Team and board
Our team
Meet the Metroland Cultures team. You can contact us on the details below.
Lois Stonock
Founder and Director of Metroland Cultures
lois@metrolandcultures.com
Dan Mitchell
Programme Coordinator, Studio and Residencies
dan@metrolandcultures.com
Becky Morris Knight
Digital Content Curator
becky@metrolandcultures.com
Annie Jael Kwan
Curator – Brent Biennial 2025
annie@metrolandcultures.com
Christy O’Beirne
Assistant Curator
christy@metrolandcultures.com
Izzy Milenkovic
Marketing and Communications Assistant
izzy@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
Hester Abrams (Co-Chair)
Hester Abrams worked as a journalist, literary festival director and TV drama researcher before setting out to create a new public heritage experience at Willesden Jewish Cemetery. She has led work of staff, consultants and volunteers in delivering the House of Life at the Victorian cemetery, as well as fund-raising, marketing and advocacy. As curator, she has uncovered most of the research into the cemetery and written new permanent displays, developed guided walks and produced events and exhibitions.
In past working lives Hester was a Reuters correspondent and magazine editor in Vienna and London, and Director of Jewish Book Week.
Zeyn Alsukhny
Zeyn is a Brent resident and Blueprint Collective member. He is passionate about changing the perception of and narratives around young people in the borough, and bringing the community together.
Ismael Dahir
21 year old Ismael has lived in Brent for 17 years, and has been part of the Blueprint Collective since June 2018. He attended school in Brent until he landed a place on the aerospace engineering course at the University of Surrey. Ismael feels strongly about giving young people in the borough a voice, and sat on the engagement board for the Seen and Heard project.
Rachel Dedman
Rachel Dedman is a Brent-based curator, writer, and art historian. Born, raised and still living in Brent today, Rachel is passionate about the borough, its histories and people. She holds a first class degree in the History of Art from St John’s College, Oxford, and was the Von Clemm Fellow at Harvard University. Her work examines the material and political lives of things, and challenges established narratives around cultural production in the Middle East. Rachel is the Jameel Curator of Contemporary Art from the Middle East at the V&A, London, where she is curating Jameel Prize: Poetry to Politics in 2021.
From 2013-2019, Rachel was based in Beirut, Lebanon, and Ramallah, Palestine, where she curated projects across the Middle East and Europe. She is co-founder and editor of polycephaly.net, and one third of Radio Earth Hold, a research and broadcast collective working on notions of transnational solidarity through the sonic. Her writing is published by Ibraaz, Spike, e-flux, MacGuffin, La belle revue, and REORIENT, among others.
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.
Cllr Krupesh Hirani (Co-Chair)
Krupesh graduated with a Politics degree from the University of Nottingham in 2007 and has developed strong hands-on experience in the political sector, working for Barry Gardiner MP in the House of Commons and being on the Parliament and Government Programme at the Hansard Society. He then went on to work as a Policy and Business Development Officer for a new public affairs think tank and was mentored through the Operation Black Vote shadowing scheme by the Rt Hon David Lammy MP. He stood as a Labour Party candidate in the 2010 local elections and was elected as Councillor to the London Borough of Brent, representing Dudden Hill Ward. In 2012, he joined the Council’s leading Executive Group after becoming the Lead Member for Adults and Health, making him the youngest person in the country to hold this portfolio. He is the current Cabinet member for Adults, Health and Wellbeing at the London Borough of Brent. He works part-time for the Multiple Sclerosis Society.
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.
Bhavini Kalaria
Bhavini is an experienced solicitor. Having run her own practice and as a partner in a well-established legal firm located in Harrow, Bhavini has experience in advising businesses of all sizes. Specialising in contract disputes and cross border litigation, Bhavini has experience in both running a legal practice, and promoting one. Bhavini has sat on other boards and acted as a trustee to different organisations in the past and so brings some gained knowledge from these roles. In this way, Bhavini offers legal and business expertise as well as trustee experience to the board.
Social justice matters have always been important to Bhavini, and she is keen on seeing that arts and culture remain available and accessible to as many people as possible.
Savannah Mullings Johnson
Savannah is a youth worker, creative, blogger, professional writer and member of the Blueprint Collective who is set to embark on a new chapter when she begins teacher training later on in the year. She has lived in Kingsbury, Brent her whole life and considers her relationship with Brent as an unbreakable bond. She works in a local primary school as a learning mentor and is passionate about lifting up the younger generation. Savannah loves writing, collecting vinyls and Y2K fashion. You can often find her rewatching Gilmore Girls and playing VR.
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.
James Williams
James was appointed Managing Director of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (RPO) in June 2016. Notable achievements include the appointment of Vasily Petrenko as the RPO’s next Music Director (starting 2021) and a new Associate Orchestra partnership between the RPO and the Royal Albert Hall. He established a new home for the Orchestra at Wembley Park in partnership with the developer Quintain and oversaw an international touring schedule across Asia, Europe and the USA.
The RPO’s move to Brent will enable the Orchestra to build long-term partnerships with local organisations and artists, and contribute to the Borough’s cultural, community and education priorities for the benefit of Brent’s residents.
Andria Zafirakou MBE
Andria has been teaching art and design at the Alperton Community School for 14 years. In 2018, she was awarded the Global Teacher Prize and has recently set up a charity called Artists in Residence to support the arts in education. Andria received an MBE in 2019 for her services to education.
Cllr Fleur Donelly-Jackson (Council Representative)
Fleur is the Cabinet lead at Brent Council for Community Engagement, Equalities, and Culture. She was elected as a councillor in Brent in 2018 and represents Roundwood ward. Fleur previously worked at Whitechapel Gallery, the Barbican Centre, and at Tate Gallery where she was a Volunteers Manager and worked to bring diverse audiences into the galleries, as well as chairing the gallery’s staff disability network. She currently works for the Labour Party and has a background in campaigning for the rights of disabled people. She has been part of a number of access advisory groups including for the Horniman Museum and the Mayor of London’s Liberty Festival. She is also a Trustee for Action Space – a visual arts development agency for learning disabled artists.
Interested in joining the board? We advertise vacancies on our Opportunities page.