Eastside Projects is made by many people. We are a combination of salaried workers, freelancers, voluntary advisors, and community members who join the Cultural Citizens and EOP Thinkers to feedback and reflect on what we do.
Workers
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Ruth is an artist who makes things. Sometimes those things are artworks for exhibitions or public artworks and sometimes they are resources like the Birmingham Art Map, programmes like Workshop Birmingham, infrastructure like STEAMhouse or multiverses like Eastside Projects.
She works with Gavin Wade to make things happen, imagine and run the organisation, find the money, curate and produce projects and exhibitions and develop strategic plans. She leads on the development of artists support programmes including EOP, The Syllabus and STEAMhouse.
She is a Company Director and one of Eastside Projects’ founders.
She works four days a week and her salary is £29,429 (£36,786 pro-rata)
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Amelia is an artist, counsellor-in-training, mother, podcaster, activist and the Artist Caretaker (formerly EOP and Public Programmer) at Eastside Projects. Her work often begins as conversations and materialises as performance, installation, clothing and publications. She is currently exploring connections between art practice and counselling strategies by making new spaces for conversations that aren’t afraid, and are happily political.
Amelia regularly performs and exhibits across the UK and Norway (where she studied her MA at Kunstakademiet in Oslo). Notably, she has exhibited at National Gallery, Prague; Intercultural Museum, Oslo; Helsinki Art Museum, Helsinki; Luda Gallery, St Petersburg; and performed in numerous international festivals such as SPILL Festival, The Festival of Northern Norway, Stockholm Fringe Festival.
She hosts the podcast OTHERWISE SILENT giving a voice to issues and people that are often unheard. In 2020 she began training to be a counsellor. She works three days a week and her salary is £16,800 p/a (£28,000 pro-rata).
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Dinosaur is an artist and collaborator.He is part of Kühle Wampe, a collective based in the Midlands. He created Cheap Cheap gallery, an artist-led space in Birmingham. Dinosaur has a studio at The Lombard Method.He works four days (30hrs) a week and his salary is paid at the Real Living Wage.@dinosaurkilby
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Tim is an artist-curator who has joined Eastside Projects as Offsite Curator until February 2023.
Previously he was Contemporary Art Curator at The Box Plymouth, where he delivered the inaugural exhibition Making It, working with artists Eva Grubinger, Alexandre da Cunha and Antony Gormley. He also developed projects and exhibitions with Jasleen Kaur, Katie Schwab, David Clarke, Maurizio Anzeri and George Shaw. As part of the Australia/UK Season 2021/22, he was project lead of Songlines: Tracking the Seven Sisters, an exhibition entirely conceived and curated by a team of First Australians, with The Box Plymouth as the only UK host venue.
As an artist, he works with photography and photographic archives and is currently Photographer In Residence for the Heritage Action Zone (HAZ) in Coventry, one of six commissions nationally and part of Historic England’s ‘Picturing England’s High Streets’ project.
He works four days a week and his salary is £25,000 p/a (£31,250 pro rata).
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Jaz is an artist and writer, exploring history and social space. She loves storytelling, Afrofuturism, magic realism, and sustainable ways of creative expression. Her work is an ongoing process of sense- and memory-making, as well as ‘community collaboration’.
She works four days (30hrs) a week and her salary is paid at the Real Living Wage.
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Zoë is a curator and creative practitioner currently working between Birmingham and Leeds. In her role as Offsite Curator at Eastside Projects she develops and curates EP’s projects and programmes beyond the gallery such as Susan Philipsz’ Station Clock in Birmingham, the Park Life series of useful public artworks in Banbury and the Link & Shift artists residency and walks programme currently in Chelmsley Wood.
She previously worked as Curator at Project Space Leeds and The Tetley from 2007-17, commissioning and producing large-scale commissions, exhibitions and events with artists including Simeon Barclay, Joseph Buckley, Jessie Flood-Paddock, Dora Garcia, Lubaina Himid and Rehana Zaman.
In her independent practice she initiated and ran theartmarket + Kunstfreund Gallery in Leeds from 2006-12 and has been a co-director of practitioner-led collective Mexico since co-founding it in 2011. She is a director of Corridor 8 art writing platform and an advisory board member of the East Leeds Project.
She works four days a week and her salary is £25,000 p/a (£31,250 pro rata).
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Borbala is a curator and an active advocate, participant and organiser of artistic and ecological research. Her practice responds to, disrupts and enriches environmental thinking and related social, political and decolonial urgencies. She holds an MA in Curating Contemporary Art, Royal College of Art, London (2012), and is currently undertaking a part-time PhD at Goldsmiths College in the Art/Visual Cultures Departments. She is regularly invited as a visiting lecturer at Goldsmiths College, the Royal College of Art, Central Saint Martins, Edinburgh College of Art and Artquest…
Between 2012 and 2019 she was director/curator at Tenderpixel, a contemporary art gallery in central London. As an independent curator she recently collaborated with the Metal Peterborough; CCA Derry~Londonderry; the Horniman Museum and Gardens, London; ICA, London; Camden Arts Centre, London; OFF-Biennale, Budapest; Trafó House of Contemporary Arts, Budapest; FUTURA Centre for Contemporary Art, Prague and tranzit, Bratislava.
