Our Team

Aileen is a consultant on public engagement and parliamentary strengthening, working with parliaments around the world. She was formerly Director of Public Engagement at the UK Parliament, where she was responsible for Parliament’s Education Service, Outreach Service, Visitor Services, and an innovative Public Engagement and Learning team. Aileen oversaw a significant increase in ambition in the way Parliament connects with the public, including the delivery of a dedicated Education Centre at Parliament, and the introduction of new engagement initiatives such as Parliament Week and TEDxHousesofParliament. She has been a school governor for many years, and is interested in the potential of technology to enhance learning and engagement. A Scottish immigrant to London, she loves the city for its rich culture and diversity, and also for its wealth of theatre music, and arts experiences. Aileen received an OBE in the New Year 2017 Honours List for services to improving public engagement with Parliament and voluntary service to the community in London.

Alan is a technology entrepreneur working in the communications and media sector. After qualifying as a Chartered Accountant, working in Deloitte’s music and entertainments group, he co-founded a technology consulting company which he then ran for nearly 15 years. The company won a Queen’s Award for Enterprise for the innovative work it did with telecommunications businesses in the UK and Europe. Now working freelance, he continues to provide strategic advice to help technology businesses achieve their goals, and occasionally writes iPad apps in his spare time. Alan loves technology, science and maths, and sees no contradiction with loving theatre and music too.

Anne has been Partner at Stephenson Harwood since 2008 where she is a specialist and recognised leader in her field of employment and partnership law. Before joining Stephenson Harwood, Anne worked at law firms Fox Williams and RPC.

Craig Hassall is the CEO of the Royal Albert Hall in London, the first Australian to undertake this role. His job oversees the management, programming and other aspects of this iconic performance venue, which celebrates its 150th birthday in 2021. Craig has worked in the arts in both Australia and the United Kingdom in a variety of disciplines. His previous role was CEO of Opera Australia, Australia’s largest performing arts organisation, with over 600 opera performances a year, including two mainstage opera seasons in Sydney and Melbourne, Opera on Sydney Harbour, musical theatre, concerts and national touring. Prior to this, Craig worked in London for almost nine years, firstly as CEO of English National Ballet, the national touring ballet company of the UK, with a permanent ensemble of dancers and musicians and an active national touring schedule. Following this, Craig was Chief Operating Officer of Raymond Gubbay Ltd, responsible for new business and collaborative ventures in the commercial field of classical music, opera and ballet. Craig also consulted to the London 2012 Olympic Games cultural program, providing advice on staging and presentation, particularly of the free tactical entertainment for Olympic Park. Before leaving Australia, Craig was Deputy General Manager of Sydney Theatre Company, responsible for marketing, individual and corporate fundraising and box office for NSW’s state theatre company. Prior to this, Craig ran a consultancy producing and managing concerts and large scale productions. Between 1997 and 2000, Craig worked with the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games as General Manager of Image, Special Events and Olympic Arts Festivals – a role that involved the development and delivery of a comprehensive, substantial and successful four-year cultural program, the graphic applications for all areas of the Games and management of special events. This role saw the delivery of the largest festival ever mounted in Australia, the 2000 Olympic Arts Festival, as well as the ground breaking Festival of the Dreaming in 1997. Prior to the Games, Craig worked for Opera Australia as Marketing Manager and Bell Shakespeare Company as General Manager. Craig is currently on the board of LIFT, the London International Festival of Theatre and C4RD – Centre for Recent Drawing, London. He has also served on the boards of English National Ballet School, Company B Belvoir, and Object – Australian Centre for Craft and Design. Craig was awarded an AM (Australia Medal) in 2016 for his services to the performing arts in both Australia and the UK.

Dan Vo is a media producer and museum professional specialising in inclusive museum practice. He is a Course Leader at Sotheby’s Institute of Art and previously was a Course Leader at the V&A Academy. He is also Project Manager of the Queer Heritage and Collections Network, a partnership formed of the English Heritage, Historic England, Historic Royal Palaces, National Trust and the Research Centre for Museums and Galleries, supported by the National Heritage Lottery Fund and Art Fund. He has developed volunteer-led LGBTQ+ tours and programming for several museums in the UK, most notably the V&A Museum, Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge and Amgueddfa Genedlaethol Caerdydd National Museum Cardiff. Other clients have included Imperial War Museum, National Archives and Tate Britain. Dan is a patron of LGBT+ History Month, trustee of Culture 24 and sits on steering committees for Historic England, Imperial War Museum, Pitt Rivers Museum and Queer Britain. He was co-presenter of BBC Arts programmes Museum From Home and Museum Passion.

Enni-Kukka is a London-based, Finland-born Empathy Artist and Designer. By creating for empathy as the end goal and not only with empathy as a part of the process of creation, Enni-Kukka has launched the Akin Kollektiv, a series of installations, experiences, games and tools to increase connection and collaboration beyond borders, between people of different cultures, backgrounds, generations, races and values. Her work breaks taboos and challenges social, cultural and behavioural norms in order to transform empathy from an individual feeling to a collective power.

