Board of Directors
Robin Deacon (Chair)
Robin Deacon is a British artist, writer, educator and curator. He graduated from the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff in 1996, going on to present his performances, lectures and videos at conferences and festivals in the UK and internationally in Europe, the USA and Asia. He has received a variety of awards and fellowships from organizations such as Artsadmin, the Delfina Foundation, British Arts Council, Live Art Development Agency and Franklin Furnace Inc. He is also a MacDowell Fellow. His writings on the practice and ethics of performance reenactment and documentation (along with contributions to monographs on artists such as Baktruppen, Stuart Sherman and Joshua Sofaer) have been published by Routledge, NYU Press and Intellect Live. After a decade in the USA as Professor and Chair of Performance at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Robin returned to the UK in 2021 to become the Artistic Director and CEO of SPILL Festival, an international biennial of art and culture based in Ipswich, Suffolk.
Gill Lloyd (Treasurer)
Gill Lloyd was the co-director of Artsadmin for 33 years having worked with the organisation since 1986, before which she managed production and touring for The People Show. Gill initially worked at Artsadmin as project manager on a range of projects – particularly projects from South Africa in negotiation with the African National Congress during the period leading to the end of the cultural boycott. She also organised a large cultural festival (Zabalaza) for the ANC in London. She has been overall financial management of the organisation and spearheaded Artsadmin’s £6m building purchase and renovation which was completed in early 2007. Subsequently as co-director led on finance, the building and curated the public programme until retiring in 2018. Currently chair at People Show, Co-chair at Madlove and a trustee at Hay2Timbuktu twinning charity. Gill also has specialist knowledge and extensive interest in Southern African arts and culture and has undertaken a lot of South African human rights campaigning activity on behalf of artists working alongside veteran politician Helen Suzman both pre and post apartheid.
Katy Baird
Katy Baird is an artist, curator and producer. Her practice is centred around the desire to create a shared space that can be both welcoming and radical. As the Artistic Director of Home Live Art in Hastings, East Sussex, Katy is committed to developing new audiences for Live Art and building strong local communities through creativity. Her performance work explores the intersections of class, gender and sexuality. It has been presented in arts centres and performance festivals, as well as in squat parties, clubs and raves. Her forthcoming solo show, Get Off, is set to tour starting April 2024.
Angela Bartram
Angela Bartram is an artist and artistic researcher working with objects, sound, video, print, curation, performance event and published text, concerning thresholds of the human body, gallery or museum, definitions of the human and animal and the effects of exploring and engaging empathy within companionable binaries, and appropriate strategies for documenting the ephemeral. She is Professor of Contemporary Art and Co-Lead of the Creative and Cultural Academic Theme and Research Centre at the University of Derby, and has a PhD from Middlesex University.
Ansuman Biswas
Ansuman Biswas has an international, inter-disciplinary practice which has included directing Shakespeare, translating Tagore, designing underwater sculptures in the Red Sea, living with wandering minstrels in India, being employed as an ornamental hermit in the English countryside, touring with Björk in New York, surviving blindfolded in an unknown place, travelling with nomadic shamans in the Gobi Desert, playing with Oasis, collaborating with neuroscientists in Arizona, living for a week with nothing but what spectators chose to give him, singing for 24 hours non-stop, organising grassroots activists in Soweto, trapping himself in a box for ten days with no food or light, creating a musical in a maximum security prison, doing R&D for Hewlett-Packard, being a soloist with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, bathing strangers, holding seminars in a Burmese monastery, running a nightclub for women on the Reeperbahn, being Musical Director at the Globe theatre, playing with terminally ill children, making a radio telescope sing and dance, being locked in a Gothic tower alone for forty days and nights, flying on a real, live, magic carpet, and stopping time. Ansuman is Lecturer in Live Art and Contemporary Performance at Queen Mary University of London and a member of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. He has designed academic programmes in Arts and Ecology at Dartington and Schumacher Colleges, and in socially engaged practice at The Guildhall School of Music and Drama. His key research interests are in improvisation and meditation.
Andy Wansell
Andy Wansell is the Chief Operating Officer at Harbottle & Lewis, a London-based law firm renowned for acting for the most innovative, influential and enterprising people and organisations across all of their legal and business needs. The firm works alongside an array of talented and entrepreneurial clients from the creative industries, including writers, producers, actors and musicians. In a nutshell, it does interesting work for interesting people. As COO, Andy is the conductor of the orchestra and makes sure that the right people are in the right roles, doing the right things. Andy has many years of experience in senior business management and operational roles at law firms and was formerly a managing director of the Business Management Group at global talent agency, YMU. Outside of work, Andy is still going to see live music, reading a lot, and thinking too much.
Aaron Wright
Aaron Wright is Head of Performance and Dance at the Southbank Centre, appointed in April 2023. Aaron has extensive experience in commissioning and presenting contemporary performing arts. Previously, Aaron was Artistic Director of Fierce (Birmingham) since May 2016, where he was responsible for festival programming, commissioning, artist development and building partnerships. He curated three editions of the biennial Fierce Festival between 2017-2022, working with a broad range of international artists and companies. Aaron was also a cultural programme consultant for the Birmingham 2022 Festival for which Fierce delivered a major public realm project Key to the City by artist Paul Ramírez Jonas. Aaron also helped instigate the new English performing arts showcase: Horizon.
