Globally-sought-after Creative/Cultural/Change Consultant, Expert Advisor, Strategist and Capacity Builder:

  • Whom/Clients: UK, European and global government ministries/agencies, research councils, funding bodies, health and mental health policy and practising bodies, universities and Higher Education, trading and design firms, third-sector human rights, arts, cultural and creative organisations, as well as international journals and learned bodies.
  • What: Provide insights that ignite new questions and/or pathways to deliver positive ongoing, sustained transformation, in attitude, knowledge, culture and/or practice, at individual, disciplinary, community, organisational and/or sectoral level.
  • How: Curate, connect, workshop, disrupt, instigate, advise, conceptualise, mentor, coach, co-create, help to identify, develop and strengthen assets, skills, instincts, abilities, processes and resources needed to adapt and survive thrive in fast-changing, volatile contexts.  
  • Themes/areas include (and not limited to): 
    • Innovative, inter-/trans-disciplinary, inclusive thinking, making and change making, creative and liberal arts and humanities, teaching, research & knowledge exchange, collaboration and co-creation
    • Anti-oppression, EDI, particularly neurodiversity, disability, anti-racism, anti-colonialism
    • New, critical & creative modalities of leadership; diversifying and widening ‘leadership’; reframing leadership as EDI-centred creative practice
    • Mobilities, borders, place & geopolitics; Running as an arts & humanities discourse  
    • Arts-psychiatry, arts-health & art-science; Neurodivergent leadership, EDI-centred and inclusive research and practice
    • Fine/Visual art(s), Visual Culture  
    • Public engagement; public/community art; socially-engaged art; art for social change; social art; Live/performance art; Curatorial research & practice; Art writing; writing as art; Film/video/media and locative art
  • For other past voluntary roles see here; for current pro bono professional memberships, see here. For the rest of my CV, click here.
  1. Since 2015: Referee; named and coster mentor, leadership team member and more. 2024: Named and costed as in two distinct £10m Leverhulme Research Centre proposals in University of Southampton – as one of four Associate Directors for a Centre for Queer Futures (by a Digital Humanities senior leader), and a Co-Investigator for a proposed Centre for Hybrid Living (by a Professor in Design). Leverhulme Centre for Hybrid Living Letters of support and named referee for applications for British Institute for Libyan & Northern African Studies (BILNAS) (successful), Arts Council England grants, Artist-in-Residencies, academic and professional cultural roles and more. Named and costed advisor in grant applications to research funding bodies including Leverhulme, Arts Council England and more.
  2. 2023: Juror, Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival New Asian Currents. See my summary here, 13-minute news story on NHK (Japan Public Broadcaster) here, NHK article and podcast here, University of Southampton news story here, jurors’ comments here, YIDFF New Asian Currents Official selection here, my reflection here (on how the winning film relates to larger systems of oppression, and how film can catalyse thinking and action), and another reflection here on my jury role and what was unfolding in Palestine in October).
  3. 2023: Invited Expert Panelist. DaDa’s annual Edward Rushton Social Justice Lecture by mentee Ashokkumar D. Mistry, Museum of Liverpool.
    • ‘You have been a great influence on me and my work over the past few years’, states Ashok, a multidisciplinary artist, writer, researcher, activist and curator. I was Ashok’s mentor alongside with George Vasey (Wellcome) & Mike Layward (Dash Arts) through an Arts Council England fund (2021-2023). I am proud that not just myself but my mentees are now invited to give keynote lectures.
    • Chaired by DaDa Executive Producer Ngozi Ugochukwu. Expert Panelists: Kai Syng Tan (Artist / Agitator / Professor), Sonia Boué (Artist / Writer / Consultant) and Dr Linzi Stauvers (Acting Artistic Director, Education, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham).’
    • The annual lecture marks UN International Day for People with Disabilities, and is named after the Liverpool-based ‘revolutionist‘ Rushton, whose radical efforts as a poet, activist, abolitionist and change-maker who set up UK’s first blind school drew on his background as an uneducated, working-class and ship worker.
    • DaDa: An award winning and pioneering disability and Deaf arts organisation based in Liverpool with international reach and impact. Founded in 1984, Dada is one of the first disability-led arts organisations in the UK and an integral part of the campaign for greater equality and access for disabled, Deaf and neurodivergent people.
  4. 2023: Invited guest. ‘BBC World Service – The Conversation, Women Living with ADHD’. 2023. BBC. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3ct4tvz.
  5. 2023: Invited facilitator for ESEA Artists’ Futures Town Hall, to collectively imagine new landscapes for East and Southeast Asian artists in the UK and beyond. In-person or online. Initiated by members of Artist Working Group who led the campaign to defund the Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art, the Round Tables are a UK and International series of discussions and actions with East and Southeast Asian artists and stakeholders to collectively re-imagine a more equitable art ecology.
  6. 2022: Invited Reviewer, Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship grant application
  7. 2022: Invited Reader/Assessor, Homerton College Junior Research Fellowship, University of Cambridge. Successful outcome
  8. 2022: Advisor, to various senior leaders of a range of organisations, including a Defence Ministry in Asia (leading to consideration of recruitment and more inclusive workplace practice for neurodivergent people), and a UK Faculty of Business and Law (leading to change in name and direction from ‘BAME group’ to ‘Inclusive Action’).  
  9. 2021-2022: 2021: Invited Facilitator, Chinese Centre for Contemporary Art revisioning process. Led workshop that led to petition by contracted Artists Working Group led by Dr Jack Tan for end to White Occupation of centre and its defund, media interest & set up of Arts Council England-funded Round Table to reimagine future of arts for East & Southeast Asian artists & stakeholders in UK & globally. 2022: Invited Convenor & Chair for Round Table in Manchester. Initiated by members of Artist Working Group who led campaign to defund the Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art, the Round Tables are a UK & International series of discussions & actions with East & Southeast Asian artists & stakeholders to collectively re-imagine a more equitable art ecology. Manchester discussion significant as the sites of CFCCA. Since January 2023, CFCCA has been renamed ‘esea contemporary’ (all lower case).
