Gordon Seabright

Chief Executive
Creative Land Trust

Gordon Seabright is Chief Executive of Creative Land Trust, the charity tackling the loss of creative workspace for artists and makers in the UK. Before that he led environmental charities for a decade, most recently as CEO of the Eden Project, following periods at the helm of the national cycling charity and the Royal Horticultural Society. Outside work he is a trustee of parkrun Global, Five Talents (a development charity operating in East Africa) and a community orchard in Cornwall, a Fellow of the Linnean Society and an Honorary Fellow of University of Exeter Business School.

Russell Pedley

Director & Co-Founder
Assael Architecture

Russell is Director and Co-Founder of Assael Architecture. With over 30 years as an architect and 15 years in urban design, he has a strong passion for creating a sense of place with historical and cultural connections in all of his work.

Russell spent many years spearheading Assael’s skills in the design of professionally-managed Build to Rent communities in the private rented sector. Following years of research, including many study trips to the US, and producing design guides for the UK, Assael is now one of the leading architects in the sector, paving the way with key projects such as Union Wharf in Greenwich for Essential Living, Blackhorse Mills in Walthamstow for Legal & General, and Pontoon Dock in Newham for Linkcity. Russell also co-authored both editions of the Urban Land Institute’s Build to Rent: A Best Practice Guide, which was sponsored by the British Government, and he is now Chair of the ULI’s UK Residential Council and advises on MHCLG’s Build to Rent Joint Committee.

Morwenna Hall

Executive Director
Related Argent

Morwenna Hall, a chartered mechanical engineer, is an Executive Director at Related Argent. She joined the firm (then Argent LLP) in 2011 and in addition to her corporate leadership role, has led the design and delivery of several major projects at King’s Cross, including Coal Drops Yard - a thriving shopping and leisure destination with more than 50 shops, cafe, bars and restaurants - the Fish & Coal building and Gasholder Park. Morwenna now leads on the ground floor uses, public realm vision and activation for Brent Cross Town, a new park town that brings together the very best of London’s great neighbourhoods while making the most of its natural assets and opportunities. Its most distinct local feature is a 44-acre playing field that is destined to become one of London’s great parks and home to a wide variety of new play and sports facilities.

Morwenna started her career at Arup as a mechanical building services engineer. During this time, she was the lead mechanical engineer for the Sainsbury Laboratory in Cambridge, designed by Stanton Williams architects, which in 2012 won the most sought-after accolade in the industry – the RIBA Stirling Prize. Morwenna has featured in many publications such as Property Week’s ‘Forty under 40’ list of young entrepreneurs, disrupters and leaders and her evident passion for design led to her being showcased as one of 27 women in the 2014 ‘Women Fashion Power’ exhibition at the Design Museum, alongside Princess Diana, Dame Vivienne Westwood and Dame Zaha Hadid.

Alexander Jan

Non-Executive Chair
Central District Alliance

Alexander is the non-executive chair of Central District Alliance – the Business Improvement District covering Holborn, Clerkenwell, Farringdon, Bloomsbury and St Giles. He is Chief Economic Advisor to the London Property Alliance, which brings together the Westminster Property Association and the City Property Association to provide a unified voice for the real estate sector across the City, the West End and neighbouring commercial districts. Alexander was formerly Arup’s chief economist. He is currently researching and (slowly) writing a book on the remarkable life of Lord Ashfield, the first chairman and creator of London Transport.

Professor Katy Shaw

Professor of 21st-century writing + publishing - Northumbria University /
Programme Director - UKRI

Katy Shaw is Professor of 21st-century writing and publishing at Northumbria University, UK and Director of the UKRI/AHRC Creative Communities programme.

Her research interests include diversity and inclusion in the creative industries (the subject of her 2022 TED talk) and the redistribution of the creative industries from the capital to the regions and nations as part of the ‘levelling up agenda’. She is the author of the 2021 APPG Inquiry report ‘The Case for Culture’ that set out policy recommendations, many of which have since been adopted by UK government, on how to rebuild rebalance and recover cultural production post-covid.

She sits as a commissioner on the LGA Culture Commission and the Gordon Brown Union Commission. Her policy consultancy focuses on R&D, innovation and the role of HEIs and further education in cultural partnership working. As Professor of writing she is the author of five monographs, four edited collections as well as journal articles and essays on contemporary British literature and is the author of the British Council ‘Write Now: Teaching 21st-century Literature Globally’ report.

