Staff
Artistic Director and CEO
Dr Errol Francis
Dr Errol Francis is artistic director and CEO of Culture&. Errol studied photography and fine art at Central Saint Martin’s, University of the Arts London. His doctoral research at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London focused on postcolonial artistic responses to museums.
Errol’s background in mental health activism has influenced his arts practice such as his role as head of arts at the Mental Health Foundation and his directing of the Anxiety Arts Festival 2014, Cyborgs 2019 and his work in the curatorial research group PS/Y. More recently Errol has been commissioned by the charity Hospital Rooms to make a new site-specific work of art in collaboration with patients in an NHS mental healthcare unit.
Errol was content producer for the Culture Box research project at the University of Exeter which promoted social interaction and public health through the arts in the time of Covid-19 for people living with dementia in care homes. He is visiting lecturer at the University of Greenwich, Goldsmith’s University of London and Sotheby’s Institute of Art.
Development Director
Angela Billings
Angela has spent over a decade working in the charitable sector raising funds from government bodies, trusts and sponsors to support the delivery of cultural events. A major part of her work involved fundraising for the provision of training and performance opportunities for emerging opera singers. She is passionate about the power of diversity to enliven and refresh our collective understanding of, and participation in, the arts, culture and heritage sectors. She previously worked as a senior manager in education and championed diversity, inclusion and equality from policy making through to curriculum delivery.
Angela is a member of Museum Detox and has recently completed an MA in Arts Administration and Cultural Policy at Goldsmiths, University of London. She undertook a research placement at Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford which is at the forefront of decolonial praxis in the UK. The research examined the public’s responses to the removal of human remains from the museum’s open display in the summer of 2020. She was subsequently invited to take part in the panel discussion on the Emotion of Removal which is part of the museum’s Radical Hope series. Angela’s main academic interests are decoloniality, polarization of language and restitution
Programme Manager
Samuel Pontin
Sam joined Culture& in 2017 with a BA Hons Degree from the University of York in History. While completing his degree Sam worked on a number of projects with Eastside Community Heritage, from audio transcription and design, to a pop-up Lottery Funded exhibition ‘Saving the Queens: Queens Market’, featuring oral histories of contemporary and past stallholders at Queens Market, Upton Park.
Sam has experience in admin, planning and coordination, organising and supporting a number of Culture& events including New Museum School Graduations and Sharing Days, and the ‘Imagination Café’ in collaboration with the University of West London, which toured Great Britain in 2018 and was on show at MOSTYN Gallery – Llandudno, Menier Gallery – Southwark, and the City Art Centre – Edinburgh. Sam is dedicated to ensuring the smooth running of all day-to-day operations, projects and events; to the benefit of opening up who makes and enjoys arts and heritage.
Executive Assistant
Yujia Wang
Yujia has worked with a variety of art spaces in the UK and in China, including non-profit and commercial cultural organisations and film festivals, in administrative, public programming, exhibition-making, as well as marketing roles.
When studying at the Curating Contemporary Art MA at the Royal College of Art, Yujia was awarded distinction for her dissertation on analysing Western-centric discourses on ‘queer exhibitions’ from a transnational perspective, and co-curated For us, to share, a project in collaboration with Southwark Park Galleries and the Bosco Centre in Rotherhithe. Being a curator, digital artist and animator, Yujia is passionate about exploring intersectional subjectivities, transnational kinship and belonging through multidisciplinary practices.
Research Consultant
Sandra Shakespeare
Sandra Shakespeare is a founding director of Museum X CIC and the Black British Museum Project. Museum X works in creative ways with people and museums to explore Black British history. Fundamental to her practice is the creation of work which explores Black British intangible heritage to reshape and expand a national cultural narrative.
Sandra also works as a Life Coach and enjoys working with arts, heritage and museum sectors. Her career includes roles at The National Archives developing access to African Caribbean archival collections. A Clore Leadership Fellow, Sandra is a co-founder member of the heritage network Museum Detox – a network for people of colour who work in museums, libraries, galleries, archives, and the heritage sector.
Research Consultant
Victoria Tischler BSW, MSocSc, PhD, CPsychol, AFBPsS
Professor Tischler is a Chartered Psychologist and Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society. She has a PhD in psychology from the University of Nottingham where she worked for 12 years. She retains an honorary position at the University of Nottingham Medical School. Her research interests focus on creativity and mental health and multisensory approaches to dementia care. She is co-executive editor of the journal Arts and Health: an international journal for research, policy and practice. She has worked as a curator in the outsider art field, she serves on the scientific advisory board for Boots UK archive and is an advisory board member for the Hamwe Festival, University of Global Health Equity, Rwanda.
Research Consultant
Dr Natalie Darko HEA Fellow, PGCHE, PhD, MPhil, BSc.
Dr Natalie Darko is an Associate Professor in Social Sciences and specialises in research on race and ethnicity, equity, inequalities, and health. She is currently an Associate Professor at the University of Leicester and retains an honorary Senior Research Fellow position at the Stephen Lawrence Research Centre. Dr Darko serves as a steering advisory board member for the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) BRACE Rapid Service Evaluation Centre. She also supports various organisations to prioritise and capture the seldom heard voices of minoritized groups, and how to work collaboratively to inform equitable provision and practice.