April 2026, we reached out to Liz Cooke after I (Sam, hello reader) have spent the last few years at the Isle of Wight Festival looking up at the colourful flags waving back at me.
“We’d love some flags to dress the space for our CAN YOU HEAR US? celebrations. Your usual minimum order is 50, but do you think you could make us 3?”
“I’d love to!”
Now, August 2026, I have had the pleasure of being invited to Liz’s off-grid, tin-barn joyous space, that a gypsy originally built for his wife’s horses. It has since been adapted by Joe, Liz’s partner and Island-based painter & surfer so Liz can create there, and has been for about 12 years. The important additions of a solar panel, a wood-burning stove, and windows. It’s rustic, still, and peaceful, completely surrounded by nature.
The idea originally, was to show you the flags and how they are made. But after talking about the importance of creative spaces, cheerleading the Isle of Wight, and how saying “yes” can completely determine your life, it would feel like a disservice to not share that with you.
“What I like about this space is that it has given me and my practice the ability to grow together.”
Before flag-making, Liz trained and worked as a photographer in a 1990s London. Looking for meditative inspiration, she then traversed India for 6 months, and then moving to the South of the Isle of Wight, specifically Dimbola. A fitting place for an established photographer. I won’t delve into the specifics of the conversations of how Liz enjoyed her first Isle of Wight Festival, although there wasn’t a lot to do for her then one-year-old, and after expressing that directly to John Giddings, he suggested:
“Well, do you want to do that for the festival?”
“Yes!”
The first yes that springboarded the textiles and flag-making career right here on the Isle of Wight.
“I made some flags for the Isle of Wight Festival, then someone asked for flags for hire, and then again, and here we are now. In a way, the Island has made my creative career.”
Reader you should know, as I was moving to the Isle of Wight from a bustling Manchester, I told my closest that I felt sad to be saying goodbye to my creative career, since it would be unsustainable to pursue it whilst living on an Island, so far away from a city centre what I’d known as a creative hub. What felt like accessible rehearsal spaces, studios, theatres on nearly every corner wasn’t going to be available to me anymore. How happy I was to eat my hat.
Because on this small but remarkable Island, the change-makers here are creating their own. They’re turning challenges into opportunities, and quickly at that! And then came the cheerleading. The Sandown Town of Culture shortlisting, the opening of Department, and then Graft Studios, the revival of Open Studios, the whimsical and mischievous Ventnor Fringe. People who decided, yes, we can do this.
So, I asked Liz: “Has the Isle of Wight supported or stunted your creative career?”
“For me, it probably did disrupt the photography and editorial stuff I was working on. Here, there wasn’t a printer or a colour dark-room! The Island gave me my current job. It came out of the Island. I would never have thought of going into textiles, making flags for events. It’s massively given me the career.”
Each flag is made with love, within a space that alludes nothing but positivity. The room is brightly lit and filled with colour, the aroma is a mixture of sun-dried fabric, with a woodsy green hint.
It’s a familiar space, one that although it was my first time visiting, I felt at home. I really do believe that even just walking past the flags when they’re flying at our CAN YOU HEAR US? homebase at the Ventnor Exchange Arena, you’ll come to appreciate the hands that have made, and the Island that shaped them.
