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Sue Jones has thirty years curatorial experience in the visual arts. She was Curator and then Director of Chisenhale Gallery in London for ten years, before becoming the Director of Whitstable Biennale which ran for ten editions, with the last one taking place in 2022. The festival built an international profile for commissioning ambitious and experimental new work with a diverse range of early career artists, with over 70,000 visits to each edition. Sue is currently working freelance as a curator and writer.
Peter Fillingham is a sculptor, academic and curator. His practice includes site-specific, object-based installation, photography, regeneration and cultural events. He has been consistently exhibiting his work since 1989. As a collaborative artist, he regularly works with a number of highly respected and recognised contemporaries. Since 1997 Peter has played a large part in ‘making present’ artistic events on the peripheries of perceived cultural epicentres, notably in Kent and Nord Pas de Calais. He is interested in how artists can occupy places whilst not being essentially different from other people, and how artists can practice outside what is normally considered art. He is the former Head of Sculpture at Central St. Martins and the former Chair of Fine Arts at Parson’s Paris. An extensively published and awarded arts professional, he is currently editor-at-large at /Seconds. He was a great friend of and collaborator with Derek Jarman.
Thea Behrman is Artistic Director and Chief Executive Officer for Estuary Festival. She is passionate about realising arts programmes that create exceptional experiences for the broadest possible audience, working closely with artists, participants, partners and cultural organisations. Thea established Estuary Festival as a new organisation in 2023 to build on the success and legacy of the first two editions led by Metal in 2016 and 2021. Embracing the South Essex and North Kent coastlines as well as the river itself, Estuary Festival is a catalyst to embed long-term change. Through ambitious, multi-arts programmes inspired by the Thames Estuary and its connections with the rest of the world, Estuary Festival explores the rich, often overlooked stories of estuary people and places. It’s all about creating extraordinary arts experiences inspired by unexpected places – where sea and river meet, land and water mingle, and nature and industry intertwine.
Peter Hatton is an artist working collaboratively with engaged spatial practices to produce live art, video, photography and installation with collectives TEA (since 1987) and e space lab (2003 – 2008). His work has been created and exhibited in Finland, Poland, China, Russia and in the UK at the South Bank Centre, Tate Liverpool, Whitworth Gallery, Manchester. Peter was introduced to Chatham and the Medway area in 2006, when he was appointed Lecturer in Event & Experience Design at the University of Kent. The first design programme at Kent to run from Chatham Historic Dockyard, it pioneered the development of a much larger School and broader creative offer. He has been actively engaged with the creative and cultural community in Medway as a member of the Medway Cultural Partnership, the Fuse Festival Advisory Group and the 51zero Advisory Board, extending his involvement across Kent and nationally as a member of the Creative Industries Federation’s (now Creative UK) Creative Education and Careers Working Group.
Amer Kamal is the Course Leader for the BA (Hons) Fashion Pattern Cutting at University of the Arts London. He studied Fashion Design at Parsons School of Design in New York and has worked as a freelance designer for twenty-five years, running his own business in both New York and Milan. He has shown at New York Fashion Week and made clothes for a range of prestigious clients including David Bowie. He established the BA(Hons) Fashion Atelier programme at University for the Creative Arts, Rochester and worked as part of the creative community in Medway for almost a decade. He has been teaching in higher education for fifteen years and continues to work as a freelance designer and pattern cutter.
Fiona Watt is a freelance scenographer, part-time lecturer and sector advocate. She has based her practice in studios in Medway since 2004, developing commissioned projects nationally and internationally in her field as well as delivering European funded community projects locally. This sits alongside her work as an associate and guest lecturer for a variety of undergraduate courses in Design for Performance throughout the country. From 2014 – 2021, Fiona occupied roles as Honorary Secretary and subsequently Chair of the Society of British Theatre Designers. In 2019 she curated Staging Places: UK Design for Performance which represented the UK at the Prague Quadrennial before taking up a nine month residency at the V&A, London. In 2021 she was appointed as the inaugural Chair for the Creative Medway Cultural Compact, part of a new national place-focused initiative supported by Arts Council England to situate the creative and cultural sector at the heart of local decision-making. She will continue to advocate for the value of the sector beyond completion of her term of office in October 2023.
Alex Cameron retired in 2020 after forty two years working for the BAE Systems family of companies winning various internal awards for his work in head worn displays and night vision systems for many international flight and ground-based applications. He generated various patents and conference papers published on behalf of the company and represented the company as a member of trade and technical bodies world wide. After a spell as Chief Engineer, Alex led a head worn and augmented reality product strategy, owning business and product roadmaps whilst providing authoritative and independent technical leadership. Today he occupies a range of voluntary roles including as a member of the leadership team at the Vines Church in Rochester, Co-Chair of The Old High Street Intra Cultural Consortium, Secretary of Rochester and West Kent Art Society and a Trustee of Ideas Test, a local charity that works to create a vibrant arts ecology in Swale and Medway. He is also a member of Rochester Eco Hub and Medway Environmental Action Network. He has previously held roles as Chairman/ Trustee of Kent Workplace Mission and of The Vines Centre Trust.
Margherita Gramegna-Taylor is an Italian artist filmmaker based in Medway. As the founder and Artistic Director of 51zero, she has lead festivals, collaborative initiatives and partnerships for the organisation with a focus on international cultural exchange, including Medway and Valenciennes International Relations’ Programmes and European initiatives in Northern France. These projects have received significant recognition and awards (Recreate, ICR, a-n, and Arts Council England). Since 2006 her film work has been shown in the UK and Europe (Whitechapel Gallery, Southbank Queen Elizabeth Hall; Raindance and Eat Our Shorts Festivals, London; Cannes 60th SFC; Loop Festival, Barcelona; Zlin Festival, Czech Republic). In 2019 she was invited for a collaborative artist residency at Fondazione Bevilaqua La Masa, with a film exhibited at Palazzetto Tito, Venice. She won the Emergendsee prize in 2006 in Berlin and was nominated for the Rouse Kent Award for her public art commissions with Art at The Centre.
With her own work and as a Creative Medway Cultural Compact former Co- champion and presently with the Cultural Consortium of INTRA-HSHAZ, she has worked continuously over many years to raise the profile of Medway as a place for contemporary art and artists to thrive.