C-ART is Cumbria’s largest visual arts event.

A tremendous artistic initiative put together each year by Eden Arts, under its C-Art banner for 2015 is a new competition staged as part of EA's increasingly popular annual exhibition, which runs in Rheged’s main gallery until June 28, and celebrates the amazing breadth and depth of Cumbria's creative talent.

And the winning artist will receive a cash prize of £2,000, sponsored by Rheged.

From its Sandgate base at Penrith, Eden Arts promotes, invents, dreams and cooks up all sorts of creative projects from commissions to participatory to gigs and cinema.

At the helm since 2009 is forward-thinking director Adrian Lochhead, a job he says he loves: "I get to think up projects and deliver them," he adds.

"Some of the things that we do make people so happy, sometimes they say things like thank you for making me so proud of my town, sometimes they tell us that something we have done has made a huge difference to their lives. These are the things that get me to work on a cold and dark January morning."

As well as being creative, as director Adrian's also at the business end of the arts organisation.

"Eden Arts was the third highest recipient of a percentage increase in the whole of England in the Arts Council NPO (National Portfolio Organisation) awards for 2015-18. How cool is that for Cumbria.

"This tells us that we are well regarded and valued, and that we need to keep doing more of the same, being ambitious, working with our partners the Arts Council of England, to make bigger and better projects for and in Cumbria. We've developed projects that are more self sustaining, projects that actually bring some money in – like our open air cinema Picnic Cinema. I think any organisation that doesn’t take a hard look at itself and try to work out how to be more sustainable is being very foolish. We are continuing to do so and we are very open to ideas from people who want to work with us."

Adrian was born in Saltburn, brought up in York before moving to Bridlington.

From there he went off to London to Mountview Theatre School for three years to train as an actor.

"My first job was working on a local fishing boat taking sea anglers out on day trips. I also worked in local amusement arcades, very much in the style of the film That’ll be the Day."

Frustrated and not wanting to "get stuck" in his east coast town on either fishing boats or in arcades he decided to capitalise on his apparent talent in school plays: "I blindly sent off letters to theatre schools to try to get in.

"It seemed to me that theatre offered an easy opportunity to have a good life and meet girls. After I’d been to drama school, where I discovered that it’s a far cry between being ‘talented’ and doing a good job that people will actually pay to see, I got a job working in the West Midlands doing theatre in education. From there my career developed and I ended up being a jobbing actor, doing quite well at times, being unemployed and working as a painter and decorator when I was ‘resting.’

"I had some success, was in some TV and was privileged to get on to some big stages, including the Royal Exchange at Manchester."

Following a career in the arts that included running a theatre company, dipping into running clubs and parties in London during the rave scene, Adrian said he learned that the arts were something that needed to allow people to be involved in rather than just something that people passively received.

"One of my children had learning disability, which meant that I had to be at home quite a lot to help her. It also meant that I learned a lot about things that really matter - your kids and life’s curve balls.

"I had some years where I was only able to work fleetingly, and then when my daughter went to a residential school I was finally able to look for opportunities, which led me to apply for the Eden Arts job.

"I've had to learn and understand and appreciate the amazing and peculiar place that we live in here in Cumbria. As an offcomer I'm so struck by the values and nature and humanity here, it’s something that we need to celebrate and invite people into – the Ethernet world is not the only place to be."

"Being an actor can be very subject to someone else’s vision and idea. I wanted to make work for myself and particularly I wanted that work to have an impact on people who weren’t just those who are ‘arts interested.’ I think that the arts are much more important than that, we need to reach everyone and be inclusive rather than the typically ‘middle-class, arts engaged’ audience who might go to the theatre or a gallery. I know that this is a cliché and I don’t mean it to be dismissive in the slightest but really the arts are for everyone."

Eden Arts has been going for more than 20 years, and employees seven people. C-Art has been one of its biggest successes, landing Cumbria Event of the Year in 2014.

As well as C-Art, Adrian and his innovative team are responsible for Penrith's massive Winter Droving, which drew 15,000 people into the town last year.

"We did a questionnaire with the crowds there; they reported that their average spend that day was £26 and that 50 per cent of the crowd had come from over 20 miles away.

"Cumbria has always been a cultural destination but perhaps has not had a coherent policy of selling that idea. We have Ruskin and Wordsworth as historical figures, clearly relating to the landscape. We’ve had initiatives like Lakes Alive. We have excellent gallery spaces in Rheged and Tullie House. We have the Forestry Commission’s Forest Art Works, Art Gene in Barrow and we now have the Lakes Culture initiative. This is also the county of one of the most significant arts organisations to have existed in my lifetime – Ulverston’s Welfare State International. As an outsider I am gobsmacked that people here do not know and appreciate how significant WSI and its directors John Fox and Sue Gill have been in defining the cultural landscape of the UK".