Trustees & Staff – Phoenix Art Space

Trustees
& Staff

Trustees

Dr. Cara Courage - Chair

Dr. Cara Courage, Culture, Communities & Place Consultant-Director, is a globally renowned placemaking, arts and heritage sector leader, named in the top 10 of place-thinkers worldwide and a 'strategy angel' for the culture sector. Her passion and dedication to people and place has led her to specialise in practises that are socially-engaged, community-led, and embedded in place, whether that be a team, city park, national museum, or rural town high street. Cara works with local and national government, network organisations, universities, cultural institutions, artists and communities, and has worked on projects from Plymouth to Basildon, to Belfast to Derby and across the USA and Europe. Much of Cara's work is as a Critical Friend to organisations.

Cara's most recent project is 'Traum-Informed Placemaking,' with Dr. Anita McKeown, a research platform with Dr. Anita McKeown and forthcoming textbook (Routledge, 2023). Cara is the editor and convenor of 'The Routledge Handbook of Placemaking,' (2021; Co-Editor of 'Creative Placemaking and Beyond' (Routledge 2018), and author of Arts in Place: The Arts, the Urban and Social Practise, (Routledge 2017).

Simon Wilkinson

Simon Wilkinson is a neurodiverse artist with 30 years experience creating boutique and large scale playable, immersive, interactive, digital and transmedia artworks. His work has featured at Tate Modern and toured to 36 nations on 6 continents in the past 15 years. He is co-director of BRiGHTBLACK Productions and co-creator of Immersive StoryLab offering consultation and education on the future of arts and culture to venues and institutions worldwide including Sydney Opera House, Royal Shakespeare Company, National Institute of Dramatic Arts, National Gallery and New York Public Libraries. He is co-director of Level-3 Festival of Neurodiverse Video Game Art and co-creator of Oska Bright Festival of learning disability film.

Alli Beddoes

Alli Beddoes is the Artistic Director and CEO for Lighthouse, Brighton. a charity that supports artists who use digital technology in their work and helps people find routes into and succeed within the creative & cultural industries. Alli leads the artistic and strategic vision and programme for Lighthouse, with a focus on representing an inspiring and challenging range of voices and art forms in art, technology and society. Under Alli’s direction, Lighthouse continues to ignite powerful interrogations into cultural themes explored by artists and creatives, through commissioning new works, supporting artists and nurturing new talent. With over 15 years of experience working with leading contemporary artists such as Ryan Gander, Random International and TeamLab. Before joining Lighthouse, Alli produced programmes of temporary and permanent commissions across the globe.

Remi Rana Allen

Remi Rana Allen is a British South Asian artist, educator, and researcher based in London. With a background in graphic design and fine art printmaking, she holds an MPhil and has completed a Practice-Based PhD at Chelsea College of Art. Remi’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, earning recognition such as the Scott Mead Award residency at The British School at Rome and Arts Council England’s Develop Your Creative Practice bursary. She is the founder of BL&ME – Brown Leaders & Makers Exist – a research hub advocating for artists of the global ethnic majority. An advocate for equity in education, Remi devised the BAME/EDI Research Student mentoring scheme at the University of the Arts London and represents global ethnic majority artists on the CVAN South East steering board. She teaches Fine Art at Chelsea and Camberwell, serves as an adjunct lecturer at the University of Nairobi, and collaborates on transnational projects through TrAIN. Her solo touring exhibition, Swan Song: sing her to me, is currently on display at Exeter Phoenix, following its debut at Brighton’s Phoenix Art Space in 2024.

Jeff Turko

Jeff Turko is a full time academic at the University of Brighton, where he is the Associate Subject Area Lead for the Architecture and Design courses in the school of Architecture Technology & Engineering, as well as the Course Leader for the Master of Architecture course. When time allows between those academic demands, he also takes on private architectural and design work. The professional practice aspect of his experience is split between his practice - Nekton Studio - and his involvement with the collaborative design group OCEAN. Between these my work output and experience coves built commissions, speculative design proposals and design competitions. These have been exhibited internationally, and published.

Sophie Parkin

Sophie Parkin has been working in Development and income generation roles at major London galleries for the last eight years, ensuring core activities are responsibly funded. She works across multiple areas of fundraising: Corporate Partnerships, Trusts & Foundations, individuals, event hire and Corporate Membership. She works with teams and advisors to realise priorities; removing barriers people might face accessing art, building sustainable income, working towards a diverse and equitable workforce and audience, presenting world class exhibitions, enabling discourse and exchange. She is passionate about seeking opportunities to increase revenue, whilst upholding the integrity of the organisation.

Heidi Chester

Heidi is a Partner at DMH Stallard LLP a South East law firm with strong links to Brighton where it was established in 1970. Heidi heads up the Planning & Environment team at the firm and has been involved in some landmark development projects within Brighton & Hove, including Jubilee Street and the Library, the Amex Stadium for Brighton & Hove Albion and the New England Quarter. She is a graduate of the University of Sussex and has lived in Sussex since she came here to university in the late 1980’s and decided to make it her home.

Andy Cummins

Andy Cummins is a local resident of Brighton, having moved here around 15 years ago, and a frequent visitor to Phoenix. Andy’s strategic, technical, and production skills has been honed over more than a decade at Cogapp, an international digital agency specialising in delivering digital projects for cultural organisations across the globe. He has helped deliver an incredibly wide range of projects under various roles from technical lead to producer, as well as developer for clients including MoMA New York, The Whitney Museum of American Art, The V&A, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, The British Library, and The UK National Archives. He is a member of The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences and serves on the board of directors at the Museum Computer Network in the US. Andy also mentors a group of year 7 pupils at Brighton Aldridge Community Academy.