The 2008 winner of the Gane Travel Scholarship was Michelle Cook, a second year ceramic student in the School of Art and Design at Bath Spa University. On 29th January 2009 she gave a presentation to Gane Trustees and other students about her project.
Michelle described her two-week visit last year to the Languedoc in South West France, home of the extraordinary Cathars, whose tragic story had captured her imagination. She wanted to see how far the events of the 12th century were still remembered by and affected the people still living in "Cathar country".
Michelle's journey led her resulting work in new directions which were quite unexpected. She illustrated this in the form of ceramic pieces inspired both by the landscape and its history.