She can be found on Twitter @profkatyshaw

Professor Christopher Smith, FSAS, FRHistS, FSA, FRSA, MAE, FRSE

Executive Chair
AHRC + UKRI International  + Creative Industries Sector Champion

Christopher was previously Professor of Ancient History at the University of St Andrews where he was also Dean of Arts (2002 to 2006), Provost of St Leonard’s College and Dean of Graduate Studies (2006 to 2009), and Proctor and Vice-Principal (2007 to 2009), before being seconded as Director of the British School at Rome, the UK’s leading humanities and creative arts research institute overseas, from 2009 to 2017.

From 2017 to 2020 he has held a Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship on ‘The Roman kings: a study in power’ and held visiting positions in Erfurt, Princeton, Otago, Pavia, Milan, Siena, Aarhus and Paris Panthéon-Sorbonne.

Professor Smith’s research explores constitutionalism and state formation, with particular emphasis on the development of Rome as a political and social community and how this was represented in ancient historical writing and subsequent political thought.

He is the author or editor of over 20 books and in 2017 was awarded the prestigious Premio ‘Cultori di Roma’. He is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries Scotland, the Royal Historical Society, the Society of Antiquaries of London, the Royal Society of Arts and a Member of the Academia Europaea.

Professor Rebecca Madgin

Professor of Urban Studies, University of Glasgow
Programme Director for the AHRC

Rebecca Madgin is Professor of Urban Studies at the University of Glasgow and Programme Director for the AHRC Place-Based Research programme. Rebecca’s research examines the relationship between the emotional and economic value of place and has published widely on the role of heritage within placemaking and emotional attachments to urban places. Rebecca also retains an active involvement with a number of heritage organisations in the UK.

Denz Ibrahim

Head of Retail & Futuring
LGIM Real Estate

Denz Ibrahim joined Legal & General Investment Management (LGIM) Real Assets in 2019 as the Head of Retail and Futuring. He has a creative background in Design and Urbanism with extensive experience in retail, placemaking and re-building the urban environment for the future. Denz is a graduate of the London School of Economics Cities Programme and was previously the Head of Special Projects at Appear Here and then the Head of Placemaking for BNP Paribas Real Estate. Since joining LGIM Real Assets, Denz’ role has been to completely re-invent how the business considers retail, both spatially and culturally, and drives a cross-sector approach to consumer centric placemaking, curating environments, which re-connect people with places and brands. He is responsible for LGIM Real Assets thought processes as an organisation to better understand the cultural shifts in the way people live, work and play across the entirety of its consumer facing environments, delivering future fit places. Denz is a member of the LGIM Real Assets Equity Senior Leadership Team, a frequent contributor to industry journals and press, and sits on the board of Foundry, a co-working provider and business support incubator, co-founded by LGIM Real Assets in 2022.

Patricia Brown MBE

Director
Central

Patricia runs Central, a niche consultancy advising civic and business leaders on urban change. She has over 25 years of direct experience thinking about, influencing and improving London, and at the heart of many of the initiatives that have been part of the city’s successful evolution.

In the mid 1990s she worked alongside real estate guru Honor Chapman in helping to establish London’s first inward investment body, promoting London as a premier business destination. She became CEO of the Central London Partnership in 1997, leading a cross-sector partnership and agenda set on maintaining the capital’s position as a global world city. At CLP, she led much of the early work to achieve this sustained success through ensuring it was a city that people wanted to be in; a people-focused, liveable city, with improved quality of life and built environment.

Tom Kiehl

Deputy CEO & Director of Public Affairs
UK Music

Tom is a specialist in music and creative industries policy, strategy and campaigns.

Tom was a founding architect of the Live Music Act, designed to deregulate live music performance from entertainment licensing, and navigated its passage through Parliament while working in the House of Lords.

At UK Music, Tom subsequently coordinated the successful Parliamentary campaign to introduce the agent of change principle to protect music venues. Most recently, he has taken a leading role in responding to challenges presented by the pandemic, the impact of leaving the EU and the growth of Artificial Intelligence (AI),
Tom has also played a key role in major debates on copyright policy. This includes campaigning to support music rights in the Copyright Directive and organising a successful industry wide judicial review of Coalition Government plans to introduce an exception to copyright for private copying without fair compensation.

