Meet Alex Brown, Arts and Culture Manager. In his profile Alex tells us about launching the new QM Centre for Creative Collaboration, their work with the BLOC media space and introduces us to the Arts and Culture team.
I joined Queen Mary as Arts and Culture Manager in April 2023. It’s my first job in higher education, and before this I worked for over 15 years in the creative sector as a theatre director, youth worker and creative producer. My most recent role before Queen Mary was as Creative Engagement Manager at Rich Mix, an arts centre in Shoreditch, where I led creative projects and collaborated with lots of east London based arts and cultural organisations.
My average week involves a mixture of project planning and meetings with partner organisations and Queen Mary researchers. Sometimes I’ll be invited to attend events run by our partners from local grassroots cultural organisations, and I also convene meetings with our key strategic partners like the Arts Council and Greater London Authority to discuss ways to connect Queen Mary to local and national policy agendas in the arts and creative industries. There’s also a chunk of admin to stay on top of, ensuring that our project partners are paid for their time and expertise, and making sure there’s always a decent spread of teas, coffees and food ordered for when we invite people to join us for workshops, meetings or events. Good collaboration is powered by good catering!
It was exciting to launch the new QM Centre for Creative Collaboration in November. The centre continues and extends the work of the Arts and Culture team, which over the last five years provided strategic support to academics using creative methods and collaborations in their research, and built partnerships and networks with local, national and international cultural organisations, advocates and artists.
We are now a centrally located team, part of the Policy and Strategic Partnerships portfolio which is a lovely team working on lots of varied projects. Our role as the Centre for Creative Collaboration is to bring together artists, academics, students and cultural organisations to collaborate and make change. We currently have long term projects exploring how Queen Mary can support cultural organisations to evaluate their projects and understand their positive impacts on people and place, how academics can collaborate with young researchers through partnerships with schools and youth organisations and on mapping the impacts of AI (artificial intelligence) on the creative workforce through research involving major arts unions and the Turing Institute.
It's busy times, and all in areas that I find fascinating as someone coming from a background in the creative sector.
Working with Aoife Monks, who is Director of the Centre for Creative Collaboration, is brilliant because we bounce lots of ideas around and develop strategic projects through discussion. We also have some new members who just joined the team. Jenny Hewitt is the postdoctoral researcher leading our work with young people, and she brings loads of experience of working in east London and around the UK to meaningfully involve children and young people in research projects. Fahima Jahan Amin is our new Strategic Partnerships Officer, supporting the team to share more stories about the work we are doing. Fahima graduated from Queen Mary last year studying marketing and was also a participant on this year’s Assistant Producers scheme, so it’s great to have her join us.
Speaking of Assistant Producers - this year a group of students from across Queen Mary created and ran a brilliant arts festival in the BLOC media space in Arts One in the spring. Since then, we’ve connected them with lots of opportunities to share their skills in creative producing across the University and in the local area, so I’m often in touch with them about upcoming events. We are running the scheme again next year and I can’t wait to see what the new group of Assistant Producers make and what they go on to achieve in whatever sectors and careers they apply their skills in.
I see my role as helping to build ambitious and ethical partnerships between Queen Mary and the cultural and creative sectors. We hold relationships with influential policy makers and funders, and we are working to shape a more inclusive creative sector through championing the insights and expertise of grassroots organisations. We are also supporting the development of skills and networks that help academics and students to use creative methods to unlock collaborations across science, engineering, humanities and medicine.
We are delivering one strand of Queen Mary’s Civic University Agreement, looking at how the University can be a cultural hub for east London. We are proud to be involved in amplifying the brilliant work already happening across the University with our local area, and to play a role in helping to shape the future of creative and cultural partnerships with communities in east London.
The canal on Mile End campus. I spent lots of lockdown walking along the other side of the towpath so it’s great to be back in the real world again and busy getting to know people at Queen Mary!
I play saxophone in a Balkan band, so will be out at a few music festivals this summer. I also love to cook so am often found exploring all the wonderful markets and small shops we are lucky enough to have on our doorstep in Mile End for ingredients.
Yes, check out the great programme of films, workshops and events at BLOC. There’s always something great to see.