Speakers

Cara grew up in Coventry and has spent the last 15 years working in PR, Marketing and Event Management across Hospitality, Fashion, Beauty, Pop Up Ventures, Social Enterprise, Live Events, Education and the Arts.

Sarah Ellis is an award-winning producer currently working as Director of Digital Development for the Royal Shakespeare Company to explore new artistic initiatives and partnerships.

The latest partnership for the RSC is the Audience of the Future Live Performance Demonstrator funded by Innovate UK - a consortium consisting of arts organisations, research partners and technology companies to explore the future of performances and real-time immersive experiences.

In 2017, she became a fellow of the University of Worcester for her work in the arts and technology. In 2016 she was awarded The Hospital Club & Creatives Industries award for cross industry collaboration for her work on the RSC’s The Tempest in collaboration with Intel and in association with The Imaginarium Studios.

In 2013 she was listed in the top 100 most influential people working in Gaming and Technology by The Hospital Club and Guardian Culture Professionals. In partnership with Google, she produced Midsummer Night’s Dreaming winning two Lovie Awards for Innovation and Experimentation.

In 2012, she produced myShakespeare an online commissioning platform for the World Shakespeare Festival. In 2011, she produced Adelaide Road for the RSC, which mixed live performance with an app and website map.

As a spoken word producer, she has worked with the Old Vic Tunnels, Battersea Arts Centre, Birmingham REP, Contact, Improbable, Southbank Centre, Soho Theatre, and Shunt. She has been Head of Creative Programmes at the Albany Theatre and Programme Manager for Apples & Snakes.

She commits to the development of the arts and technology sector by being a mentor and advisor to programmes such as the Sundance Institute's New Frontier Labs, Creative XR programme supported by Arts Council England and Digital Catapult and CPH:LABS.

She is a regular speaker and commentator on digital arts practice, as well as an Industry Champion for the Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre, which helps inform academic research on the creative industries to lead to better policies for the sector. She has been appointed Chair of digital agency, The Space, established by Arts Council England and the BBC to help promote digital engagement across the arts.

Laura Nyahuye, a Creative Visionary. Laura is a Zimbabwean born artist, mother, storyteller, performer, wordsmith, founder of MAOKWO, an arts organisation. Laura designs and makes unique handcrafted wearable body adornments. Her work addresses social issues: representation, in the arts sector for minoritized artists, women, young people and migrant communities. Tokenism and tick box exercises are real life issues, affecting marginalised communities daily, you will find these topics woven into Laura’s poetic writing and her handmade body adornments. Her work challenges perceptions and provokes human beings’ habitual thought patterns, concerning fellow humans. For centuries, body adornments have been used to define cultural, social, or religious status. As Laura hand weaves her body adornments, she is weaving a message  it’s about Hope, Love and Freedom. Laura’s work is driven by the conviction that Art/Creativity is a tool that help us to see past race, class, age and create a better NOW, a better FUTURE #allhuman. She is driven by the desire to see a better tomorrow for the next generation, to see a flicker of hope in the eyes of a fellow woman and for communities to connect, despite race, language and religious differences. She believes that, humanity is tapestry of differences and commonality. Why divide it?

I help people to make a ruckus and make positive change happen.  From November 2020 I became co-CEO of Birmingham Museums Trust. I am a job share as two heads are better than one.  I’m encouraging the museum sector to become ‘digital by default. My mission is to ensure our people, skills and services are adaptable to the rapidly changing landscape as a cultural business. We’re experimenting with different ways of doing things including business models, partnerships, and sharing as much as possible publicly.

At the age of 16, Cory Barrett began his career training as a part-tme Sales assistant in Coventry, whilst completing his Diploma in Graphic Design. During this time, he found a love of clothes, styling, window dressing and ultmately visual merchandising. Cory dedicated his time to the craft of visual merchandising through a series of high profile moves - including Director-level roles at Tiffany and Gap in New York, as well as managerial roles at Bally, COS, and Liberty in London. His passion has seen him travel the world, gaining inspiraton from new cultures and people, as well as developing the skills needed to set up his own company

An award-winning business and technology journalist and analyst whose work has appeared in consumer and trade magazines and websites in the US, the UK, Australia, South Africa and Europe, Dr Bianca Wright has covered the broader tech landscape for 20 years. She has worked on a range of projects in academia and industry, most recently focusing on immersive technologies, gamification, and customer experience. Bianca is Associate Professor and the Curriculum Lead: Immersive at Coventry University, as well as the Course Director for the BA Digital Media, an Associate of the Centre for Post-Digital Cultures and a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. She holds a Masters in Science and Technology Journalism and a PhD in Media Studies focusing on gamification in serious games. She also completed a VR Mobile 360 Developer nanodegree.

Bianca’s areas of interest lie in the intersections of digital cultures, heritage, history and immersive technologies. Her work has focused on storytelling in a variety of media and centres on exploring how multiplicities of voices and histories can be made visible through immersive media and technologies.

Creative Giants founder and man in the know, Simon Vaughan, brings nearly 20 years of experience in artist relations, project and event management and “making it happen”. He is highly skilled at building creative relationships and has worked with a diverse list of clients ranging from Thom Yorke, Glastonbury Festival to Coventry City Council and Warwickshire County Council.

Creative Giants are the nominated place curators for Coventry Public Realm and have spent the last 18 months working closely with the Public Realm team, as well as other Coventry City Council departments and the City of Culture Trust to deliver a number of ambitious projects across the city centre, as well as providing ongoing consultancy in wayfinding, placemaking, design and development, and public art strategy.  