Enni-Kukka has a joint M.A. and M.Sc. in “Global Innovation Design” from the Royal College of Art and Imperial College London. A former Classical Archaeologist from Oxford University, she has previously worked as a Cannes Lion- and IPA Effectiveness Award-winning Brand Strategist in advertising for Saatchi & Saatchi and adam&eveDDB in London.

Eritrean-born Hannah Azieb Pool is currently the Artistic Director of Bernie Grant Arts Centre, a multi-arts centre in Tottenham. The Centre hosts a busy calendar of theatre, dance, live music, comedy, cinema, and exhibitions in collaboration with local artists, as well as some of London’s biggest names. Before joining Bernie Grant, Hannah was the Senior Programmer of Contemporary Culture at the Southbank Centre, the lead programmer for the Africa Utopia festival and one of the curators of the Women of the World (WOW) festival. Also a journalist, author and broadcaster, Hannah writes regularly in the national and international media. Hannah’s second book, Fashion Cities Africa, (Intellect Books 2016) celebrates the fashion landscapes of four key cities – Lagos, Johannesburg, Nairobi and Casablanca and is inspired by the exhibition of the same name, which she co-curated at the Brighton Museum. A Guardian journalist for over 14 years, Hannah was Guardian Weekend Magazine’s first Beauty Editor, and wrote the New Black – the first beauty column for women of colour in a national newspaper. Former Associate Editor of Arise magazine, and former Chair of UKFeminista, Hannah’s work also appears in The Times, Vogue, Grazia and many others. A regular contributor to BBC Radio, Africa Writes and Africa Gathering, Hannah’s first book, My Fathers’ Daughter (Penguin 2006) was described by the Washington Post as “a significant and moving book.”

Helen Shute is currently Chief Executive at Rambert, the contemporary dance company who commission and tour across the UK and beyond.  Most recently she has worked in the commercial sector as Chief Operating Officer of the newly formed House Productions, working with Tessa Ross CBE and Juliette Howell to establish the company as a new home for world-class talent across television and film. Helen started her career in festivals at Fronteras Latin American Festival and Woking Dance Festival.  She subsequently joined The Place as Programming Associate where she worked with many emerging choreographers, including Hofesh Shechter, producing his early works Uprising (2006) and In your rooms (2007). Together with Shechter, Helen founded Hofesh Shechter Company in 2008, and under her leadership as the Executive Producer the Company grew to become a major national and international presence establishing significant partnerships with high profile venues in the UK and in major world cities. Helen’s experience in fundraising has seen her raising funds through a huge range of sources, her particular expertise lie in the cultivation of individuals who support a vision and the establishment of international co-production relationships for large-scale work. Helen had the pleasure of working with the Executive Team of LIFT in early 2016 and now serves on the board.  She also currently sits on the boards of New Movement Collective and Aerowaves European Dance Network.

malakaï is an artist, educator and producer from pre-gentrified Hackney, London.They work actively as a poet, theatre director, dramaturg, cultural programmer, creative producer, facilitator and consultant. Led by curiosity and care, malakaï creates and interrogates through an unapologetically Afroqueer lens.

malakaï co-founded and was Artistic Director of The S+K Project, a producing theatre company specialising in nurturing the talent of emerging Black & Asian artists, between 2014-19. Aged 21, malakaï was appointed Associate Director at Theatre Peckham, responsible for the venue’s artistic programming, talent development and overseeing participatory community projects.

Most recently, malakaï has led projects with the Royal Court, Apples & Snakes, South London Gallery, UAL, Mountview and Guildhall. Parallel to their work in the arts, malakaï devises and delivers bespoke anti-racist training and consultancy, predominantly for clients in the cultural and charity sectors – which have included the Albany, Young Vic and Trinity Laban Conservatoire.

A Barbican Young Poets alumnus, malakaï is currently co-director of literary arts organisation BORN::FREE, and remains passionate about expanding the forms and reach of experimental Afro-diasporic writing. They are undertaking an MA in Black British Literature at Goldsmiths University of London.

Martin Harrison is the Group Financial Controller of Inmarsat, the global mobile satellite business based in Old Street, London. Martin has worked in finance for over twenty-five years originally training as a Chartered Accountant with PwC. He spent fifteen years with the erstwhile “bellwether” of British Industry ICI in a wide variety of roles based in the UK and Canada including a spell as Finance Director of Dulux. More recently Martin has worked in the telecoms sector and is currently working for Inmarsat who were set up in the 1970’s by the International Maritime Organisation to provide communications to the global maritime community.  They now provide communications over a network of twelve satellites to a wide variety of businesses and organisations including governments who have a need to communicate in remote regions or where there is no reliable terrestrial network.  As well as enjoying the theatre over many years Martin is to be seen most days dressed in lycra trying to prove something – what he ‘s not sure – on his beloved bike.

