Who we are
Bobby Baker, Artistic Director
Bobby Baker's acclaimed intersectional feminist practice includes performance, drawing and installation, and persistently exposes the undervalued and stigmatised aspects of women’s daily lives, exemplified by pioneering
works such as Drawing on a Mother’s Experience (1988), and Kitchen Show (1991).
Born in 1950 in Kent, UK, she graduated from Painting at St. Martins School of Art (1972, now Central St Martins) and holds an Honorary Doctorate from Queen Mary University London.
Performances and installations include Great & Tiny War, Newcastle (2018); An Edible Family in a Mobile Home (1976), London; Drawing on a (Grand) Mother’s Experience, WOW-Women of the World Festival, London (2015); Kitchen Show (1991), London, Adelaide Festival and touring; How to Live, Barbican Centre, London (2004); Table Occasions 9–15, Münchner Künstlerhaus, Munich (1998); How to Shop, Chicago International Festival of Arts (1996); Cook Dems, Harbour Front Centre, Toronto (1992); and Box Story, Arnolfini, Bristol (2001). Selected solo exhibitions include Tarros de Chutney, La Casa Encendida, Madrid (2019); Art Supermarket and Perpetuity in Icing, ICA, London (1978); and Diary Drawings: ‘Mental Illness’ and Me 1997–2008, Wellcome Collection, London (touring exhibition) (2009).
Since the late 1990s, following her own lived experience of physical and mental ill health, recovery and survival, her work has actively confronted the misogyny, racism and failings of the mental health system.
Bobby Baker lives and works in London.
Melissa Bradshaw, General Manager
Melissa joined Daily Life Ltd as General Manager in March 2022. She previously worked at Heart n Soul, a creative arts charity, as Project Coordinator on their two-year experimental research project at Wellcome Collection called Heart n Soul at The Hub. She has a BA in Psychology from San Francisco State University and an MA in Visual Sociology from Goldsmiths, University of London.
Kemi Williams, Programme Coordinator
Kemi joined Daily Life Ltd as a programme coordinator in September 2023 and previously worked with Daily Life Ltd. as a programme assistant in 2022, on the Diary Drawings project. She formerly worked at Collage Arts as a programme assistant, facilitating creative online events, workshops and exhibitions.
Kemi has a BA in Media and Cultural Studies and is interested in making art and cultural experiences accessible and engaging to wider audiences. She has also worked in television and film.
Janine Stolz, Finance Manager
Janine Stolz started her career as an actress in a government funded Young People’s touring theatre group, creating quirky, agit prop theatre with a message. Janine was best known for her larger than life portrayal of Marilyn Monroe, trapped in a dystopian government funded nightmare… After gaining a First Class Honours Degree in International Politics (something that has always been a passion and a far cry from playing working men’s clubs in Yorkshire), she decided against a career in academia, and turned to working for non-profit organisations as office manager and book-keeper. Her love of book-keeping and a growing family led Janine to pursue a career in accountancy.
She has worked as Management Accountant and Finance Manager for a number of corporates, over a period of 15 years, before settling back into the not-for-profit sector as Finance Manager at Newham Sixth Form College and then Stratford Arts Trust where she has worked for the past 10 years. Here she has gained an in-depth knowledge of not-for-profit finance and a rekindled love for the arts.
Associates
Rose Sharp, Associate Producer
Rose Sharp is a highly capable, effective and resilient arts manager with experience of senior management and strategic organisational development; a track record in leading and delivering on major projects including AHRC and EU funded initiatives and large-scale conferences including Performance Studies International: Performing Rights (Psi#12) at Queen Mary University of London producing External and Research events often involving local, national and international projects and communities.
Rose has managed several Arts Council England revenue (NPO) funded organisations and has managed and produced many ACE GFA project funded clients. In addition, Rose has over 25 years’ experience as a producer, planning effective delivery of projects in the creative industries, independent experimental theatre, performance, site-specific and alternative arts projects.
Gemma Lloyd, Associate Curator
Gemma Lloyd is an independent curator with two decades of experience in commissioning, exhibition-making, publications and catalogues, artist residencies and public events. She has curated exhibitions for Czarna Galeria, Warsaw; Kunstraum, London; The Living Art Museum, Reykjavik; Ferens Art Gallery and Hull Maritime Museum and worked closely with the artists Emma Hart, Jonathan Baldock and John Walter on the production of new work and projects.
