Team and board
Our team
Meet the Metroland Cultures team. You can contact us on the details below.
Lois Stonock (she/her)
Founder and Director of Metroland Cultures (on maternity leave from the end of July 2024)
lois@metrolandcultures.com
Louise Shelley
Deputy Director
louise@metrolandcultures.com
Rebecca Heald
Interim Director (Maternity Cover)
rebecca@metrolandcultures.com
Dan Mitchell (he/him)
Programme Coordinator, Studio and Residencies
dan@metrolandcultures.com
Becky Morris Knight
Digital Content Curator (currently on maternity leave)
becky@metrolandcultures.com
Annie Jael Kwan
Curator – Brent Biennial 2025
annie@metrolandcultures.com
Lizzie Graham (she/they)
Programmes Curator
elizabeth@metrolandcultures.com
Christy O’Beirne (he/him)
Assistant Curator
christy@metrolandcultures.com
Izzy Milenkovic (she/her)
Marketing and Communications Assistant
izzy@metrolandcultures.com
Alice Sewell (she/her)
Communications Consultant (Maternity Cover)
alice@metrolandcultures.com
Interested in joining the team? Jobs are advertised on our Opportunities page.
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 of all our work in line with our charitable objectives and strategy.
Our trustees
Rachel Dedman (Chair)
Rachel Dedman is a curator, writer, and art historian. Her work examines the material and political lives of things, and challenges established narratives around cultural production in the Global South. Rachel is the Jameel Curator of Contemporary Art from the Middle East at the V&A, London, where she curates the triennial Jameel Prize exhibition and the Jameel Fellowship artist residency programme. Beyond the V&A, Rachel curated Material Power: Palestinian Embroidery for Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, and The Whitworth, Manchester, in 2023/24, and co-curated the State of Fashion Biennale 2024 in the Netherlands.
Before returning to London in 2019, Rachel spent six years in Lebanon and Palestine, where she curated projects across the Middle East and Europe. Trained in the history of art at Oxford and Harvard Universities, Rachel’s writing on art is widely published and she is the author of two books on Palestinian embroidery and dress. Born, raised and still living in Brent today, Rachel is passionate about the borough, its histories and people.
Digby Halsby
Digby is an award-winning communications professional whose promotional experience spans public relations, marketing and publishing. At the Paris-based advertising agency Iceberg-Bozell he developed pan-European advertising campaigns for market-leading consumer brands.
In 2009 Digby co-founded Flint Culture, a specialist cultural consultancy that has gone on to provide cultural advisory and communications services to brands, businesses and organisations ranging from the 2012 Cultural Olympiad, the British Library, Christie’s and the London Art Fair, to BT, Time Out and the National Trust. Based in London and working across Flint’s international offices, Digby offers expertise in brand management, audience engagement, business development and corporate, consumer and cultural partnerships.
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.
Matt Holt
Matt is Commercial Director at Frieze, and has a track record of driving commercial strategy in the arts and media. In his current role, he has been involved in developing major global cultural initiatives, including the launch of Frieze Los Angeles. He established Frieze Studios, Frieze’s in-house creative agency, set up to deliver commercial projects that engage and support the creative community. Most recently he rolled out Frieze’s first ever membership programme, alongside a full creative rebrand.
He previously spent four years as Head of Corporate Development at Southbank Centre, prior to which he worked within various roles at Sky. He is a Non-Executive Board member of Everyday Plastic, a Community Interest Company that provides the public with a personal connection to the plastic problem.
Lois Stonock
Lois is the Director of Metroland Cultures, and was previously the Artistic Director of Brent 2020, London Borough of Culture. She is also a consultant, writer, researcher and programmer working in the arts.
Lois specialises in taking people and organisations through change and development with new approaches and strategic thinking. Over 2018 she developed a cultural think tank, The Jennie Lee Institute, to imagine new cultural futures for the UK, engaging the voices of young people, artists and policymakers to extend the value of culture to all areas of the everyday. In addition to this Lois develops curatorial and research projects which are always artist and idea-led, working with artists to realise ambitious projects. This work also informs her strategic thinking in other areas, as she is increasingly working at the intersection of art and society.
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.