Author: Bethan Jayne Goddard

Lucy Barnes is the Exhibitions and Residencies Manager at LEVEL Centre, where she is a part of the Senior Leadership Team who deliver a nationally significant programme of digital and visual arts exhibitions. Driven by LEVEL’s mission to “Celebrate the art that difference makes”, Lucy ensures all exhibitions are fully accessible and showcase the work of disabled artists. She also oversees LEVEL’s residency programme, supporting the professional development of emerging and established talent by continuously adapting to the evolving needs of artists and audiences.

Howl Cheng-Po Yuan (原承伯) is a performance maker and cultural organiser, currently serving as Artistic Director and Co-CEO of Kakilang. His practice explores cultural identity, mobility, and the relationship between bodies, sites, and place, and has been presented at venues and festivals across the UK and internationally. Through Kakilang, he develops cross-disciplinary projects that foreground underrepresented narratives and foster transnational dialogue. Howl served as Guest Curator for Migration Matters Festival (2020–2021) and hosts the alternative podcast Ming Strike, which brings artists and cultural workers into conversation around art, politics, and lived experience.

Polly Brannan is an artist, curator and educator. She’s committed to producing public
art, social practice, strategies and programmes collaboratively with artists and
communities, co-commissioning with them to create new work for the cities and
places we live in. She is inspired by user-led design and the methodologies of
learning through play.

Since early 2021 she has been the Artistic Director at Open
School East in Margate, UK, a free, independent arts school and community space
in Margate, was Education Curator at Liverpool Biennial 2012-18 and Education
Curator at Serpentine Galleries 2011–13. She is Founder and Artist with network
Avant Gardening and was a member of art and architecture collective, public works
2005-2011. She has curated, delivered and produced commissions and projects
internationally including: Triangle Network Fellowship, Ethiopia; Istanbul Biennale
2017, Turkey and Kochi-Muziris Biennale, India 2018; Making Worlds, Stiftung
Künstler*dorf Schöppingen, Germany 2025.

Deb Richardson is a creative producer and arts leader with more than two decades of experience across film, digital media, theatre, and community arts. With a background in theatre and specialist training in archive film management Deb has developed a reputation for championing creative participation, digital storytelling, and innovative media projects that connect people and place. 

As Somerset Film’s Creative Director, Deb leads a wide range of creative and community-focused initiatives, from immersive digital experiences and artist development programmes to heritage and archive projects. Passionate about making technology accessible and inspiring, she has helped audiences of all ages explore filmmaking, virtual reality, animation, and emerging digital tools in imaginative and inclusive ways. 

Deb is also an advocate for sustainable and socially engaged creative practice, supporting projects that celebrate local identity, amplify underrepresented voices, and encourage collaboration across Somerset’s communities. She has interwoven permaculture design principles into financial project management. Alongside her work at Somerset Film, she is a passionate gardener and advocate of perennial vegetables.

I am deeply passionate about art as a way to bring people together, to heal, and to allow us all to find joy through fun. I have been working with artists for a number of years, blessed with opportunities to talk to them about their art. This is one of the aspects I enjoy most about curating, as well as the chance to write in a way that bridges the gap between artists and audiences. With all the work I do, I try to involve the people looking at the art as much as those creating it. More recently I have conducted interviews with artists, writing longer form pieces that delve a bit deeper into how artists work, why they do what they do, which will hopefully encourage people to experiment and research for themselves. 

Alongside curation and writing, I work in museums and heritage. I have the unique and amazing opportunity to use skills and experiences from across the board to experiment with new ideas and ways of working. As a creative, also, I find my own practice benefiting from interactions with everyone I come across, pushing me to find and create community in my work, enabling meaningful and enriching arts experiences for everyone. 

Ali Pretty is a cultural activist and internationally recognised artist who uses walking, talking, and collaborative making as radical tools for connection and change. Her work transforms public environments into a shared platform where communities can address challenging issues such as climate action, peace, reconciliation, and inclusivity. Through artist-led walks, she mobilises people, landscapes, and stories into living artworks that spark dialogue, celebrate identity, and inspire action. These journeys are shared on an international stage, connecting local experiences to global conversations.

