Emma Blackburn is a Manchester-based artist working with textiles and sculpture. She uses embroidery, beadwork, hi-vis fabrics and found materials to explore the everyday objects, rituals and emotional carry-ons that make up ordinary life. Her work often starts with something familiar — a road sign, a cone, a piece of inherited cloth — and turns it into something tender, funny or quietly powerful.

Emma completed her MA in Textiles at Manchester Metropolitan University. Her recent solo exhibition PEDestrian (Gallery Oldham, 2025) brought together ten years of work, looking at movement and stillness, grief, family ties and the pace of everyday life. The exhibition included pieces such as Cosy Cone, Daddy Doll, and Scachs d’Amor (Chess of Love), showing how civic symbols, hazard colours, soft materials and small acts of care thread across her practice.

She is currently developing Crossing Queen, a project celebrating the overlooked care and quiet authority of lollipop workers, drawing on British folk pageantry and working-class traditions.

Emma’s work is held in the public collections of The Whitworth, The Harris and Idle Women. She lives and works in Manchester, balancing her studio practice with supporting arts education at The Manchester College.