She works three days a week and her salary is £16,800 p/a (£28,000 pro rata).
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Gavin is an artist-curator, Director of Eastside Projects, and Senior Research Fellow at Birmingham City University. His (co)curated exhibitions include ‘Sonia Boyce: In the Castle of My Skin’ (2020), ‘This is the Gallery and the Gallery is Many Things X’ (2018), and ‘Display Show’ (2015–16), Temple Bar Gallery/Eastside Projects/Stroom den Haag.
Gavin makes/has made art on twitter, in public squares, shopping malls, naval frigates, cathedrals, Commons, Parks, The London Underground, Dudley Zoo, and the future Smithfield Market in the centre of Birmingham (2025). His books include ‘Upcycle This Book’ (2017) and ‘Has Man A Function In Universe’ (2008), both published by Book Works. He is a Company Director and one of Eastside Projects’ founders.
He works full time and his salary is £41,531 p/a.
Freelancers
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An Endless Supply is a design studio in Birmingham, UK, established in 2011 by Harry Blackett and Robin Kirkham. They work with artists and organisations making websites, printed matter and identities.
An Endless Supply work with us on a freelance basis on print and web design.
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Matt is from a fine art background and began his career working with gallery technical teams. He established Plane Structure in 2011 to fulfil a need for skilled art fabricators in Birmingham. Since then the company and its workshop has grown to deliver specialist carpentry and joinery as well as gallery installation.
Matt regularly works with us on a freelance basis to realise exhibitions and projects.
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Rose has been helping us keep Eastside Projects clean and tidy since 2020. She is paid the Real Living Wage and contracted through DST Cleaning Services.
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Suzi is a freelance art technician and maker based in Birmingham who studied sculpture at the Slade School of Art. She is a maker of functional ceramics and a member of Modern Clay co-op; a co-working and public project space run by its artist members.
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Neisa is an independent ICB bookkeeper with over 20 years’ experience, providing a range of accounting services for Freelancers, startups, small to medium businesses and Not for profit Organisations. Neisa and her colleagues work with us two days a month, on a freelance basis.
She has been keeping our finances in order since 2012.
Advisory Board
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Bob Ghosh is an Architect, urban regeneration specialist, property and land adviser. He is the Founder and Director at K4 Architects.
Prior to starting his own practice, he spent 7 years as a Director of Glenn Howells Architects, working on various prestigious commissions. Since then, he has completed numerous major projects in Birmingham, Manchester, London and West Yorkshire.
He joined the Advisory Board in 2017 and has been Chair since 2018.
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Tom Bloor is a Company Director and one of Eastside Projects’ founders. As an artist he shares a collaborative practice with his twin brother Simon.
Their works and projects stem from a shared experience of growing up in a post-industrial city and its legacy of post-war regeneration.
He joined the advisory board in 2007.
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Vanley Burke is a British Jamaican photographer and artist, who has been described as “the Godfather of Black British Photography”. His body of work represents possibly the largest photographic record of the Caribbean Diaspora in Britain.
From local community organisations to the Victoria & Albert Museum and Whitechapel Gallery, Vanley has exhibited widely in the United Kingdom, and as far afield as New York, South Africa and China. He lives and works in Birmingham.
He joined the Advisory Board in 2020.
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Roo Kaur Dhissou is a British, Indian, (British Asian, Punjabi, and all things in between and beyond) multidisciplinary artist based in Birmingham. Her practice explores the relationships and connections we have with one another and the land, through notions such as culture, belonging and identity.
She is due to begin her PhD in interdisciplinary Arts and Cultural Studies in 2021, exploring the representation of South Asian women from the Diaspora in 21st Century Britain. She is an EOP member.
She joined the Advisory Board in 2021.
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Anita Lawlor is a communications expert with over ten years’ experience working in galleries and arts organisations, on a range of curatorial projects, campaigns, events programmes and publications.
She currently works as Communications Manager at DACS.
She joined the Advisory Board in 2021.
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Katherine is a Black Country-born solicitor by background, now working as a senior caseworker for a local MP.
She is an advocate for social justice, LGBTQIA rights and community engagement. Most recently she worked to secure vital protections for all survivors of domestic violence in the recently passed Domestic Abuse Bill and in the coordination of Birmingham’s emergency Covid-19 response.
She joined the board in 2021.
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Paul McKeown is a Director at BDO Accountants where he is Head of Valuations in the Midlands and the North with 30 years of experience. He is a keen art collector and joined the Advisory Board after discovering Eastside Projects and the work of EOP members at a Contemporary Arts Society event in London.
He joined the Advisory Board in 2012 and provides financial expertise and diligence.
