BIOGRAPHY
CURRENT
I am currently working as an independent curator, creative producer, lecturer and researcher. I am primarily focused on digital artwork and am passionate about work that seeks to investigate not only the impacts of digital technology on society, culture and politics but also the nature of the technology itself. In my arts practice, I aim to create equitable spaces to encourage and support diverse artists to make work and promote that work to audiences.
I have recently co-founded a curatorial collective called Inter\face with artist, Judith Ricketts. We are currently seeking funding for our first exhibition in partnership with SEAS.
As a Visiting Fellow at the Sussex Humanities Lab, I am currently researching the Lab’s connections with creative digital businesses in Brighton and Hove, with the belief that there are rich possibilities in bringing together the two sectors.
I teach the Critical Theory: Media Concepts Research Paper module on the Digital Media Arts MA at the University of Brighton, supporting students through the process of writing their dissertation.
Image: Mephitic Air by Wes Goatley and Tobias Revell
BRIGHTON DIGITAL FESTIVAL
I was involved with Brighton Digital Festival (BDF) from its conception in 2011 as part of the original steering group, before becoming the Arts Advisor for 2014/15 and finally taking over as Director in 2016-19.
During my tenure at BDF, especially as it became an independent organisation in 2016, I worked to give the festival a strong identity and to ensure that it had wide reach across the city and beyond.
Alongside the festival’s open programme, I commissioned more than fifty artworks and education projects, attracted audiences into the hundreds of thousands, developed strong partnerships and raised more than £100k in sponsorship alongside several successful funding bids to Arts Council England.
I also created and programmed the festival’s flagship conference the Messy Edge over three years 2017-19. In a direct rebuttal to most of the digital culture conferences that I had attended, the Messy Edge brought together diverse speakers from groups usually underrepresented in traditional conferences. You can read more about the Messy Edge and see a line up of the speakers here.
Wanting new challenges and feeling that I’d taken the festival as far as I could with the resources available, I stepped down at the end of 2019.
Image: Maya Indira Ganesh at The Messy Edge, photo by Leonardo Lami
FABRICA
I worked at Fabrica in a number of capacities over 12 years, starting as a volunteer and finishing as Head of Communications.
I was involved in developing and delivering a series of European collaboration projects in my time at the gallery. I developed audience development, diversity and communication strategies. I also produced a series of films to accompany exhibitions and to document projects.
During the time I overlapped between Fabrica and the Brighton Digital Festival, I developed and programmed the Test Bed, an opportunity for a digital artist or group to use Fabrica’s space, a deconsecrated Regency church, to test and show works in progress.
Image: Dawn Chorus by Marcus Coates