Meet Our Team

Christine is one of the original founders of Blick. She studied fashion and textile design at Ulster University and briefly worked in industry in Italy before returning to Northern Ireland to set up her own fashion business. When she returned to Northern Ireland, Christine realised she didn’t know anyone working in the fashion industry in Northern Ireland or anything about starting a creative business. She found starting a creative business from home a lonely experience, especially after working alongside other creatives in busy open-plan design studios. She found it hard to meet like-minded people, stay motivated and inspired, and actually be productive working alone at home. She did a NESTA creative entrepreneurship course at Ulster University, and it reminded her of the value of working alongside other creatives and of having a space outside the house to work from for productivity, motivation and for work/life balance. She realised working from home meant she had missed out on lots of opportunities and the chance to meet new people. The other creatives on the course felt the same way, and together they decided to set up a shared studio.

They received £5,000 of funding from Unltd and rented a big warehouse in Belfast City Centre as a pilot project. Christine soon realised running a fashion business wasn’t for her, and Blick needed someone to take ownership of the project, so she took over the role of managing the organisation. Since then, Christine has been hands-on in all aspects of the business. Developing the organisation and its different products, services and projects in partnership with Rosy and with support from the board of directors and different freelance creatives. Christine is passionate about encouraging and supporting creatives to follow their dreams no matter how big or small, encouraging diversity within entrepreneurship and building creative communities so creatives don’t have to work in isolation or feel alone on their creative journeys.

After completing a degree in Economics at Edinburgh University, Rosy moved back to Belfast without a clear idea of how she wanted her career to progress. She worked in a few different roles before getting involved as a part-time volunteer with the running of Blick in 2007.

A role at a local start-up company as part of a graduate training programme gave her an insight into the opportunities and challenges of working within that environment. As Blick grew and became more busy, Rosy left full-time employment to concentrate more time on her work at Blick. With the support of the Board of Trustees, Rosy is responsible for the finance and operations side.