​The line‑up of judges has included, and will continue to include, people who embody what the Prize sets out to do: bridging the worlds of entrepreneurship, education, the art market and the inner life of creative practice. Bringing together a FTSE‑100 founder, art prize creators, an artist‑educator and a seer and healer, this evolving panel reflects the mix of commercial insight, cultural rigour and deep sensitivity that the Prize aims to offer emerging artists as they build sustainable careers.
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Past judges have included Peter Hargreaves CBE, one of the UK’s most successful self‑made entrepreneurs, co‑founder of leading investment platform Hargreaves Lansdown, an innovator in online investing and a serious art collector. New Blood Art is grateful for the insight and attention he has given.
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Professor Anita Taylor is an artist and Dean of Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design, and founding Director of the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize and of Drawing Projects UK, a centre dedicated to championing drawing as a vital contemporary practice.
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Serenella Ciclitira is a curator and collector who, with her husband David, founded the Global Eye Programme and Ciclitira Prize, international initiatives that have supported hundreds of emerging artists and recent graduates from leading art schools.
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Jim Rajan is a seer and healer, and founder of The Subtle Qualities School for highly sensitive people, where he works with sensitivity, intuition and energetic awareness as strengths rather than liabilities; his presence on the panel brings a rare attentiveness to the inner life of artists and to the more subtle dimensions of creative practice that commercial frameworks can easily miss.
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Sarah Ryan is a fine art graduate, former art educator, and founder and director of New Blood Art, one of the UK’s first online galleries dedicated to emerging artists. Drawing on her background in art education, financial journalism and psychotherapy, she has designed a structure that actively connects UK art schools with collectors. She is driven by a belief that artists with talent, passion and vision should have a genuine chance to enter the market and build commercially viable careers, not just those with existing advantages or connections.
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In 2025, Mary‑Alice Stack, Chief Executive of Creative United, joins the panel, bringing deep experience in designing finance and business support programmes that help artists and cultural organisations build sustainable enterprises.
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The Prize champions emerging talent, offering a bridge between education and long-term practice.