17 current roles as Founder, Chair or active Member, in UK, European and international NGOs and professional organisations/collectives across creativity, culture, health, social justice and more. For past/ad hoc voluntary roles, see here. For past consultancy roles, see here. For the rest of my CV, click here.
- 2024: Elected Trustee (with highest vote count of three elected trustees) Council for Higher Education in Art and Design (CHEAD, the UK association for 67 educational institutions with degree or postgraduate provision in art and design)
- 2022-2023: StellarHE. Strategic executive development for diverse leaders in HE. Nominated by MMU
- 2022-2023: Social Art Inclusion Lab (SAIL) Founding member. Social Artists for EDI (SAFEDI) Researcher, Mentor. AHRC EDI Fellowship £100,609. PI: Prof Amanda Ravetz
- Since 2021: First artist on British Journal of Psychiatry Bulletin Editorial Board (Cambridge University Press for Royal College of Psychiatrists). Broaden discourse to include creative practice. Widen participation. Introduce ethical pathways to include creative, neurodivergent people, ideas & methods. The Bulletin is read by all registered psychiatrists in UK and distributed beyond the UK, totalling 87,216 physical copies per year, and more online as an open access journal
- Since 2021: Running Artfully Network (RAN) Co-Founder, Co-Lead. Draws on leadership since 2014 as: 90-member global Running Cultures Research Group Co-Founder, Manager; RUN! RUN! RUN! Biennale Founder, Lead
- Since 2020: Race Equality Action Group (REAP) Co-Founder, Co-Chair. 59-member UK NorthWest alliance of cultural & academic institutions including Ahmed Iqbal Ullah Race Centre, & Manchester Poetry Library. Legacy of 75th Anniversary of the 5th Pan African Congress Celebrations (PAC75) which reached 18.2m people globally
- Since 2020: Global 350-member Neurodiversity In/And Creative Research Network Founder, Co-Lead
- 2019-2024: Hear Me Out Trustee. UK charity (formerly Music in Detention) working with detained migrants through music & arts since 2005. Played key role on board, in working groups and panels to help drive efforts to radically transform the organisation, by embedding co-creation and anti-oppression, anti-ableist, anti-colonial, pro-transgender principals, policies and practices at all levels including governance, training, recruitment and more, and formalise ways to value (financially and more) lived experience as skill and knowledge. Highlights:
- Decolonise trustee board membership with inclusion of former detainees
- Help streamline processes & improve communication for meetings to become more accessible for people with English as second language, help advocate for equity (eg expenses coverage to participate in board meetings)
- Advocate for power-sharing at all levels, including leadership and governance, such as carefully working out and building equitable processes to employ an artistic director with lived experience of detention and/or racial inequity. The success of this is seen in the recruitment of the organisation’s first ever Black, neurodivergent Artistic Director
- Formalising processes to make recruitment more equitable, accommodate for disabled and neurodivergent staff and participants, as well as ways to value – including financially – lived experience and more.
- Key member of recruitment processes and panels
- See related posts here, here and here in LinkedIn
- Students from the new MA Arts and Cultural Leadership made a Study Visit here, and a few wrote their reflective reports about HMO. The course itself prioritises EDI, and has a radical understanding of leadership as an inclusive practice as outlined here, so it lends itself to values shared by the University of Sanctuary and similar spaces.
- Support people with refugee/asylum status with their academic ambitions
- put together a research grant proposal which will include some of this work.
- This area of work relates to my artistic and teaching practice around migration, mobilities, borders and crossing borders.
- Since 2018: UK Research and Innovation Future Leadership Fellowship Peer Review College member. UKRI: National organisation that works with universities, research organisations, businesses, charities, and government to create the best possible environment for research and innovation to flourish. FLF: Highly-competitive prestigious scheme to ‘grow the strong supply of talented individuals needed to ensure that UK research and innovation continues to be world class’. 7 year scheme life changing for awardees, leading to careers as world-class academics to then further transform lives of other researchers
- Since 2018: First ever Creative and Cultural Consultant & Research Committee Member, UK Adult ADHD Network (professional network for mental health practitioners & researchers). Lead on its arts & public engagement interfaces, important for a network focused on neurodevelopmental processes as medical deficits
- Since circa 2018: Member, Composers and Authors Society of Singapore Ltd (COMPASS). Non-profit public company that administers public performance, broadcast, diffusion and reproduction rights in music & literary musical works, Singapore
- Since 2015: AHRC Peer Review College Member. Renewed until 2024.
- 2014-2023: Fellow, Royal Society for the Arts (FRSA) 8044270. Deliver two workshops, including one attending by 130 Fellows re-imagining future of work. Publish two op-eds, including one outlining bold interdisciplinary approach to fight pandemic & other wicked global crises. Previous Fellows include Charles Dickens, Adam Smith, Benjamin Franklin, Karl Marx, William Hogarth, John Diefenbaker, Stephen Hawking & Tim Berners-Lee. Resigned in 2023 as RSA did not walk the walk in advancing its own workers’ rights, and its activities and governance remain elitist and white-supremacist.
- Since 2013: PhilbeatVisual Consultant, Communications Consultant. Asian creative company
- Since 2017: Art & Mobilities Network member. Co-curated, co-produced inaugural Art & Mobilities Symposium that instigated setup
- Since 2014: Member: Global Mobilities Network, ADHD & Associated Disorders, Aurora Leadership/Advance HE Network, National Alliance for Art; Health & Wellbeing; Culture Health & Wellbeing Alliance. Arts Health ECR Network, AN The Artists Information Company