Find out a little about our CIC and the people involved..
PZArts CIC is a community interest company based in Penzance, Cornwall, incorporated in June 2025. Formed by Tasha Scannell and Sara Ross, both practising and experienced arts educators who until recently taught in the buildings. The CIC was born specifically to build the project of purchasing, renovating and relunching the buildings to deliver a multifaceted heritage arts and crafts campus. The CIC board has since been strengthened by the appointment of director Morvah Stubbings who brings business, governance and charitable sector experience alongside deep local roots.
Our People
Tasha Scannell
Tasha Scannell is a jewellery designer and craft educator specialising in small-scale metalsmithing, whose own path began with a part-time course at Penzance School of Art. Until recently running her own jewellery brand, Sable Cloud Jewellery, she has taught for the past several years at Truro and Penwith College, on the very course that launched her. Her practise has evolved into developing narrative jewellery, releasing curated pieces and collections for exhibition. Her fifteen year background as an Early Years specialist and primary school teacher grounds her approach in human connection, creative play and structured learning. Through building her own business she has seen at first hand the need for stronger, more cohesive support for artists seeking to make their practice financially sustainable, something she aims to offer through studio access.
Morvah Stubbings
Morvah Stubbings joined the board as a director, bringing a career in business leadership and lifelong ties to Penzance and its creative community. Born in the town and educated locally, she read Politics at the University of London before a career in market research that took her to Australia, where she established the Asia Pacific office of a UK company, and back to the UK as joint managing director of a specialist research company within WPP. Her charitable sector experience is directly relevant to the project: she has been a Pilotlighter, pairing business skills with small charities to help them grow, a trustee of Paintings in Hospitals, and is chair of a charitable trust managing almshouses for people connected to the area. A supporter of local artists and makers for more than fifty years, with a collection drawn largely from West Penwith, she also remembers the building from childhood, visiting the library, playing on the cannon outside and listening to stories read aloud in the room below.
Sara Ross
Sara Ross is a sculptor and arts educator with more than eighteen years of experience in traditional sculpture and ceramics. Trained at Wimbledon School of Art, she worked as a sculptor in the film industry in London and internationally, and continues to exhibit her own work in galleries across Cornwall and London. She has taught extensively in secondary and further education, including inclusive ceramics programmes for students with additional educational needs, and has led sculpture and ceramics courses at Truro and Penwith College for over a decade. She believes that traditional craft offers more than technical skill, nurturing calm, confidence, connection and a sense of belonging.
Different disciplines.
Shared values.
One vision for the future of the Penzance School of Art
