Welcome to our new board members
We warmly welcome three new members to our Board of Directors: Emma Dean, Dima Karout and Laura Jeffery. We are delighted to have them on our board - bringing expertise and experience to our work and artistic programme, as well as new perspectives on the issues we explore and care about deeply, including cultural rights and social justice, heritage and decolonisation, and environmental justice.
They officially begin their roles in April 2024 for a period of three years.
Tania Mahmoud, Chair of the Board of Directors, said: “I’m delighted to welcome our three new members to D6’s Board. Their breadth of knowledge and depth of insight across the arts sector and their own areas of research and expertise will make a vital contribution over the coming years. I look forward to us all working together as we help D6 flourish, collaborating with artists, partners and audiences in the North East of England, the UK and internationally.”
The new appointees will join D6’s current board members: Clymene Christoforou (Executive Director and member), Fiona Crisp (Vice Chair), Dave Pritchard (member) and Lucy Latham (member).
Emma Dean is a curator, editor and writer based in Newcastle upon Tyne. Over the past two decades she has collaborated with artists to stage ambitious projects for institutional and public realm contexts. Emma is currently Curator at Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead where she has realised many major large-scale exhibitions and commissions, programmed live art, performance, talks and events, and has edited and contributed to a range of artists’ publications. As part of her role, Emma leads on the development of Baltic’s Artists’ Residency Programme working with UK and international partners. She is interested in developing imaginative and impactful projects that explore issues around the environment, climate change, migration and displacement.
Prior to BALTIC, Emma was Head of Exhibitions at MK Gallery, Milton Keynes where she oversaw the programme of exhibitions, offsite projects, film, performance, events, commissions and publications. She has also held curatorial positions at Modern Art Oxford and the Pitt Rivers Museum. Emma has curated exhibitions independently for AV Festival, The Agency and Crisis UK among others. She is a former Trustee of the Chiltern Sculpture Trust and has nominated and selected artists for the Paul Hamlyn Foundation Awards, The Arts Foundation Future Awards, AXIS, C-Art, the Hayward Touring Curatorial Open, the Durham University Art Prize and the Aesthetica Art Prize.
Dima Karout has over 20 years’ experience in creating and managing art projects, curating and producing exhibitions, and designing publications and learning programmes. She specialises in socially engaged art and its contribution to museums, education, research, wellbeing, sanctuary and inclusive societies.
She is a trusted advisor on strategies and public programmes supporting complex innovative projects. Throughout her career, she promoted equality, inclusion and creative learning having authored and delivered diverse programmes at internationally renowned universities, museums and humanitarian charities. She gained strong cultural awareness and a global mind-set through her international experience in cities including Damascus, Paris, Montréal and London.
Her collaborations in London include: the GLA (Greater London Authority), Grand Junction, the Horniman Museum and Gardens, the British Museum, the Migration Museum, Shakespeare’s Globe, Brent Museum, Counterpoints, Groundwork London, University of Westminster, Play for Progress among many others.
Our collaboration with Dima began when we invited her to be part of our first Associate Artists Group (2021-23). During that time, she contributed to our programme reflecting on cultural rights, practice as research, art residencies and studio of sanctuary, and she advised on our international programme Artists Connecting in Transition.
Laura Jeffery (FRSA) is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh. She has worked with the displaced Chagossian community from the Chagos Archipelago in the Indian Ocean since 2001. Her collaborative AHRC project on Cultural Heritage Across Generations produced a Chagos Tambour Group music album, facilitated intergenerational intangible cultural heritage (ICH) transmission workshops, showcased Chagossian heritage in exhibitions and on our open access repository chagos.online, and contributed to the successful nomination of Chagossian tambour music as UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding in 2019.
Laura also works on participatory arts methods and creative engagement with migration and displacement in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. She led an ESRC/AHRC project on Arts for Advocacy: Creative Engagement with Migration in Morocco and an AHRC project on Mobilising Access to Rights for Artists in Morocco, which facilitated artist residencies and generated a series of exhibitions, a downloadable Creative Arts, Migration, and Advocacy toolkit, a guide for (migrant) artists, and a co-edited special issue of Crossings: Journal of Migration and Culture on creative engagement with migration. She is Co-Director of the AHRC Maghreb Action on Displacement and Rights Network Plus. Laura plays cello in Scottish Sinfonia.
