About the Team

The Live Art sector research collective



Chinasa Vivian Ezugha

Chinasa Vivian Ezugha is the founder of Live Art in Wymondham, a one day site-specific series of events that aimed to bring emerging artists working in Live Art to rural Norfolk. Her work has been presented in venues across Europe, America and the UK, including In Between Time (Bristol, 2017) and SPILL festival (Ipswich, 2018). She is the winner of the New Art Exchange Open Main Prize (2019), and recipient of the Santander Universities Post Covid-19 Performance Making Enterprise Award (2020), supported by Santander Universities and ICCE, Goldsmiths, University of London. Ezugha is also a Research Associate at the Centre for Contemporary Art Derry Londonderry.

Cecilia Wee

Dr Cecilia Wee (co-lead of the research collective) is an independent curator, educator and agitator, addressing equitable infrastructures for art and social action, working with experimental sound, performance, visual practices. Cecilia has edited books, curated exhibitions, events and led research projects with organisations including Akademie der Künste Berlin, Heart of Glass, Live Art Development Agency, Resonance FM, and Tate. Cecilia is Visiting Tutor in Visual Communication at Royal College of Art and founder of tdwm studio.

www.ceciliawee.com
Twitter: @ceciliawee

Dr Elyssa Livergant

Dr. Elyssa Livergant (co-lead of the research collective) is an artist, activist, researcher and educator. Her work centres on participatory and collaborative performance practices, cultural work, public space and local community organising. She supports artists and organisations with strategic guidance to produce equitable process-led change. She has participated in numerous international critical and artistic projects and publications alongside working with various arts activist groups in the UK. Elyssa has lectured at various institutions in London including the Royal Central School of Drama, Goldsmiths, Queen Mary and the University of Arts London.

Dr Johanna Linsley

Dr Johanna Linsley is Lecturer in Creative Practice at the University of Dundee, working between performance, interdisciplinary writing and sound studies. Her ongoing project Stolen Voices, in collaboration with Rebecca Collins, is a slowly evolving eavesdrop on the east coast of the UK, and it was shortlisted for a Scottish Award for New Music in 2021. She is co-director of the Centre for Scotland’s Land Futures at the University of Dundee.

Dr Tarek Virani

Dr Tarek Virani is Associate Professor of Creative Industries and Co-director of the Creative Economies Lab at the Faculty of Arts, Creative Industries and Education at UWE Bristol. Previously, he was Deputy Director of Network: Queen Mary University of London’s Centre for the Creative and Cultural Economy. His research interests spans a number of areas within the creative and cultural economy including: the role of intermediaries and social enterprises in the creative and cultural economy, cultural policy, artistic knowledge within locally bounded artistic communities, new work spaces in the creative and cultural economy, the role of micro-community engagement in culture-led regeneration, the role of the creative and cultural economy intermediary, the link between the creative industries and local development, creative and cultural hubs, and the internationalisation of creative work. Tarek has done work for a number of local, national and international organisations including research institutions, governments and other stakeholders.

Dr Tim Jeeves

Dr Tim Jeeves has been making performance work for the last fifteen years, with an emphasis on how narratives around disability and health develop. Between 2011 and 2016, he directed the Arts Council England-supported Giving in to Gift festival, ‘an ongoing conversation around ideas of generosity and reciprocation’. Since 2019, he has represented Liverpool Clubmoor as a city councillor, exploring the possibilities within mainstream politics to support the creation of a socialist future.

Twitter: @timjeeves

Live Art Development Agency (LADA)

Founded in 1999, LADA is a Centre for Live Art based in East London. Whether you are an artist, curator, writer, producer, student, educator, researcher or activist, LADA is here to help you understand, appreciate, dig into, and take inspiration from a huge breadth of Live Art and performance practices – contemporary and historic. All LADA’s specialised resources, opportunities, projects and events are driven by an unwavering commitment to experimentation and risk, to the sustainability of our planet, and to difference and diversity in all its forms.

www.thisisliveart.co.uk

Live Art UK

Live Art UK is a network of 30 venues, promoters and facilitators who collectively represent a range of practices and are concerned with all aspects of the development and promotion of the Live Art sector. The network aims to be a representative voice for Live Art practices and initiatives in the UK.

www.liveartuk.org