Team and board
Our team
Meet the Metroland Cultures team. You can contact us on the details below.
Lizzie Graham
Programmes Curator
elizabeth@metrolandcultures.com
Annie Jael Kwan
Curator – Brent Biennial 2025
annie@metrolandcultures.com
Dan Mitchell
Programme Coordinator, Studio and Residencies
dan@metrolandcultures.com
Christy O’Beirne
Assistant Curator
christy@metrolandcultures.com
Louise Shelley
Deputy Director
louise@metrolandcultures.com
Lois Stonock
Director
lois@metrolandcultures.com
Metroland Cultures is a registered charity. As a charity, we are governed by a board of trustees. Our trustees are all from Brent or meaningfully connected to the borough through home, upbringing or work.
The Board and team work closely together. The Board bring invaluable knowledge and lived experience of Brent.
They also oversee all our work in line with our charitable objectives and strategy.
Our trustees
Roshni Hirani
Roshni is a Human Resources professional and has been working in the arts, culture and heritage sector for over ten years in a range of museums and galleries including Serpentine, Tate, Royal Museums Greenwich and the National Portrait Gallery. Having studied a fine art degree at the University of East London, Roshni has a huge passion for arts and creativity. She has been a proud resident of Brent for 4 years and a frequent visitor of her close family who have lived in Brent her whole life. Roshni sees huge potential for communities in Brent to come together to build, share and support arts and culture within the borough.
You can often find Roshni walking in green spaces, in her garden growing sunflowers during the warmer months and cooking.
Moira Lascelles
Moira Lascelles is Executive Director & Head of Partnerships of UP Projects, a
public art commissioning organisation that brings world class artists out of the gallery
to work with communities in public spaces across the UK. As well as overseeing the
strategic direction of the organisation, Moira leads UP Projects partnership projects
working to develop progressive public art strategies and commissions that
foreground the needs of communities in their conception and development.
She has previously been Deputy Director of The Architecture Foundation, Consultant
Curator of the London Festival of Architecture 2010 and has collaborated with and
been commissioned by many celebrated organisations including the V&A, the
Barbican and the British Council.
Moira specialises in curating projects that harnesses creative practice to bring about
social change and empower communities to connect with their built environment in
new ways. She has been the curator of a number of flagship meanwhile projects
including the Union Street Urban Orchard with the Wayward Plant Registry and
South Kilburn Studios with Practice Architecture that transformed a vacant
portacabin in Brent into a series of creative studio spaces offering rent free studio
space in return for offering training to local young people. Moira is an Arts
Emergency Mentor and a member of the Curatorial panel of advisors for the London
Festival of Architecture 2024.
Jacob Barnes
Jacob Barnes works at the intersection of art and publishing in London, UK. His ventures include Minor Attractions fair, Season 4 Episode 6 Gallery, and Curatorial Affairs magazine.
Having begun his career in publishing with a magazine titled Soft Punk, Jacob has consistently sought out entrepreneurial modes of participation in the art world, often creating small communities directed towards broader systemic change. Believing firmly in small groups’ ability to affect macro-level discourse, much of his work is devoted to achieving a sustainable and equitable future for the art world and its constituents.
Elizabeth Aderonke Johnstone
Elizabeth Aderonke Johnstone is a social research professional with seven years of experience in research, monitoring and evaluation across various sectors, including the arts and cultural fields. She played a key role in evaluating the 2022 Brent Biennial, conducting in depth interviews with local artists, young people, and audiences, and analysing the resulting data. Specialising in mixed methods research, Elizabeth supports learning at beneficiary, organisational, and sectoral levels.
In 2023, Elizabeth launched her own consultancy, expanding her expertise to a wider range of projects. Her work has been published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, showcasing her contributions to the field of research.
Elizabeth loves music performance and composition, which keep her creativity flowing. Based in London, she brings her evaluative expertise to the board, eager to support and advance arts and culture initiatives.
Turab Shah
Turab Shah is a filmmaker and director of photography who holds an MA in Cinematography from Met Film School. Turab grew up in Brent and attended schools in Queens Park and Wembley. He has a special interest in the legacies of colonialism and his films include ”Extradition’ which followed Talha Ahsan and Babar Ahmad’s battle against extradition to the US and ‘Zones of Non-Being’, a film which looks at Guantanamo through the lens of coloniality. He has produced a range of work from documentaries for AJE to moving image works for Humber Street Gallery, TfL/Art On The Underground, Brent Biennial ’22 as well as small independent fiction films.
Together with Arwa Aburawa, Turab co-founded Other Cinemas which has its home at Metroland Studios. Other Cinemas is an award-winning project focused on showcasing the work of Black and non-white filmmakers through a free community screening programme and a year-long film school. Other Cinemas was recognised as a Film London Lodestar in 2022 and was awarded the ‘Support Structure for Support Structures’ fellowship by the Serpentine Gallery.
Adam Farah-Saad
Adam Farah-Saad was a commissioned artist for the 2020 Biennial ‘On the Side of the Future’, and was part of the Curatorial Committee for the 2022 Brent Biennial ‘In the House of My Love’. Since 2021, he has been a resident at Metroland Studios.
Chris Prempeh
Chris a North London based creative who has extensive experience in scenic design and construction. With experience spanning live events, art fabrication, marketing and community based arts. Chris first came into contact with Metroland during the 2022 Brent Biennial and has since become a part of the Metroland community.
Interested in joining the board? We advertise vacancies on our Opportunities page.