Founded by architectural designer Beau McCarthy and artist Lucy Grainge, Wiggle Wonderland is a touring, open-air gallery bringing artists and communities together through collaborative artwork, creative workshops and playful public installations that celebrate imagination, connection and community voices.
Lucy is an artist-designer from Manchester based in London. Her practice explores colour, shape and pattern working across printmaking, illustration and installations. Lucy is also an arts facilitator, interested in collaborative and community centred projects.
She has worked within community arts settings for 7 years on employability arts programmes with young people, intergenerational projects, in schools and healthcare settings which was a catalyst to launching Wiggle Wonderland. Her clients include Wellcome Collection, National Theatre, Rumpus Room, Selfridges, Artsadmin, Royal Society of Sculptors.
Lucy’s role in Wiggle Wonderland is producing, leading on engagement and workshops, co-ordinating the artwork and doing lots of admin!
Beau works as a freelance 3D designer and art director across film and TV, festival design and as an architectural designer. In these roles, he’s instrumental in conceptualising, designing, and creating sets that incorporate high-quality 3D visualisations and construction drawings. His clients include commercial galleries, Glowedup, BBC, Channel 4 and Netflix.
Beau’s interests lay within the public realm and temporal spaces used to engage the audience and aims to bring joy and celebration into the built environment.
He designed the Wiggle Wonderland pavilion and re-designs it to meet the site's opportunities and constraints. Beau prepares all required documentation within the public realm and on private land for the local authority and the client, including surveys, visualisations and construction drawings.
"It was a joy to work with the Wiggle team to host the Wiggle Wonderland. Lucy and Beau were incredibly collaborative and flexible throughout the project. Everything from the planning, through to the build, accompanying engagement work and deinstall was well planned and executed to a high professional standard by their team."
Kelly Robinson
Senior Learning and Participation Manager at Dulwich Picture Gallery
Project: Dulwich Picture Gallery
‘’Lucy managed the relationships with all stakeholders and demonstrated strong leadership in managing a wide range of complex relationships - across partners, artists, community groups and schools - and ensured the project was delivered on time and to a very high standard. Wiggle Wonderland not only transformed the Whitgift Square public space, but also deeply engaged our community - reaching and involving over 2,000 local people in meaningful and joyful ways. Lucy’s collaborative and solutions-focused approach helped navigate the inevitable challenges of a public art project of this scale with creativity, confidence and care. I would highly recommend Wiggle Wonderland for any future Public Art projects.’’
Caterina Loriggio
Legacy programme lead for This is Croydon, London Borough of Culture 2023
Project: Whitgift Centre
Featured in the Croydonist
“Lucy and Beau are so refreshing to work with. It’s rare to be able to collaborate with people who believe so wholeheartedly in what they are doing and it’s very infectious to be around. They bring together architecture, design and art in a way which produces installations that engage people and provoke thought and interaction which is not easy to do in our busy world. Their ability to translate topics and respond to such important issues through creativity and placemaking is unique and so needed in central London and the built environment.”
Rachel Moore
Marketing Director at Almacantar
Project: London Festival of Architecture
Featured in Wallpaper Magazine