Her most recent projects include Earth Spells: Witches of the Anthropocene at RAMM, Exeter and living in fear of quicksand – a solo exhibition by Maria Amidu at the Nunnery and Tower Hamlets Local History Library & Archives in London. As an associate of Bridget Sawyers Ltd she is working on a series of public art commissions along the River Thames for Tideway and a number of permanent commissions in Brighton for Brighton & Hove City Council.
She is an English language copy editor for the Contemporary Art Centre in Vilnius, Nida Art Colony, and the biannual magazine *as a Journal. Gemma is an associate of DACS and has worked on the archives of Alison Wilding, Tess Jaray and Susanna Heron. She studied Fine Art at Nottingham Trent University and holds an MA in Curating Contemporary Art from the Royal College of Art.
Caroline Smith, Associate Creative Producer
Caroline is an independent arts consultant and creative producer, based in London. Her work encompasses the creative production of ambitious works by individual artists as well as strategic development for cultural organisations, fundraising, and project management of events and exhibitions.
She works as a regular producer and studio director with artists Simon Faithfull and Cornelia Parker. Recent work includes working as Exhibition Producer at Tate Britain, and as an Artistic Advisor for Durham 2025. Caroline has been working with Daily Life Ltd on Strategic planning and fundraising, including our successful NPO application.
Ilana Mitchell, Associate Director and Curator
Ilana is an artist, curator and facilitator who lives in Newcastle upon Tyne. She is working with Daily Life as an interim Executive Director and curator.
While fostering an alternative-to-mainstream approach, her works spans scale and type, from individual projects and collaborations to setting up and supporting arts organisations and structures.
Ilana led the ‘playfully disruptive, seriously curious’ arts production company Wunderbar as Artistic Director from its inception in 2008. She was a founding member of the Star & Shadow Cinema – a volunteer-run open co-operative housed in a building it owns, dedicated to culture coming from and/or programmed by the grass roots. She is Chair of Trustees of The NewBridge Project, an artist-led hub of pioneering contemporary art practice providing an ambitious programme of exhibitions, commissions, events, artist development and studio provision.
A 2002 graduate of Newcastle University’s Fine Art degree course, Ilana has been supported to make work in the UK by organisations including the National Football Museum, Camden Arts Centre, East St Arts, and Artsadmin, and internationally such as Spielart (DE), Junction Festival (AUS), Homo Novus (LAT). She also makes things on her own or in collaboration - such as her 2017 project The Year of Years and 2019’s Edicure. She received a British Academy “Rising Star” Award for her collaboration Good Feels, Cool Friends with philosopher Dr Rachael Wiseman.
Dr. Dora Whittuck, Associate Evaluation Consultant
Dora is a service design and evaluation consultant with special interests in the
person-centred practices and organisational development. She has over 20 years of experience working as a consultant clinical psychologist, researcher and senior lecturer, and has worked in a range of health, academic, arts and charitable settings. Dora loves to build strong collaborative relationships and to develop creative and dynamic solutions to problems. Over the last 4 years she has worked with Heart n Soul, the Wellcome Trust and the Health Foundation on projects seeking to radically reimagine collaborative arts, evaluation, research and care services alongside learning disabled and autistic people.
Sarah Pickthall, Associate Equity Diversity Inclusion Engineer
Sarah has always been interested in the spaces that unite and divide us all.
Her extensive facilitation, training, production and coaching portfolio is
dedicated to ensuring a broad range of voices and opinions are represented
and included in the creative, cultural, media and health sectors in the UK and
beyond.
A dancer and children’s television writer and puppeteer for 10 years with the
Media Merchants for CITV, Sarah joined Arts Council England in 2004 and
became the first Chair of its Disabled Workers Group.
On leaving Arts Council she had an extensive career as a digital dance
producer working locally and internationally which gave way to more bespoke
coaching and leadership projects in arts, culture, heritage, health and disability
in line with her own changing energy and impairment.
She additionally co-founded Sync Leadership alongside Jo Verrent of
Unlimited, working with Deaf, and disabled leaders with its mix of leadership
theory and coaching practices. Sync has run its programmes in the UK,
Australia, Canada, South Korea, Singapore and in 2023, in Jordan and
Palestine. In 2023 she designed and delivered Amplify, a leadership and
coaching programme for ITV which was wild.