Tom joined UK Music in 2012 as Director of Government and Public Affairs. Prior to this, Tom worked in the Houses of Parliament for 11 years as an advisor and researcher in a Whips Office in both Government and Opposition.

In 2018 Tom was promoted to the role of Deputy CEO and Director of Public Affairs. In this role, Tom retained oversight of all public affairs work at UK Music, as well as research, policy, skills and education work-streams and budgets.

He took on the role of acting CEO at UK Music between January-September 2020 before returning to the role of Deputy CEO and Director of Public Affairs. He then again took on the role of Interim Chief Executive of UK Music in September 2023.

Leigh Natasha Salter

Managing Director
Movers & Shakers

Leigh Natasha Salter is Managing Director of Movers & Shakers, having formerly been the Business and Events Director. Leigh has been responsible for developing the brand over the last 14 years and was responsible for the launch of the Movers & Shakers UK Regional events programme. Previously she worked in marketing, communications and research, and also ran the Windsor & Maidenhead Borough’s Business to Community Partnership, facilitating CSR for businesses. She qualified at Oxford University with a BA Honours in Human Sciences, and a scholarship, and is also a member of the BPF, WPA and UK-GBC.

Sarah Ellis

Director of Digital Development
Royal Shakespeare Company

Sarah Ellis is an award-winning producer currently working as Director of Digital Development for the Royal Shakespeare Company to explore new artistic initiatives and partnerships.

The latest partnership for the RSC is the Audience of the Future Live Performance Demonstrator funded by Innovate UK - a consortium consisting of arts organisations, research partners and technology companies to explore the future of performances and real-time immersive experiences.

In 2017, she became a fellow of the University of Worcester for her work in the arts and technology. In 2016 she was awarded The Hospital Club & Creatives Industries award for cross industry collaboration for her work on the RSC’s The Tempest in collaboration with Intel and in association with The Imaginarium Studios.

In 2013 she was listed in the top 100 most influential people working in Gaming and Technology by The Hospital Club and Guardian Culture Professionals. In partnership with Google, she produced Midsummer Night’s Dreaming winning two Lovie Awards for Innovation and Experimentation.

In 2012, she produced myShakespeare an online commissioning platform for the World Shakespeare Festival. In 2011, she produced Adelaide Road for the RSC, which mixed live performance with an app and website map.

Shain Shapiro PhD

Author, Founder, Thought Leader & Senior Executive
Sound Diplomacy

Shain is a globally recognised thought leader at the convergence of music, culture and urban policy. This is showcased in his debut book, This Must Be The Place: How Music Can Make Your City Better, due out on Repeater Books (distributed in the United States by Random House) on September 12, 2023. Shain has defined a new way to think about the value of music in cities and places and through it, influenced over 130 cities and places to invest in music and culture as founder and executive chairman of Sound Diplomacy and founder and executive director of the not-for-profit global Center for Music Ecosystems. He has authored authoritative reports on the role of music in cities, tourism, the night time economy, real estate and recovery, including the most extensive guide to music and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) ever written, in partnership with the United Nations. He has spoken at hundreds of global conventions, such as SXSW and the UN World Urban Forum and delivered the first ever TEDx talk on music’s role in cities. Shain holds a PhD from the University of London and lives in East London.

Professor Tom Crick MBE

Chief Scientific Adviser
Department for Culture, Media and Sport

Professor Tom Crick MBE is Chief Scientific Adviser at the UK Government’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport and Professor of Digital Policy at Swansea University. His academic interests sit at the research-policy-practice interface, identifying and addressing domain problems with broad digital, data-driven and computational themes, and especially focusing on the impact on citizens, culture and the economy.

Tom has led the major science and technology curriculum reforms in Wales over the past 10 years, and has recently driven the development of Swansea University’s civic mission strategy. He was an inaugural Commissioner of the National Infrastructure Commission for Wales from 2018-2022, as well as a member of the expert panel for the Welsh Government’s 2019 Review of Digital Innovation for the Economy and the Future of Work in Wales. Alongside his academic work, Tom has held senior advisory roles with Nesta, Ofcom, and BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, as well as non-executive roles in the utilities, engineering/manufacturing, and health sectors. Twitter: @ProfTomCrick.