Find out more about D6’s Board of Directors here.
They officially begin their roles in April 2024 for a period of three years.
Tania Mahmoud, Chair of the Board of Directors, said: “I’m delighted to welcome our three new members to D6’s Board. Their breadth of knowledge and depth of insight across the arts sector and their own areas of research and expertise will make a vital contribution over the coming years. I look forward to us all working together as we help D6 flourish, collaborating with artists, partners and audiences in the North East of England, the UK and internationally.”
The new appointees will join D6’s current board members: Clymene Christoforou (Executive Director and member), Fiona Crisp (Vice Chair), Dave Pritchard (member) and Lucy Latham (member).
Emma Dean is a curator, editor and writer based in Newcastle upon Tyne. Over the past two decades she has collaborated with artists to stage ambitious projects for institutional and public realm contexts. Emma is currently Curator at Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead where she has realised many major large-scale exhibitions and commissions, programmed live art, performance, talks and events, and has edited and contributed to a range of artists’ publications. As part of her role, Emma leads on the development of Baltic’s Artists’ Residency Programme working with UK and international partners. She is interested in developing imaginative and impactful projects that explore issues around the environment, climate change, migration and displacement.
Prior to BALTIC, Emma was Head of Exhibitions at MK Gallery, Milton Keynes where she oversaw the programme of exhibitions, offsite projects, film, performance, events, commissions and publications. She has also held curatorial positions at Modern Art Oxford and the Pitt Rivers Museum. Emma has curated exhibitions independently for AV Festival, The Agency and Crisis UK among others. She is a former Trustee of the Chiltern Sculpture Trust and has nominated and selected artists for the Paul Hamlyn Foundation Awards, The Arts Foundation Future Awards, AXIS, C-Art, the Hayward Touring Curatorial Open, the Durham University Art Prize and the Aesthetica Art Prize.
Dima Karout has over 20 years’ experience in creating and managing art projects, curating and producing exhibitions, and designing publications and learning programmes. She specialises in socially engaged art and its contribution to museums, education, research, wellbeing, sanctuary and inclusive societies.
She is a trusted advisor on strategies and public programmes supporting complex innovative projects. Throughout her career, she promoted equality, inclusion and creative learning having authored and delivered diverse programmes at internationally renowned universities, museums and humanitarian charities. She gained strong cultural awareness and a global mind-set through her international experience in cities including Damascus, Paris, Montréal and London.
Her collaborations in London include: the GLA (Greater London Authority), Grand Junction, the Horniman Museum and Gardens, the British Museum, the Migration Museum, Shakespeare’s Globe, Brent Museum, Counterpoints, Groundwork London, University of Westminster, Play for Progress among many others.
Our collaboration with Dima began when we invited her to be part of our first Associate Artists Group (2021-23). During that time, she contributed to our programme reflecting on cultural rights, practice as research, art residencies and studio of sanctuary, and she advised on our international programme Artists Connecting in Transition.
Laura Jeffery (FRSA) is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh. She has worked with the displaced Chagossian community from the Chagos Archipelago in the Indian Ocean since 2001. Her collaborative AHRC project on Cultural Heritage Across Generations produced a Chagos Tambour Group music album, facilitated intergenerational intangible cultural heritage (ICH) transmission workshops, showcased Chagossian heritage in exhibitions and on our open access repository chagos.online, and contributed to the successful nomination of Chagossian tambour music as UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding in 2019.
Laura also works on participatory arts methods and creative engagement with migration and displacement in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. She led an ESRC/AHRC project on Arts for Advocacy: Creative Engagement with Migration in Morocco and an AHRC project on Mobilising Access to Rights for Artists in Morocco, which facilitated artist residencies and generated a series of exhibitions, a downloadable Creative Arts, Migration, and Advocacy toolkit, a guide for (migrant) artists, and a co-edited special issue of Crossings: Journal of Migration and Culture on creative engagement with migration. She is Co-Director of the AHRC Maghreb Action on Displacement and Rights Network Plus. Laura plays cello in Scottish Sinfonia.
Find out more about D6’s Board of Directors here.