Sarah is a Trustee for StopGap Dance Company, Co-Chair of Access All
Areas Theatre Company alongside her colleague Charlene Salter and
Diversity Associate for Clore Leadership heading up their disabled-led
Inclusive Cultures programme, now in its fourth year.
www.sarahpickthall.com
www.syncleadership.com
Trustees
Suzanne Alleyne
Suzanne Alleyne is a Cultural Thinker. Collaborative working is at the heart of everything she does. She is driven by the belief that considering people, profit and purpose at all levels of business, benefits both organisations and wider society.
Her business navigates the intersection of culture and commerce underpinned by 25 years’ experience supporting and consulting for high profile international organisations and individuals. Her portfolio of clients includes Barclaycard, Channel 4, V&A, Wellcome Trust and Roundhouse. Within the arts she has an impressive track record working with UK writers and poets on their professional development and associated shows.
She is an inaugural Arts Council England Changemaker, through which she was Commercial, Brand and Strategy Director at Apples and Snakes. She is a Fellow of the RSA, a Cultural Animateur for Signifier, and a Visiting Research Associate and guest lecturer at King’s College London.
Malika Booker
Malika Booker is a British poet of Guyanese and Grenadian Parentage. And the founder of Malika’s Poetry Kitchen. Her pamphlet Breadfruit, (flippedeye, 2007) received a Poetry Society recommendation and her poetry collection Pepper Seed (Peepal Tree Press, 2013) was shortlisted for the OCM Bocas prize and the Seamus Heaney Centre 2014 prize for first full collection. She is published with the poets Sharon Olds and Warsan Shire in The Penguin Modern Poet Series 3:Your Family: Your Body (2017).
Malika received her MA from Goldsmiths University and has recently begun a PhD at the University of Newcastle. She was the Douglas Caster Cultural Fellow in Creative Writing at Leeds University, the first British poet to be a fellow at Cave Canem and the inaugural Poet in Residence at The Royal Shakespeare Company.
Malika hosts and curates New Caribbean Voices, Peepal Tree Press’s literary podcast, and is currently a poetry Lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University.
Riah Charles
Riah Charles joined Daily Life Ltd. from the Beyond Suffrage Network Programme. Passionate about inclusion within the arts, Riah strongly believes in the importance of seeking ways to give voice to marginalised people and is what motivates her as a Trustee.
Riah currently works at The WOW Foundation as the projects assistant, delivering a variety of projects and events centered around social justice and gender equality; alongside Riah is the Community Partnerships Manager for mental health organisation, Black Girls Camping Trip, delivering tailored outdoor retreats for Black women and non-binary people, and runs POC Impact the UK’s largest community group for people of colour working in the social impact sector.
Rehaab Daud
With over 15 years of work experience in Communications and Public Relations, Rehaab has a passion for connecting people and building communities through creative avenues. She has previously founded a Communications and Talent agency in Dubai and held leadership roles at various startups, including working as a Development Communications Manager for a global gender equality charity - The WOW Foundation and as the PR and Outreach Lead at Chayn for their award winning podcast called for Less than 2%.
Currently, Rehaab owns a retail brand called Pehhchaan - a homegrown social enterprise that promotes art, textiles, and craftsmanship from the Sub-Continent - and is training to be a Forest School Teacher and a Mindfulness in nature Practitioner.
Kit Green
Kit Green is an Olivier award-winning artist whose work covers, theatre, music, broadcast and immersive entertainment. kitgreen.net
Anthony Roberts
Anthony Roberts is currently director of Colchester Arts Centre. The organisation declares an artistic bias towards new work innovation and experimentation. The performance programme includes an eclectic mix of performance arts including jazz music, folk, rock and pop, world music, comedy, children’s theatre, performance poetry, film.
Anthony is also currently the chair of Frozen Light theatre company who specialise in making work for people with profound and multiple learning difficulties (PMLD). Frozen Light take their work throughout the UK with a vigourous touring schedule and recently developed international mentoring and development work.
He is the UK producer for the New York-based activists and performance troupe Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping
For 14 years he was the producer for Escalator East to Edinburgh taking over 20 companies, performers, poets, choreographers to the Edinburgh festival every year. During this time, he was an active campaigner for better access to the fringe for performers and audiences with disabilities.
Creative Collaborators
Joe Hales, designer
Fi Mason, writer, coach & arts consultant
Miranda Melville, production designer
Claire Nolan, filmmaker
Jo Palmer, production manager
Steve Wald, technical director
Charlie Whittuck, artist
Sian Stevenson, choreographic associate