Polly Mackenzie

Chief Social Purpose Officer
University of the Arts London

Polly took up post in July 2022, having previously served as Chief Executive of Demos, the UK’s leading cross-party think tank, which brings citizen voice and lived experience into public policy discussions. Previous civil society roles include founding CEO of the Money & Mental Health Policy Institute and establishing the operations of the Women’s Equality Party. From 2010-2015 she was Director of Policy to the Deputy Prime Minister, based in 10 Downing Street and the Cabinet Office, having worked as a policy advisor to the Liberal Democrats since 2004.

Polly’s recent publications include The Gravitational State, The Humble Policy Maker, Living in the Exponential Age, and The Social State: From Transactional to Relational Public Services. She is a member of the Social Value Taskforce, a trustee at Shift Foundation, and a non-executive director of Registry Trust, a not-for-profit provider of credit data.

Prof. James Bennett

Director
CoSTAR National Lab

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Claudia Kenyatta

Director of Regions
Historic England

Claudia oversees Historic England’s work in the delivery of expertise and advice, grants, and major programmes across the regions, and is committed to building the effective partnerships that help to explain, protect and care for the historic environment. Prior to joining Historic England in September 2018, Claudia was Director of Corporate Strategy at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, following previous roles over 15 years at DCMS specialising in heritage and culture policy, strategy and delivery. Before joining DCMS, Claudia worked in a variety of roles in the Cabinet Office and the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. Alongside her work at Historic England, Claudia is Chair of the Board of Trustees at Battersea Arts Centre.

Richard Thompson

Architectural Director
Parabola

Richard is a qualified architect with over 30 years of experience. Before joining Parabola he worked in private practice on high profile masterplan and construction projects including the redevelopment of the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, Saïd Business School in Oxford and Parabola’s Kings Place in central London. He has experience of all aspects of the development process, but with a strong a focus on detailed design and construction. He has been involved in Parabola’s master planning work at Edinburgh Park for 10 years.

Phoebe Gardiner

Associate Director, Corporate & Consumer
London Communications Agency

A communicator by trade, Phoebe inhabits an interesting intersection between the creative industries and the built environment. For a decade, Phoebe delivered in-house and freelance PR and communications for some of the country’s preeminent arts and cultural organisations, including Arts Council England, Historic Royal Palaces, Shakespeare’s Globe and Southbank Centre. She is now Associate Director at London Communications Agency, where she brings this specialism to some of London’s most important new places and spaces. Her work always has an inclination towards accessibility, education and community engagement. Phoebe is a volunteer Director of the first ever Alton Arts Festival, and Chair of LCA’s Diversity Working Group, driving forward equity, diversity and inclusion within the industry.

Emma Wilcox

Head of Culture
Royal Borough of Greenwich

With thirty years’ experience in the cultural and creative industries, Emma specialises in purposeful placemaking, delivering culture-led regeneration with equity and relevance. Emma is highly skilled in leading ambitious projects with multiple stakeholders, building dynamic and durable partnerships and securing investment.

From 2019-2023 Emma was the Director of Creative Estuary, a pioneering £7.7m programme to transform the Thames Estuary through investment in cultural and creative industries. Her work has often been situated in the area between private and public sectors and she is highly accomplished at managing the transition between different organisational cultures, structures and sectors, translating needs into action. Emma is committed to equity and inclusion and enabling diverse voices and those with lived experience to shape the most relevant solutions. Emma now works as a consultant and strategic advisor as well as on interim assignments, currently acting as Head of Culture at the Royal Borough of Greenwich.

Ailish Christian-West

Chief Operating Officer
Get Living

Ailish is Chief Operating Officer at Get Living, responsible for the performance of Get Living’s circa £3bn build-to-rent neighbourhood portfolio and the development pipeline portfolio of a potential 6,500 homes. She leads Get Livings ESG agenda and supports industry collaboration on a broad range of issues. Ailish has been with Get Living since 2020 supporting a rapid growth in the business and leading on operational efficiencies and customer experience strategies.

Prior to Get Living, Ailish enjoyed 12 years at Landsec, laterally as an executive committee member responsible for portfolio management and portfolio operations. At Landsec she led key strategic initiatives, creating significant portfolio value and repositioned the retail business to exit the secondary shopping centre sector ahead of a significant decline in market values. She also spent ten years in fund management, running core plus and opportunistic funds including at La Salle Investment Management.

