Biographies

Live Art Development Agency staff

The Live Art Development Agency is a small organisations with three permanent members of staff.

Lois Keidan was Director of Live Arts at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London from 1992 to 1997 where she devised a year round programme of new performance and initiated numerous new ventures for established and emerging artists. Prior to the ICA she was responsible for national policy and provision for Performance Art and interdisciplinary practices at the Arts Council of Great Britain. She contributes articles on performance to a range of journals and publications and regularly gives talks and presentations on performance at festivals, colleges, venues and conferences in Britain and internationally.

Daniel Brine joined the Live Art Development Agency as Associate Director in January 2001. After training as an architect he worked with the Visual Arts/Craft Unit of the Australia Council, the Australian Government's arts advisory and funding body. On the completion of his Masters of Arts Administration he worked as a curator including projects with Tamworth City Gallery and the Centre for Contemporary Craft. Between 1996 and 2000 he was a Combined Arts Officer and then Visual Arts Officer; Live Art at the Arts Council of England. As a freelance arts manager Daniel has worked with Andrew Caleya Chetty as Co-Director of the NOW Festival, DA2 (Digital Arts Development Agency) and London Arts.

Andrew Mitchelson joined the Live Art Development Agency as Company and Resource Manager in March 2006 and his post was redesignated as Projects Manager in April 2008. Andrew has a BA Degree in Arts Management, and since graduation has freelanced on a number of projects with Royal National Theatre. As a project manager, Andrew was responsible for creating and piloting a Youth Enterprise Programme with the Head for Business project and also produced a European Theatre Exchange programme to Berlin with Art of Regeneration. Andrew has also previously worked as administrator for Duckie.

Project Directors

From time to time, the Agency works with Project Directors who lead a specific initiative or project. Current Project Directors are:

Dr Adrian Heathfield writes on and curates contemporary performance. He is the editor of Live: Art and Performance (Tate Publishing, 2004), Small Acts: Performance, The Millennium and the Marking of Time (Black Dog Publications, 2000), On Memory, an issue of Performance Research (Vol. 5, No. 3, Routledge, 2000) and the box publication Shattered Anatomies: Traces of the Body in Performance (Arnolfini Live, 1997). His writing has also appeared in Hybrid, Cultural Studies, Frakcija, Art and Design, Yishu, Connect, and Space and Culture. He co-curated Live Culture a four-day performance series and two-day international state-of-the-artform symposium at Tate Modern, London, in March 2003 with Lois Keidan and Daniel Brine of the Live Art Development Agency, the national performance series Small Acts at the Millennium with Lois Keidan and Tim Etchells, and Forced Entertainment's twelve hour durational performance-lecture Marathon Lexicon. He has given many lectures, talks and dialogues nationally and internationally in Holland, Denmark, France, Germany, Portugal, Slovenia, Croatia, Australia and in a number of cities in the USA. He is a Principal Research Fellow at Nottingham Trent University and President of Performance Studies international. www.adrianheathfield.co.uk

Rajni Shah's work as a producer and director challenge preconceptions about the audience-performer relationship. Each new piece of work is informed by the artists involved and uses different performance disciplines accordingly, drawing from Live Art, dance and theatre. She is committed to bringing diverse artists together to explore innovative ways of presenting work outside a conventional theatrical setting. Her most recent piece, 'Mr Quiver', has been shown at the National Review of Live Art, South Hill Park, Sprint, and will soon be showing at Coastal Currents and Southampton Live. Rajni is a Live Art Development Agency One to One bursary artist. www.rajnishah.com

Co-founder

The Live Art Development Agency was co-founded by Catherine Ugwu.

Catherine Ugwu who was Deputy Director of Live Arts at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, from 1991 - 1997, holding programming, curatorial and commissioning responsibilities. She compiled and edited Let's Get It On - the politics of black performance and has contributed chapters to publications including, Mirage: Enigmas of Race, Difference and Desire, Global Encounters In The World of Arts, Collisions of Tradition and Modernity, and The Project Papers, a Dublin Theatre Festival Publication. She has contributed to numerous publications nationally and internationally. She was formerly Chair of Talawa Theatre Company and The Showroom Gallery Board's. Catherine Ugwu left the Agency in 2000 to work as an independent producer on major international events.