Ali is building on three decades of leading Kinetika (1997 – 2027) – the internationally renowned arts organisation she founded to unite communities through silk-based designs and large-scale public spectacles. She has spearheaded and collaborated on numerous large-scale events for diverse audiences worldwide, WOMAD (1989-1992), the Atlanta Olympics (1996), the Athens Torch Relay – London (2004), the Beijing Cultural Olympiad (2008), the FIFA World Cup in Abu Dhabi (2009), the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Pageant (2022), and the Cultural Olympiad for the Paris Olympics (2024). Since 2012, Ali has developed transformative walking arts projects in collaboration with diverse communities. Her innovative approach combines walking, talking, and creative making to foster connection and bring people together. She has led impactful walks across Wiltshire, the Isle of Wight, Lincolnshire, Essex, and Thurrock. In Thurrock, Ali established T100, a dynamic year-round programme of walking, talking and making activities. This innovative place-making model has been successfully replicated in India, Ethiopia, Chile, Costa Rica and Lebanon.

She served as the Artistic Director of Silk River, a project commissioned by the British Council as part of the UK/India Year of Culture in 2017. Ali served as the Artistic Director of Beach of Dreams, a UK-wide coastal arts festival supported by Arts Council England and Historic England. Currently Ali is curating the global solidarity walk. Walk with Lebanon, Mountains of Hope. April 3-May 3 2026 https://kinetika.co.uk/portfolio/mountains-of-hope Ali is on the International Board for the World Trails Network and chairs the Arts and Culture Task Team.

In 2028, Ali will launch the Kinetika Fellowship Programme. This initiative will empower women and girls worldwide to become leaders in their communities, using the arts as a catalyst for change.

Aidan Moesby is a curator, artist and writer with a body of work that is playful, intimate and deeply human. He brings an emotionally nuanced context to climate change and the deep inter-connectedness between the natural and social environments. He often works in spaces where art, wellbeing and technology intersect. His projects always foreground care, access and inclusion, creating space for conversations which act as a catalyst for positive social action and change.

He works nationally and internationally across physical and digital platforms within disability and mainstream contexts.

Esraa Husain (any pronouns) is a creative writer, community organiser and researcher based in Scotland. Their writings are published online and in print in SINK, Lumpen, On the Other Side of Hope, Scottish BPOC Writers Network, Gutter, Somewhere for Us, The Bottle Imp amongst others. Their PhD is in Black Scottish literary studies at the University of Glasgow.

Their work include: founding U Belong Glasgow est. 2020, Community Curator with Curating Discomfort intervention at The Hunterian Museum, Festival Programmer with Scottish Refugee Council, and most recently, Human Rights Participation Officer with Human Rights Consortium Scotland.

Mark Prest is a British curator, recovery activist, and founder of Portraits of Recovery (PORe), the UK’s only international visual arts charity dedicated to lived or living experiences of substance use and recovery. A man himself in long-term recovery, Prest’s lived experience has profoundly shaped his curatorial practice, shifting it toward socially engaged work that challenges stigma and fosters cultural inclusion.

With over 23 years in the visual arts, Prest began his career developing a nationally recognised exhibitions programme at The City Gallery, Leicester. His unique perspective — combining personal insight with professional expertise — positions him as a leading voice in the field of Recoverism, a cultural philosophy that views recovery as a creative, cultural process.

Recoverism challenges clinical and moral narratives by positioning people in recovery as active cultural contributors, artists, collaborators, and storytellers whose lived experience holds social and artistic value. Rooted in Manchester’s legacy of social change, Recoverism promotes dignity, inclusion, and systemic transformation through the arts.

Founded in 2011, PORe collaborates with leading contemporary artists and people in recovery to co-create work that re-frames addiction and recovery identities. Its work has been showcased across the UK and internationally, including partnerships with Manchester Art Gallery, the Whitworth, and Towner Eastbourne.

PORe believes arts and culture are transformational in themselves. Under Prest’s leadership, its mission is to increase access to cultural opportunity and enable people in recovery to contribute to an emergent cultural identity — redefining recovery through creativity, dignity, and community.

Tom Higham is the Creative Director and founder of Mediale, an independent arts charity and agency based in Selby. They work with artists, developers, designers, arts organisations and policy makers all over the world to curate and produce ambitious artworks and creative projects.

Tom is interested in the enabling power of digital technology, and inspired by well considered, simple and effective ideas and artworks.

Tom specialises in the curation and development of digital culture., with 18 years experience leading teams, projects and change, where art meets technology. He is an articulate, confident and skilled communicator, able to inspire, engage a team, and to work under extreme resource and expectation pressure. He is deeply committed to the development of arts, culture and creative technology in the UK, and the North in particular.

Clients and collaborators have included Arts Council England, British Council, NESTA, numerous cultural institutions globally, and he is equally adept in policy circles as well as commercial conversations and empathetically but ambitiously supporting an artist to develop their practice.

Tom is a 2x fellow of Salzburg Global Forum and Clore’s Emerging Leaders programme. He is also a type 1 diabetic, father of two and runner.