Kirsten Dunne

Senior Manager, Cultural infrastructure & Public Realm
Mayor of London

Kirsten leads the Space for Culture Team at the Mayor of London’s Office. The team works to ensure that culture, creativity and community are hardwired into the fabric of our city, by protecting, creating, improving and promoting the many types of space that make up London’s rich cultural ecosystem.

The team is responsible for the delivery of Creative Enterprise Zones, London Made Me pop up & business development programme, Creative Land Trust, Culture & Community Spaces at Risk, Fourth Plinth and Public Commissions, as well as new cultural infrastructure including East Bank and Fashion Residency at Studio Smithfield and supporting cultural organisations and businesses to find appropriate space – often in partnership with new developments.

Kirsten was a founding board member of London’s Creative Land Trust and Margate’s Creative Land Trust and led the team that placed the first statue of a woman in Parliament square.

Sam Cotton

Head of Asset Management
Battersea Power Station

Sam Cotton is Head of Asset Management at Battersea Power Station, responsible for all commercial aspects of the iconic mixed-use regeneration project, which is now home to over 140 shops, bars, restaurants, leisure venues and offices, including Apple’s new 500,000 sq ft UK headquarters. Sam joined Battersea Power Station in 2015 and has been instrumental in bringing the Power Station to fruition, including determining brand mix, leasing strategy, delivery and management of the estate. Sam previously worked for Capco (Shaftesbury Capital) where he played a leading role in the transformation of the Covent Garden Estate in Central London. Prior to this, Sam held a pan-European Asset Management role at Nuveen working primarily in France, Belgium, Switzerland and Italy. Sam began his career with Savills as a graduate.

Sarah Dance

Chair
South East LEP

Sarah Dance is a strategic consultant for the culture and creative industries, with over 25 years’ experience in the creative sector. She has led a wide range of cultural organisations and set up her own consultancy in 2002. She has led and worked on a wide range of partnership projects from Eastbourne ALIVE to England’s Creative Coast. She works with many cultural organisations on business and capital development, creative production, organisational change development, and leadership mentoring

In addition to her consultancy work and her Chairship of South East Local Enterprise Partnership, Sarah has co-led the visioning of Thames Estuary Production Corridor. She is also on the Council of the University of Kent, the Civic University Network Advisory Group and a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Joss Taylor

Head of Enterprise and Placemaking
Bow Arts Trust

Joss leads a team delivering creative placemaking, affordable workspace management and consultancy services at Bow Arts Trust. A Dezeen Award winning cultural placemaker, he has responsibility for the strategic delivery of projects across London helping put arts at the core of communities, developing long term sustainability and opportunity through astute management of property. Joss was a trustee (Chair 2020-22) for The Ella Roberta Family Foundation.

Yamin Choudury

Joint CEO & Artistic Director at Hackney Empire Theatre;
AD of Culture & Creativity at The London Borough of Haringey

Yamin Choudury is the Joint CEO & Artistic Director at the Hackney Empire Theatre, and the Joint AD of Culture & Creativity for the London Borough of Haringey. Yamin’s lived experience and unconventional journey into arts & culture leadership, has informed, Yamin has been focused on creating vital platforms, pipelines and roadmaps for diverse, representative and emerging stories, ideas, artists, audiences and participants.

Access is the foundation of Yamin’s creative and professional practice. Working, in collaboration, to develop a more open and engaging sector, and insisting that we should all have the ability to experience the transformative power of storytelling through arts & culture; to be impacted in how we think about ourselves, our society and our environment.

Since March 2018, Yamin has been responsible for conceiving, developing and delivering a new artistic business plan that would reinvent The Hackney Empire Theatre, a 1,200+ seat theatre in London’s East End, as a landmark institution once again. Yamin led the creation of new relationships and audiences, and an unprecedented financial and critical turnaround for the organisation – the education, participation and creative engagement programme that Yamin developed at Hackney Empire in 2012, remains acknowledged as one of the most significant, transformative and impactful programmes in the Capital.

