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Trustees
Plymouth Arts Centre's Board of Trustees includes:
Andrew Brewerton
Andrew is Principal of Plymouth College of Art and Honorary Professor of Fine Art at Shanghai University. A former Principal of Dartington College of Arts, he has held a number of academic and public appointments; as Chair of the South West Regional Council and national council member of Arts Council England; and as Vice-Chair of the Prime Minister’s Advisory Group on Higher Education (PMI2), amongst others.
He is a poet, and author of fifty journal and catalogue essays, chiefly on contemporary glass art. A book-length monograph on his contribution to post-1949 Art & Design education in China was published in Shanghai in March 2011. His international work as an educator has involved the catalytic development of academic programs in China, South Africa and the UK; as well as international public art projects and arts consultancy. His poetry publications include Via (Wild Honey Press, 2010) and he is cited in ‘Poetry after 1970’ in The Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century English Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2004).
Adrian Emerson
Adrian is the head of Creative Arts and Technology at University College Plymouth St Mark and St John. Adrian has been heavily involved in the arts and creative industries for over 25 years. Adrian currently sits on a number of Creative Industry special interest groups including as Director for Plymouth Media Partnership. Adrian is also founder of Coleridge Productions, a multimedia production company which has been based in Plymouth for the last 22 years.
Mark Greaves
Mark is the Corporate Finance Partner in Francis Clark, Chartered Accountants. He is responsible for Corporate Finance activities throughout the firm. Mark is Treasurer for Plymouth Arts Centre and has actively strengthened the charities accounting reporting and systems.
Tanya Griffiths
Tanya is a registered Architect with over 12 years of practice experience. She established the Architecture Centre Devon and Cornwall, an independent community interest company in June 2006.
Educated at Cambridge University and University College London, Tanya was an associate of Foster and Partners where she worked for 10 years. After leaving Fosters in 2003 she joined Sonnemann Toon Architects, a small design practice in central London as a partner. She has worked on a very wide range of projects and on both public and private commissions in Europe and in the UK.
Tanya’s role as director of the Architecture Centre Devon and Cornwall is to raise public awareness of design issues, to promote built environment education and to support local authorities in achieving high design aspiration and outcomes,- through training programmes, community consultation, design review, advocacy events and project work.
David Marlow
David is an experienced Chief Executive and Development Economist. His 25 years in senior positions in public service both domestically and overseas culminated in eight years as Chief Executive (CEO) – firstly of a large metropolitan local authority and, from 2003-08, of the East of England Regional Development Agency (RDA).
He established Third Life Economics in 2008/09, and one of his first major commissions was as Interim CEO of Plymouth City Development Company. He has also worked extensively in Cornwall, and has retained a strong affiliation with both Plymouth’s ambitions as a city and its relationship to neighbouring areas. David’s achievements at the RDA included ‘Creative Collaborations’ – the first strategic partnership between a RDA and the Arts Council (ACE). This delivered a portfolio of internationally significant developments with Aldeburgh, Royal Opera House, and signature investments including Dance East Ipswich, First Site Colchester, and the UK Centre for Carnival Arts (UKCCA) Luton.
David is a Visiting Fellow at Ashridge Business School, and with the Institute for Manufacturing at Cambridge. He is a founding member of the Guardian Local Government Network Advisory Board, and writes regularly on economic and cultural development issues for the paper and a number of other professional journals.
Richard Coombs
Richard has over 30 years of experience advising companies, partnerships, individuals and families on their corporate and commercial legal affairs especially focusing on strategic change. I derived most satisfaction from getting to know his clients well, understanding their goals and helping them to get there.
He also led the specialist Families in Business team at Foot Anstey Solicitors where he was often involved in sensitive governance and succession issues.
He is recently retired from client facing work at Foot Anstey but continues to provide in-house legal advice as a consultant to that firm. In the future he also aims to provide family business consultancy advice whilst continuing to act as a non-executive director and trustee of different organisations.
Gill Nicol
Gill trained as an artist and has over twenty-five years’ experience in the arts, with a focus on learning and audience development. She has written feasibility studies, business and audience development plans and raised funds for many projects. In 2009, she spent eight months at Tate St Ives on a work-based Cultural Leadership programme writing an audience development plan for them, involving the whole organisation. More recently she was Head of Interaction at Arnolfini, where she initiated an Audience Review and a subsequent strategy to build new audiences over the next three years.
Gill now leads her own consultancy, lightsgoingon, with the aim to make contemporary art accessible, through workshops, talks, projects and training. Recent work has included:
- The Visitor Experience Programme, an Arts Council England funded programme looking at the quality of experience for the casual visitor to ten contemporary art galleries across the South West, West and East Midlands
- Professional development sessions for students at Bath Spa University and University of Chichester
- Facilitator of ‘Come Along Do’; a discussion forum following art films at Chapter Art Centre, Cardiff
- Artistic Assessor for Arts Council England
- Training sessions in What is Contemporary Art and How to Engage Visitors at Aspex Gallery, Portsmouth and Falmouth Art Gallery
- Engagement Programmer for artSOUTH; an exciting opportunity for national and international artists to develop new works in collaboration with professionals/specialists of their choice in any other field or discipline. The project aims to instigate engaging and innovative collaborative commissions of the highest quality, for indoor and outdoor non-gallery locations across central southern England in Autumn 2013.
- Working with Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery to deliver three talks and produce a publication to celebrate their reopening in 2013.
