CRAFTS COUNCIL - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Commercial Director
- Finance
- Member of the Senior Management Team
Adele Hill-King leads the finance function at Crafts Council, playing a strategic role in implementing the financial strategy set by the trustees. She also oversees facilities and administration functions. Her primary aim is to inform lead decision makers, whilst ensuring efficiency of operations and support services, so that the Crafts Council can create maximum positive impact upon UK craft, makers and audiences.
Job Titles:
- Associate Gallery Event Hire Manager
Anant Sharma has spent the last 14 years leading Matter Of Form - a brand and experience design consultancy that partner with timeless luxury brands, from Accor and Zaha Hadid Architects to Belmond, Diageo and Aman. A futurist, innovation enthusiast and keen advocate of developing meritocratic cultures that promote ideas and learning, Anant is also a dedicated teacher and student of behavioural design; exploring what drives us to do the things we do. Anant co-owns the design thinking school Experience Haus and lectures as an adjunct professor in branding, CX and innovation at EHL, the world's leading hospitality university. Anant shares his insights at international public speaking engagements and via Matter Of Form's podcast What The Luxe.
Andy Marshall is a senior publishing professional with nearly 30 years of media experience and is group managing director at Immediate Media Co: a fast-growing and highly successful media business which owns many market-leading brands including Radio Times, Mollie Makes, hitched.co.uk and Jewellery Maker TV. He was the co-founder and managing director of Origin Publishing (now part of Immediate Media Co) and previous roles include head of marketing at Future Publishing and head of business development at The European Newspaper. Andy has also acted as an advisor to Plymouth University at the launch of its MA in Publishing.
Job Titles:
- Associate Collect Fair Marketing Manager
- Collect Marketing Manager
Textile artist Billie Zangewa at work on a quilt piece, as seen in Crafts issue 291 November-December 2021.
Job Titles:
- Interim Head of Learning and Participation
Job Titles:
- Sponsorship and Partnership Manager
Job Titles:
- Associate Collect Fair Market Consultant
Job Titles:
- Editor / Head of Editorial
- Editor / Head of Editorial and Communications
Job Titles:
- Senior Programmes and Collections Manager
Ed Matthews-Gentle FRSA is the programme leader for Creative Lancashire and strategic lead for Creative Industries at Lancashire County Council, with over 20 years of experience working with and developing creative organisations. Current projects and collaborations include the British Textile Biennial, the development of the Lancashire 2025 bid to host the UK City of Culture and overseeing Lancashire's Cultural Strategy. More recently Ed was invited by Crafts Council to join the Craft UK Anti-Racism Working Group. Ed also curates the National Festival of Making Conference and talks programme.
Job Titles:
- Learning and Sector Support Coordinator
Helen worked for the John Lewis Partnership for over 30 years. Her last post was as a partners' counsellor and she sat on the Partnership Board. She is an HR professional and executive coach. She has a lifelong passion for textiles, particularly needlework, and is studying at the Royal School of Needlework.
Job Titles:
- Trustee
- Consultant, Researcher and Advisor in ECommerce
Ian Jindal is a consultant, researcher and advisor in eCommerce and multichannel retail performance.
He founded InternetRetailing.net and RetailX.net to serve Europe's multichannel retailers with research, insight and analysis, including the Top500 performance rankings. Ian's advisory clients have included Fiorucci, Selfridges, House of Fraser, Marks & Spencer, John Lewis, Waitrose, De Bijenkorf, Kering and Walgreens Boots Alliance. Ian was group eCommerce director at Littlewoods Shop Direct, and head of online operations at the BBC. Ian founded the European eCommerce Forum and authored the UK's first MSc in Internet Retailing. Ian was the general director of The Photographers' Gallery and Treasurer of Engage.org.
Job Titles:
- Collect Fair Director
- Senior Enterprise Manager and Collect Fair Director
Job Titles:
- Trustee
- Small Business Owner
Jake Solomon is a small business owner in the craft space, employing more than 40 people across two businesses in Birmingham. Foresso manufactures a wooden terrazzo made from industrial waste streams focusing on waste wood from the joinery industry and end of life refractory investment. Lunts Castings ltd is a 90 year bronze foundry. His focus is on creating working environments which are built around the people doing the work and creating well run and structured business processes that allow craft skills to remain in the UK. The desire to create viable craft-based businesses based on modern manufacturing standards, pricing, and social impact, no matter how small, is Jake's central philosophy.
John Knell is one of the UK's leading thinkers on the changing face of work and works as an independent strategy consultant across the private, public and third sectors. Over the last 15 years he has built an international reputation as a cultural policy analyst, working with governments, funders, cities and major cultural institutions around the world. Since 2013 John has also been running Counting What Counts Ltd, developing the ‘Culture Counts' platform to support the use of cultural experience metrics that have been co-produced with the cultural sector in Australia and the UK. In 2018, CWC won a contract with Arts Council England to roll out the Impact & Insight Toolkit across their funded portfolio.
John began his career as an academic at the University of Leeds (1990 -1997) where he undertook his doctoral research in political economy. He was Director of Research and Policy at the Work Foundation between 1998 and 2003. John retains strong links with leading research centres; and is a fellow of the RSA. He lives in Cambridge and has a consuming passion for music of all kinds.