Rehana Mughal FRSA

Director of the Global Creative Economy programme
British Council

Rehana is Director of the Global Creative Economy programme at British Council, where she works through a dispersed team, with governments, creative industry professionals and leaders in the creative sectors in over 30 countries, to develop policies that support creative economies to thrive. She is a fellow of the Royal Society or Arts and a member of the Creative Industries Council, a joint forum between the UK creative industries and Government. Rehana has lived and worked in the Gulf and in China where she lead high performing teams to deliver culture and sports projects. Prior to working with the British Council, Rehana worked at Arts Council England, Southbank Centre and Creativity, Culture and Education. With over 27 years experience, of working on arts and cultural projects and a track record as an accomplished innovator, she has led high performance arts and, cultural programmes which drive cultural engagement, build cultural relations and support strategic partnerships. Rehana is passionate about the transformative power of arts and culture and he role it plays in strengthening communities, in her spare time she is a mentor at the Global Women of Colour Network and a keen cyclist.

Yasmin Jones-Henry

Financial Times Writer & Co-founder of
The Lab E20

Yasmin Jones-Henry works in the space where fashion meets finance and culture meets commerce. Through her work as a writer with specialisms in sustainability (ESG), design and investment, she has established a career championing the role culture and creative enterprise can play as a catalyst to inclusive regeneration. As cultural placemaking strategist Yasmin is a thought leader and an advocate for rethinking retail, scaling circular economy design principles and working to diversify the talent pipelines across the fashion industry and the built environment. Alongside circular and regenerative design pioneer Christopher Raeburn, Yasmin is also the co-founder of The Lab E20, London’s creative hub and incubator for circular economy driven fashion start-ups.

Mike Tucker

Head of Coram Shakespeare Schools Foundation
Coram

Mike is Head of Coram Shakespeare Schools Foundation, a national cultural education charity that transforms lives through the unique power of Shakespeare. Since the charity was founded in 2000 by the creator of the BBC’s Shakespeare: The Animated Tales series, Coram Shakespeare Schools Foundation has engaged more than 340,000 young people in primary, secondary and SEND schools nationwide. Its work supports young people in building their knowledge, confidence and essential skills. Passionate about giving as many children as possible the opportunity to take part in oracy and performance programmes, Mike has worked at the charity for 10 years, following a variety of roles in the higher education sector. Mike studied Law at King’s College London and LSE, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Caroline Norbury OBE

Chief Executive Officer
Creative UK

Caroline Norbury, OBE is the founding Chief Executive of Creative UK. Dedicated to championing the creative industries, Creative UK invests in and supports creative ideas, talent and businesses, harnessing the power of the creative sector to build a fairer, more prosperous world. Creative UK uses its extensive membership and networks in the creative industries to advocate for change, building the right environment for the future of the sector.

Caroline began her career working in community arts before becoming a film and TV producer, focusing on supporting new talent and those whose voices had traditionally been absent from mainstream media.

A member of BAFTA and the Royal Society of Arts, Caroline is also Chairwoman of The Music Works, a young people’s music education charity and a trustee for the PRS Foundation, an organisation supporting new music and talent. She sits on the Creative Industries Council which is co-chaired by Sir Peter Bazalgette and the Secretary of State for DCMS, and co-chairs the Growth working group of the Council. Caroline is a founding board member of the Creative Industries Independent Standards Agency, (CIISA) and Chairwoman of the cross-industry “Roundtable” group focused on reducing bullying, harassment, and discrimination in the Creative Sector. She has two honorary doctorates from the University of Essex and Arts University Bournemouth.

Shanaz Gulzar

Creative Director
Bradford UK City of Culture 2025

Shanaz is known for her skillset as an artist, producer and for her creative vision. With a commitment to the arts and to creating work that pushes boundaries of cultural expression, Shanaz has emerged as a prominent leader in the UK cultural sector.

Her career spans film, visual arts, theatre, public art and media, and she has delivered ground-breaking projects nationally and internationally, most recently as a producer at Manchester International Festival.

Shanaz has several TV credits, most notably working with the BBC to present the documentary film ‘Hidden Histories: The Lost Portraits of Bradford’ and bringing a contemporary artist’s perspective to the Yorkshire landscape in ‘Yorkshire Walks’.

