous places like John Lewis, Kew Gardens and lots of lovely independant places too.
After making the cut for the Royal Academy Summer Show 2019 my work has been stocked in the Royal Academy Shop.
2024 - World Illustration Award Highly Commended (aka #2) : Publishing Category
Exhibitions / Collaborations/ Commissions
2025 - Secret 7” Group Show at The Now Gallery / Group Painting at The Chelsea Arts Club
2024 - Mixed Media Exhibition at The Chelsea Arts Club / Voting Schmoting
2023 - Brixton Art Show / Dulwich Open / Arte Sumapaz Residency
2020 - Artwork for Distance Couture for NHS Charities Together / Give-a-sheet for the WHO
2019 - Royal Academy Summer Show / Group Exhib Brockley / ‘But you look fine’, Shoreditch / Artwork for CONKER & a5mag.
2017 - Illustrations for D&AD
2015 - Dazed X Ghostpoet Openshoot winner
2014 - Drink Shop Do Exhibition w/ Hannah Myatt & Southbank Shop window Takeover
2013 - Joint Exhibition + speaker @ The Jerwood Space Out of Hours
2012 - Cover Artwork for The Burning Sand (Sarah Lowndes, Glasgow School of Art) 2012
Advertising (mostly Mentoring) stuff:
2024 - Creative Director of The Kennedys, London.
2019-2024 Investin Mentor & Program Lead
2019-2021- Jury for Le Book Connection West Coast
2020 - RARE Google Leadership Program / Jury for New Blood / Cream Mentor @ The Talent Business
2019 - British Arrows runner up
2017-2018 - Youtube Top 10 ads of the year & Shots Awards Top ads of the year
2016 - Cream Winner / D&AD New Blood Yellow Pencil WWF / Creative Conscience Awards
2016 & Earlier…
Before Advertising I worked as an Art Director & Art Department for Music Videos, Events, Editorial Shoots, TV & even a feature film, under amazingly talented people like Hattie Newman, Anna Lomax and Emma Roach. Highlights include... making it rain Pepsi inside a shop in Bethnal Green, creating a fresh flower dress for Alexander McQueens retrospective issue of British Vogue (which was then showcased in the V&A), working as a Marshmallow therapist at Bestival, a foreign language BAFTA nomination for a film I was Lead Graphic Designer on (lol), and a viral-before-viral was a thing experience of being The Metros "best thing to happen in April 2015" when we left a Toast Taj Mahal out on the street after a shoot... you can see why I got shingles can’t you?