  10. 2022: Invited Provocateur alongside White Pube, Contemporary Visual Arts Network (CVAN). On its Fair and Equitable research report, ‘Fostering Equity in the Visual Arts Sector 
  11. 2021-2022: Trustee, Fermynwoods Contemporary Art (Best Contemporary Art Gallery in Northamptonshire; 2020 Midlands Enterprise Awards; Art Charity of the Year for Central England; 2020 Central England Prestige Awards; 2020 Achates Philanthropy Prize Bursary Winner). Draw on past collaborations & commissions, like 2021: Running Artfully Network launch & award. 2020: Breathing in Art creation of masks made in recycled materials to raise funds for Fermynwoods. 2015: Free Exchange invited guest on live discussion & podcast 
  12. 2021: Invited External Reviewer, Icelandic Research Fund. Grant on application around Neurodiverse Creative Praxis
  13. 2021: Contributor to UK Parliament’s Knowledge Exchange Unit on disability & neurodiversity. Led to change in practice (training) & policy in engaging with disabled & neurodivergent academics.
  14. 2021: Researcher & Mentor to artist in Social Artists for EDI (£100K funded by AHRC EDI Fellowship, PI Amanda Ravetz).
  15. 2021: Mentor, for neurodivergent theatre & change-maker Ali Wilson’s Every Brain (£14,867 funded by Arts Council England)
  16. 2021: Mentor, for neurodivergent artist-writer-curator Ashok Mistry (£10,000 Arts Council England) with George Vasey & Mike Layward/Dash Arts
  17. 2021: External Assessor, peer’s Associate Professorship promotion, Medical School, University of Exeter. Successful outcome
  18. 2021: UKRI Talents Reviewer, interdisciplinary (psychology-art; arts-sport) proposals.
  19. 2020: Reviewer: Medical Research Council proposal on EDI through experimental psychology
  20. 2020: Reviewer: article on neuorodiversity. Synthese, philosophy journal (Springer).
  21. 2020: Reviewer: National University of Ireland Post-Doctoral Fellowships in Humanities.
  22. 2020: Reviewer: Streetnotes, University of California interdisciplinary journal.
  23. 2020: EDI Advisor: For Board of new music ensemble (senior staff of RNCM & BBC Philharmonic Orchestra)
  24. 2017-9: Advisor. PsychArt. Supported by Royal College of Psychiatrists, collective set up by psychiatrists, radical for colliding arts, creativity & mental health, & irritating psychiatrist-patient dichotomy by sharing own mental health. Successfully planned & co-curated 2018 conference feat. Stephen Fry, prison arts charity Koestler Arts, Dragon Cafe & more
  25. 2016-9: Commissions Panel Member, Unlimited (disability arts commissioning body founded in 2012). Other panel members: senior staff from Arts Council England, British Council, Southbank Centre. Approved bids <£120,000 each for disabled artists & collectives
  26. 2017-8: Advisor, Health Inequalities Research Network Innovation group (HERON, funded by Maudsley Charity, Wellcome Trust) on ways to increase participation for people with psychosis in exercise activities. KCL-UCL. Since re-branded as Up & Running, with gift sport vouchers to boost uptake
  27. 2017: Reviewer, Sport in Society (Taylor & Francis).
  28. Since 2015: Advisor, on colleagues on art-health projects, including: award-winning theatre practitioner with 20+ year background as NHS mental health nurse, on lived experience to explore impact of health policy
  29. Since 2014: Mentor, for peers’ research/practice: Singaporean creative director on leadership PhD; South African with interdisciplinary MA from QMUL; film Senior Lecturer from Bath Spa for FHEA (successful outcomes)
  30. 2012: Advisory Board Member. Delhi International Film Festival, India. Initiated partnership with UCL Slade School of Fine Art  
  31. 2007–12: Expert Panel Member. Approved funding bids up to £75,000 for innovative startups. Infocomm Media Development Authority (Singapore government statutory board that develops & regulates converging infocomm & media sectors in holistic way, creating dynamic sector for growth, through an emphasis on talent, research, innovation and enterprise)
  32. 2009: Keynote Speaker. Art & Music Education Conference, Ministry of Education, Singapore
  33. 2008: Mentor. To young film curators from secondary schools, Asian Film Archive, Singapore
  34. 2008: Judge. Fly By Night, an annual filmmaking competition, Singapore
  35. 2005: Judge. Scholarship Selection Panel, Japanese Chambers of Commerce & Industry, Singapore
  36. 2002-5: Mentor, to younger students. Musashino Art University, Tokyo, Japan
  37. 2000-5: Focus Group Member. Ministry of Education (on art curriculum for primary & secondary schools), Ministry of Communications & Information (on architectural design of the new School of the Arts), National Arts Council (on new New Media Arts Fund), Singapore
  38. 2000: Judge, Photography Competition, Alliance Francaise de Singapour
  39. 1998-9: Chair, Activities, Thomson Video Club, Thomson Community Centre, Singapore. Introduced video art to wider community. Founded 1986, Singapore’s only club for video enthusiasts in a community setting. Became Chairperson of organising committee of Singapore’s First Junior Video Awards (nation-wide video competition for people under 16). Organise & run workshops. Success of Awards & media coverage led to invitation as Committee Member in Ministry of Education’s own video awards 1999. Now video art + digital media art firmly established in HE and schools in Singapore. Club now renamed Thomson-Digital Video Club, and remains only national open-access hub for video enthusiasts of any age group and culture/professional background