In her capacity as Creative Director at Bradford 2025, UK City of Culture, Shanaz is co-leading a transformative cultural renaissance, with initiatives that celebrate diversity, artistic innovation, and community engagement. Shanaz oversees the leadership and direction of Bradford 2025 alongside Executive Director, Dan Bates.

Errol Michael Henry

Chairman of The i2 Music Group, EMH Global Media,
EMH Global Consulting & Founder of Music-Justice

Errol Michael Henry is the founder of Intimate Records, The i2 Music Group, Music Justice and EMH Global Consulting. He is a keen supporter of entrepreneurial endeavour and has been a business owner for more than three decades. Also known as The Sound Principle, Errol has an extensive and eclectic discography as an expert sound designer and record producer. Artistic independence lies at the heart of everything he does. The companies he has founded and the brands he continues to develop are all built with this ideal in mind.

A prolific author, Errol has dedicated the past 25 years of his career working with educational faculties and conglomerates, creating bespoke training programmes to help improve personal performance. His most recent work: Win@Life - has been designed to support artists and aspiring creative entrepreneurs unlock their true potential.

Benjamin O’Connor

Director
NLA

Benjamin started as Director of NLA in September 2015 developing several new streams of activity including a comms strategy, consultations, urban rooms, learning programmes, exhibitions and public events

Benjamin has 16 years of experience working across the cultural and built environment sectors in London for both the public and private sectors, he trained in Fine Art to MA level at Central Saint Martin’s School of Art and Design, has curated a number of exhibitions, been a Features Editor and sits on a number of committees for Cultural Development, Public Realm, Sustainability and Diversity across London.

In the past 5 years Benjamin has led all of NLA’s content and communications and the development of both NLA collaborate; working with a wide range of clients to solve critical issues facing London and the One City project; London’s most followed and engaged with development area Instagram platform, promoting the City as a world class destination.

Zerritha Brown

Head of Culture
London Borough of Camden

Zerritha Brown FRSA is a cultural leader with 20 years’ experience working in the public sector, community arts and large scale events. She is currently the Head Of Culture at Camden Council where she leads the Arts and Events teams, with a portfolio which covers event management, public realm activations as well as strategically growing and supporting arts and culture in the borough. Within a year she has established a cultural programme and is working with communities and the cultural sector to develop the cultural strategy for the Borough.

Previously she led culture at Brent Council for over 10 years; a career highlight was on the Mayor Of London’s, London Borough of Culture Brent 2020 programme where she executive produced the pioneering No Bass Like Home programme (during the Covid 19 pandemic) which documented Brents reggae history through a 7 hour online festival, connecting Brent, Miami and Jamaica, through music and community stories, attracting an online audience of over 125k views before transferring to prime time TV.

She is a Clore Leadership Programme Alumni and a Fellow of the Royal Society Of The Arts. In February 2022 she was awarded Best Arts Champion Local Authority in the National Campaign for the Arts, Hearts for Arts Awards for her dedication and commitment to cultural and community engagement which effects long term change.

Mark Shearer

Co-Founder & CEO
ActionFunder

Mark is an entrepreneur and leader committed to forging connections between sectors to drive positive societal change. Building off careers in the political and private sectors (as a Westminster Councillor and Chartered Surveyor), Mark Co-Founded ActionFunder, the award winning tech platform bringing businesses together with local communities to drive positive impact.

Mark focuses time between leading ActionFunder as CEO, representing the residents of St James’s Ward at Westminster Council, and commercial property investment through Sanford Capital, a breadth of experience that shapes his commitment realising a more equitable and connected world.

Sara Coppola-Nicholson

Head of Research Programmes
disguise

At the intersection between arts and science, Sara is an enabler of creative-led, highly ambitious innovation in production technologies. Sara has worked within the Creative Industries for over twenty years at international level, across business, creative and technical roles. She has been key to the inception and delivery of award-winning technologies and workflows, cross-sectors collaborations and R&D partnerships.
Over the past decade, Sara has generated substantial opportunities for the Industry and Academia, secured financial backing from major Hollywood entities, as well as the EU and UK Governments.

At Disguise since 2020, Sara has built the company’s Research Programme from inception, to define visionary research objectives and support long and medium-term technical innovations, through IP development and strong collaborations.
Adviser to international organisations in the private and public sector, Sara supports strategies to deliver future technologies, new policies, research investments and, finally, tangible growth for the wider Creative Industries.