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Andrea Phillips is a writer and organiser in contemporary art. She is Director of the BXNU Institute which develops research, events and exhibitions as part of Northumbria University’s partnership with the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art.
She joined the Advisory Board in 2017.
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Jazz Swali is an image-maker and curator. He currently holds the position of Assistant Curator and Diversity Inclusion Coordinator at Backlit Gallery, Nottingham. Both his creative and curatorial practice are socio-politically engaged, focusing on and championing social justice within the arts.
His ongoing passion project—Are You Even Listening?—is a podcast series led by university students. The project platforms marginalised perspectives and individual experiences on issues spanning the socio-political spectrum.
He joined the Advisory Board in 2021.
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Nathan Tromans is Associate Professor and Head of Birmingham Institute of Creative Arts at Birmingham City University. He has worked in the School of Visual Communication for over 20 years, as a visiting tutor, lecturer, Course Director and Deputy Head and was appointed to the role of Head of School in 2015.
He is a Photographer with a keen interest in contemporary art and music.
He joined the Advisory Board in 2020.
Cultural Citizens
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Marcus is an artist, educator and father of one.
He is interested in how art institutions can invite communities into their spaces through the use of education programs and environmental adaptations. He has worked in both Primary and Secondary schools in teaching and non-teaching roles, working with children with a variety of complex needs as well as developing relationships with families in areas where bonds between home and school have traditionally been difficult.
Currently, his art practice is painterly and text-based and tackles personal anecdotes relating to historic trauma. He has been involved with several Artist-Run spaces and recently set up The New Happiness at The Lombard Method here in Birmingham.
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Gugan is an Art and Design Student at Birmingham School of Art whose work focuses on the importance of communication, feminism and inclusion.
She is particularly interested in how conversations around different audiences, communities and perspectives can create positive change. As a young British Indian her experience of the art world is often of a place that she feels she has to fight to be part of. Fortunately, she has found the space to create freely and so wants to translate this into the wider world and other art spaces to create the same opportunity for others.
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Jane is a participatory artist who works with visual arts and textiles. She is an activist, community organiser and founder of Birmingham Artivistas – a collective of artists who use art for protest and change. She is a mental health professional and is an advocate for, and supporter of, asylum seekers and refugees in our city.
She is particularly interested in participatory arts in a contemporary context and wants to explore what Eastside Projects can do to enable local communities, who are often transient, to feel the gallery is a space for them to enjoy.
EOP Thinkers
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Sophie is an artist, curator and organiser based in Leeds. She is interested in world-building, ecology, science fiction and forged histories. Her recent works have created narratives about imagined worlds. Often using drawing as a way to begin a project, she is currently making drawings of killer plants, inspired by John Wyndham’s Day of the Triffids. Sophie co-founded the artist-led organisation Freehold Projects. Based in Leeds city centre, Freehold Projects aimed to bridge the gap between education and larger institutions in Yorkshire. It also offered a space for collaboration and exhibition-making for the 10 artists who ran it. Sophie works as an invigilator, technician, receptionist and learning facilitator across multiple
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Jennifer (she/they) is a workshop facilitator and slow writer based in Nottingham. She writes fiction, reviews, and personal essays exploring the body, gender, pain, art and literature. She is working on an essay collection and a poetry pamphlet. Jennifer is involved in projects centred in disability/illness and feminism and is a founding member of resting up collective, an interdisciplinary sick group of artists.
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Rhiannon is a visual artist based in North Oxfordshire. She came to art practice after working in commercial agricultural botany and as a consulting Medical Herbalist. She often uses constructed or everyday objects to provoke action, conversation and coincidence to create and re- mediate personal and collective archives – physical, digital and embodied. Explorations of private, personal, local and on-line relational spaces emerge in the process. Recent works re-form fragmented, dynamic imagery developed from integrated and embodied circuits, systems and networks, human anatomy and botanical microscopy.
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Rene is a multi-disciplinary who recently moved to Birmingham to Gateshead. She uses drawing, live performance, poetry and sculpture. The internal structure of music and how a track is built is similar to how she builds performances, drawings and writings: the rhythm, the repetition, the chorus, the sourness, the loop, starting again, *new track*. She is interested in moments of subversion, disruption, and glitch, (and softness and tenderness within this). She was an artist-in-residence at YARD Art House in Ladywood for 3 months, as part of MAIA’s Life Affirming Infrastructure season. Rene is currently making a quilt telling the story of ‘imagining a park that has everything everyone needs’; the quilt has been co-designed with members of the public who attended a workshop I hosted at YARD.
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Tesha is a Jamaican-Montserratian wellness artist, interested in themes of community space, herbology, Blackness, Afro-Spiritualities & Cosmologies, and somatic movement. Based in Birmingham, her background is in teaching, autism awareness training, and managing behaviours that challenge in learning spaces. As a Black woman with Migraine disability, Tesha is interested in finding ways to make art more accessible to herself and her wider community, through community gathering, intuitive practices & experimentation, consulting, and collaboration.