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.
Errol is currently content producer for the Culture Box research project at the University of Exeter which promotes 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.
Strategic Development Manager
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 is currently completing an MA in Arts Administration and Cultural Policy at Goldsmiths, University of London. She recently 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.