THE daughter of a Dartmouth woman is looking forward to receiving her MBE later this month at a presentation in London.

Helen Marriage was recognised in the Queen’s New Year’s Honours list for services to art and cultural work around the world.

Her mother, Margaret Jackson, of Ford, Dartmouth, said she was ‘very proud’ of her daughter.

Helen is director of the creative company Artichoke, which works with artists to ‘invade’ public spaces and put on ambitious street events.

Since starting out in the 1980s managing independent artists at Artsadmin, Helen went on to work as an associate director of the London International Festival of Theatre before devising the first ever arts and events programme for Canary Wharf.

She was director of Salisbury Festival for seven years, during which she transformed a local affair into what was described as a ‘miracle of British culture’.

Helen founded Artichoke with Nicky Webb in 2005. The following year their first production, The Sultan’s Elephant by Royal de Luxe, attracted a million people to the streets of London.

The company has since produced 13 projects across the UK, including bringing a giant mechanical spider to Liverpool in 2008 as part of the city’s European Capital of Culture celebrations; and in 2009 producing Anthony Gormley’s One and Other where members of the British public took to the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square, one at a time, for one hour each over 100 days.

The same year, Artichoke produced Lumiere in Durham, a light festival that has returned to the city every other year since, attracting 200,000 visitors over four evenings in November 2015.

Lumiere appeared in Derry-Londonderry in 2013, and the first ever Lumiere London has just taken place across the city from January 14-17.

In March 2015, the company returned to Derry-Londonderry for Temple, an extraordinary project bringing the two communities of the city together to build a beautiful structure with American artist David Best as a temporary shared space.

Helen was awarded a Loeb Fellowship at Harvard Graduate School of Design in 2012.

Helen said: ‘No one is more surprised than I am to receive this honour.’

She added: Artichoke’s commitment to getting the imagination of great artists to the widest possible public, free from financial or physical barriers, is only possible through the collaboration and partnerships that we’re able to establish. It’s a true example of team working.’