Richard Alice joined the LIFT team from Barcelona, where she moved to pursue a different lifestyle and learn Spanish. has been an ad man for over twenty years. Though he shows a rare penchant for monogamy when it comes to employers, he has worked at some of the most famous and iconic ad agencies including Abbott Mead Vickers and the bad boy of British advertising, HHCL. For the past five years Richard has been the Strategy Director of Saatchi & Saatchi working across their client base and helping restore the agency’s creative birthright most particularly with work for T-Mobile (the flash mobs in Liverpool Street Station and Heathrow) and the launch of EE using Kevin six-degrees-of-separation Bacon. Not to mention LIFT. Richard also writes one of the UK’s most influential advertising blogs at www.adliterate.com and is a regular cask strength columnist on brand and advertising matters.

Rosie Millard OBE is Chair of BBC Children in Need, Chair of Firstsite arts centre in Colchester and Deputy Chair of Opera North. She is a journalist and broadcaster and has been reporting on and writing in the national press on the arts, popular culture, lifestyle and politics for over 30 years. Rosie was BBC Arts Correspondent 1995-2004, Arts Editor, New Statesman 2004-2007, and has also been a theatre critic, columnist, feature writer, travel writer and profile writer, writing for most of the national broadsheets. She is a familiar voice on radio and familiar face on TV with regular appearances on Radio 4, Radio 2, Five Live, Newsnight and Sky News. For four years she led Hull 2017 City of Culture as Chair of the Board. This was a £35 million national event which achieved unprecedented acclaim and international repute for the city of Hull, and for which she was appointed OBE. She has written four books, one of which, The Tastemakers: British Art Now, is recommended reading for arts students at London University of the Arts.

After a stint as a Daily Mirror columnist and LIVE TV! Presenter Simon joined BBC Entertainment before moving to So Television in 1998 to work on C4’s So Graham Norton. In 2003 he joined TalkbackTHAMES where he co-developed and produced the comedy game show ‘Distraction’ and oversaw a raft of projects including QI, They Think It’s All Over and Channel 4’s The Morning After Show before returning to the BBC in 2008 and became Creative Head of BBC Comedy in 2011. In Jan 2013 he joined the digital content and tech company Rockabox (now Scoota) as a Freelance Content Producer, working across a range of projects including Whisked Away – an original YouTube programme he created specifically for TUI and the First Choice brand. In 2014 he co-founded and launched KidRated – an online platform for families whilst continuing to freelance in television, producing content for the major networks and online.

Local Tottenham artist Annemarie began writing for children after struggling to find books for her daughter that featured main characters who reflected the diversity of children in our world. A former primary school teacher, Annemarie’s love for storytelling led her to study acting at The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London. She has performed various roles, most recently King Duncan, Lady MacDuff and the Doctor in a multirole performance at the Chiswick Playhouse in London. Annemarie was awarded the 2021SCBWI/BIPOC writer’s scholarship. A Londoner, born to Ghanaian parents, Annemarie now lives in the Swedish forest with her young daughter, husband and their two adopted cats.

Haringey Arts

黑人历史研究首席执行官。

Program Manager and creative producer. Youth and culture.

Donna has been working with young people for some 14 years, she is currently the program lead for migrant care leavers in Haringey and founder of DLB , a developmental artistic approach, to working with marginalised groups. Donna previously worked at Cardboard Citizens as a project manager, Battersea Arts Centre as a producer, and Tender Education Arts charity – as an assistant  producer.

Cultural Officer, Haringey Council

Director of Blooming Scent (BGAC)

Artist/Producer

Heritage Manager, Tottenham Hotspurs Foundation

malakaï is an artist, educator and producer from pre-gentrified Hackney, London.They work actively as a poet, theatre director, dramaturg, cultural programmer, creative producer, facilitator and consultant. Led by curiosity and care, malakaï creates and interrogates through an unapologetically Afroqueer lens.

malakaï co-founded and was Artistic Director of The S+K Project, a producing theatre company specialising in nurturing the talent of emerging Black & Asian artists, between 2014-19. Aged 21, malakaï was appointed Associate Director at Theatre Peckham, responsible for the venue’s artistic programming, talent development and overseeing participatory community projects.

Most recently, malakaï has led projects with the Royal Court, Apples & Snakes, South London Gallery, UAL, Mountview and Guildhall. Parallel to their work in the arts, malakaï devises and delivers bespoke anti-racist training and consultancy, predominantly for clients in the cultural and charity sectors – which have included the Albany, Young Vic and Trinity Laban Conservatoire.

A Barbican Young Poets alumnus, malakaï is currently co-director of literary arts organisation BORN::FREE, and remains passionate about expanding the forms and reach of experimental Afro-diasporic writing. They are undertaking an MA in Black British Literature at Goldsmiths University of London.

Owner, Downhills Park Cafe