Jagdish works as a socially engaged visual artist, educator and writer. He works primarily around the themes of anti-racism, class, community and well-being. He has helped to establish the Nottingham Centre for Photography and Social Engagement, and Reframed, a Midlands based network for Black and Ethnic Minority photographers. He came to art after working as the Deputy Director of the anti racist human rights charity the Monitoring Group. Over the past decade, he has worked on many collaborative art projects and has held exhibitions across the country. He is currently working on a research project at Coventry University examining the intersections of socially engaged art practice and anti-racism. 

Ayesha is the Audience Development Officer and one of the Embedded Community Producer at the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry. She is also an artist that uses photography and film to interrogate social structures and belief systems, through personal narratives.

Her autobiographical project, which explores disability, female identity, family lineage and imposed ideals was one of 30 projects to receive an international award from Magnum Photos, to find 30 emerging documentary photographers from around the world.

Through her work at the Belgrade Theatre and in her personal practice, she is motivated by the power art has to bring people together and be a catalyst for social change and personal growth.

Edie Jo Murray is a UK based artist with a desire to disrupt what you understand as reality. She invites audiences into imagined worlds where the rules are different and weird is welcome. Edie’s work is both eclectic and anachronistic: references to ancient myth and folklore sit alongside 90s TV nostalgia and futuristic digitally rendered environments. Edie’s focus on digital tools and immersive technologies is enriched through vibrant, sensory driven exploration of physical media.

Edie is an Artist Fellow at Birmingham Open Media , and an alum of Vivid Project ‘s Black Hole Club. Recent work includes commissions from the Open Data Institute Coventry City of Culture 2021 and Unlimited . In 2020 Edie was a recipient of an Arts Council England Developing Your Creative Practice grant, and completed a Masters degree in Digital Media and Culture from the University of Warwick.

Edie has taken refuge in the online worlds that have sprung up amidst the UK lockdown. Having been able to engage in cultural spaces more than ever before as a result of this move to online, she is keen to see conversations around accessibility remain a priority even as restrictions ease and society anticipates a return to ‘normal’.

Helga Henry is a speaker, coach and consultant in the cultural sector with clients including Coventry City of Culture, the Royal Albert Hall, Jerwood Arts and the RSC. Helga has hosted Hello Culture since its inception in 2009, Hello Culture REMIX in Manchester in February 2019 and 2020 and Bristol in January 2020.  Since Hello Culture moved online in September 2020 she has hosted the keynote “In Conversation With” speakers such as Jonty Claypole, Le Gateau Chocolat, Kris Halpin and Cold War Steve. 

Her experience includes advising a range of national arts organisations and a secondment at St Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn, NY.  Increasingly she offers executive coaching online to a number of professionals in the creative industries.   A key part of her work is the development of cultural leaders from diverse backgrounds, most recently in partnership with Lara Ratnaraja on the AD:Vantage programme for d/deaf, neurodivergent and disabled artists in Coventry (funded by Coventry City Council) and previously the ASTONish programme and the highly acclaimed RE:Present programme – Transforming the Diversity of Cultural Leadership (both funded by Birmingham City Council and Arts Council England).  

With her consultant colleague Dr Andrew Bass, she is the co-author of “NetworkAbility – Building your business one relationship at a time”, published in November 2016 and available on Amazon and Troubadour publishing.

I am an artist, curator and independent researcher interested in DIY cultures, collaboration, community and what was briefly called the post-internet.

I started and am now artistic director of Coventry Biennial, an artist-led, social, political and critical platform for contemporary art. We delivered highly successful biennials in 2017 and 2019 and the third, called HYPER-POSSIBLE, takes place in 2021 as a part of UK City of Culture.

Prior to the biennial I made projects which adopted pseudo-corporate identities to simultaneously critique and contribute to the contemporary world, working closely with other artists, academics, musicians and technologists. I made activities at spaces
including MK Gallery, ICA London, Leamington Spa Town Hall, the slopes of Cader Idris and the streets of Digbeth.

I have spoken nationally and internationally at events organised by the British Council, Kunsthal Gent and Eastside Projects as well as at a wide range universities and educational institutions. I have also written texts for platforms including this is tomorrow, a-n The Artists Information Company and New Art West Midlands.

Before all of this I organised raves and skateboard competitions.

Helen is a neurodivergent artist and advisory board member for Artspace Coventry. Identifying as working class, she utilises lived experience and observation of the impact of being marginalised and the effects on identity, opportunity, inclusion and belonging.. Based in Warwickshire with strong links to Coventry, Helen’s practice is informed by social and political issues in Western culture, including socio-economic inequality, disability, class discrimination, ageism and gender inequality. Helen works across media within post-digital and socially engaged approaches and has a particular interest in celebrating new hybrid models of working with others within communities and organisations.

Helen has founded and co-founded a number of initiatives over the past 3 years, that facilitate spaces for connection and support both within the artist community and the wider public realm, including a tenants’ action group, and artist peer support groups.She is one of the founding citizens of the Parallel State, a collaborative, activist breakaway state.

Helen has recently been commissioned for Coventry Biennial: HYPER-POSSIBLE and is artistic lead and project manager for an 18 month community art project in Stratford upon Avon.  The project facilitates co-creation with residents through a diverse range of creative workshops to create an alternative community language and art work.