Lady Kitt is a paper sculptor, researcher and drag king, based in Newcastle- upon Tyne. Kitt describes their work as "mess-making as social glue, driven by an insatiable curiosity to explore, share and (gently) incite the social functions of stuff that gets called art". Kitt is co-lead for Social Art Network North East, a founding member of Disabled artist-led consortium Disconsortia and a member of the global art-activism movement Nasty Women (NW), co-convening the NW International Art Prize in 2018. Kitt has recently shown work at Atlanta Contemporary (USA), Saatchi Gallery London (UK) and is currently maker in residence at Durham University and one of nine Constellations artists with UP Projects and Flat Time House.
Job Titles:
- Development Coordinator
- Executive
Job Titles:
- Associate Collect Fair Marketing Coordinator
- Collect Marketing Co - Ordinator
Majeda Clarke is an award-winning textile artist based at Cockpit Arts, London. She received the 2018 British Muslim Award for Creativity and took part in the Crafts Council Hothouse Programme. After a career in education, as a head of English and then as an inspector and advisor for Camden schools, Majeda retrained in textiles before setting up her studio. She is still active in education, recently working on the new UK government T Levels strategy for craft and design.
Melanie Eddy is a renowned sculptural jeweller, with pieces held in public and private collections at the Victoria & Albert Museum, The Goldsmiths' Company Collection and the Spencer Museum of Art. She is director of The Association for Contemporary Jewellery, a trustee for The Silversmiths & Jewellers Charity and advises industry organisations both in the UK and abroad, including Turquoise Mountain's Institute for Afghan Arts and Architecture in Kabul, Afghanistan.
Melanie is an associate lecturer on the MA Design: Ceramics Furniture and Jewellery programme at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design and the University for the Creative Arts and a visiting lecturer at West Dean College of Arts and Conservation. She is one of the founders of The Jewellery Futures Fund, an initiative looking to diversify the trade and effect change through a programme of scholarships, grants and industry opportunities.
Job Titles:
- Senior Communications Manager
Job Titles:
- Creative Director
- Executive Director
- Member of the Leadership Team
- Member of the Senior Management Team
Natalie Melton joined the Crafts Council as creative director in January 2019 and has spent more than a decade working in craft. From 2012- 2018 she was co-founder and managing director of The New Craftsmen, a business which curates, commissions and sells unique contemporary objects rooted in craftsmanship and narrative and made by makers from across the British Isles.
As commercial director at Arts & Business (2005-2011), she oversaw the development of Crafted, a business support & mentoring programme for highly skilled makers.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Leadership Team
- Member of the Senior Management Team
- Director of Learning and Skills
- Learning and Skills Director
With over twenty years of working within arts education, Nicky Dewar is the Learning & Skills Director at the Crafts Council leading our work to provide professional business support for makers, formal education initiatives, and participation activities for people of all ages to engage with craft and making.
Previously, Nicky worked for decade within music education in London and before that within Local Authorities supporting collaborations between schools and the art sector. She is a trustee of Intoart, a primary school governor, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and sews in her spare time.
Job Titles:
- Facilities and Operations Manager
Richard Is Chief Executive of the housing association, bpha, which has twenty thousand homes across Bedford, Cambridge and Oxford. His passion for housing has seen him hold leadership roles in the sector for nearly 20 years including as Deputy Chief Executive of the Homes and Communities Agency. Richard is also the non-executive Chair of drugs and alcohol rehabilitation charity, Phoenix Futures which works in residential, community and prison settings across the UK.
Rose Sinclair is a Lecturer (Textiles) in Design Education, at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her PhD doctoral research focusses on Black British women, their crafting practices and textiles networks such as Dorcas Clubs and Societies. Her work on Dorcas Clubs ‘Craftivism: Making a Difference' featured on BBC4 in 2021. Rose works across a range of participatory practices in pop-up shops and museum installations, including V&A London, House for an Art Lover and Timespan in Helmsdale, Scotland. Her latest work "Dorcas Stories from the Front Room, Textile Narratives, Now and Then, a co-curated exhibition with Craftspace focuses on crafts of the Windrush Generation. Rose co-curated the first retrospective of the work of Caribbean textile designer Althea McNish, 'Althea McNish: Colour is Mine', at the William Morris Gallery and The Whitworth in Manchester between 2022 and 2023.
Rose has authored several textile books and her latest work, the first monograph about Althea McNish, for Yale Publishers is due in Autumn 2024. She is on the International Advisory board for Textile: Journal of Cloth and Culture, and Co-Editor of the Journal of Textile Research and Practice. Rose is a founding member and Alumni of the Equity Advisory Council at the Crafts Council, a Heritage Crafts Ambassador for Heritage Crafts UK, an Associate member of the APPG Group for Craft and a Trustee of the Textile Society UK.
Rafaela Ricardo, equity and inclusion manager, and manager of our equity advisory council
Supported by a team of associate writers including Abbie Coppard, Natasha Levy and Riya Patel
For subscription-related enquiries, please email subscriptions@craftscouncil.org.uk
Job Titles:
- Head of Public Programmes
Job Titles:
- Trustee
- Financial Times Writer and Co - Founder
Yasmin Jones-Henry is a Financial Times writer and co-founder and curator of The Lab E20, a new flagship for experiential retail, cultural exhibition and creative workspace, with a focus on positive fashion and sustainable living. She works in the space where fashion meets finance and culture meets commerce. Through her work as a writer with specialisms in sustainability (ESG), design and investment, she has established a career championing the role culture and creative enterprise can play as a catalyst to inclusive regeneration. As a cultural placemaking strategist, Yasmin is a thought leader and an advocate for rethinking retail, scaling circular economy design principles and working to diversify the talent pipelines across the fashion industry and the built environment.
Job Titles:
- Head of Learning and Participation