Team
The NN team consists of highly motivated individuals including employees, the board, freelancers and volunteers.
We work with a roster of freelance technicians and artist educators. If you are interested in joining NN’s roster of freelancers see our Opportunities page.
Artistic Director and CEO
Emer Grant
Emer Grant, Artistic Director and CEO, is a Curator, Producer, and Researcher who completed her Masters in Curatorial Studies at CCS Bard College (USA) and History of Art at the University of York (UK), and her BFA in Critical Fine Art Practice at the University of Brighton. Over the course of more than ten years working across the museum and gallery sector, she has contributed to many exhibition projects in curatorial, production and editorial roles. Emer was a Fellow for The Recalibrated Institution (Miami) and Curator at Art Center South Florida (now Oolite Arts). Prior to this Emer was an Associate Curator of the 2014 Sonorities Festival (Belfast), she has curated shows and programming for various institutions including the Hessel Museum (NY), P! Gallery (NY), ISCP (NY), Stroom den Haag (NL) Void Gallery (NI), Pollinaria (IT), Yeah Maybe (MN), PHL (DE) and The Grand Parade Gallery (UK). She was Visiting Tutor at the RCA, Visiting Curator at Bard College MFA, Visiting Curator at the University of Minnesota Studio Arts BFA and Visiting Critic for Florida International University’s Architecture BFA programme. Emer was the Editor of Accessions.org between 2016-2018 and has written for various publications including, Nero, Electronic Beats, The Editorial, The Miami Rail and Rhizome. She was a fellow selected for the ICI (Independent Curators International) 2013 and has consulted for various organizations on Digital Arts and interdisciplinary strategies for public space. She is also an Associate Curator for Left Gallery (Berlin).
Finance and Facilities Manager
Louise Tyrrell
Projects Assistant
Sonia Tsesarsky
Since completing a degree in Languages and History of Art, Sonia has worked in the arts as well as undertaking freelance translation work. She is also part of the MK Gallery staff team, and was briefly a Local Ambassador for the OUTLANDS network at MK Gallery in 2019, helping to deliver a programme of specially commissioned audio-visual events in Milton Keynes.
Associate Creative Producer
Simon Wright
Formerly Curator, Public Programmes at MK Gallery, Simon is an independent creative producer with over 15 years experience designing and delivering multi-arts programmes, projects and commissions.
Whilst at MK Gallery, he co-founded the Outlands Network – a commissioning body and network specialising in experimental music and interdisciplinary performance. Outlands have worked with a range of contemporary artists and musicians including Eartheater, Semiconductor, Matana Roberts, Beatrice Dillion, Keith Harrison, Qujaku, Coby Sey, Klein, and record label C.A.N.V.A.S. Now an independent organisation, Outlands were successful in joining the Arts Council’s National Portfolio 2023-2026.
In 2019, he co-founded Pooleyville, a multi-disciplinary creative agency who work with a range of commercial, cultural and community partners. Current clients include MK Council, mixed use developer Socius, and Westbury Art Centre.
Between 2013 and 2022, he was Chair of Trustees for MOTUS Dance, a contemporary dance charity based in Milton Keynes.
Board
Board NN boasts a dedicated board with members responsible for the strategic direction of the organisation as well as being advocates for NN and lending their specialist skills for NN’s staff to draw upon.
Interim Chair
David Danskin
David Danskin is a solicitor who has spent his working life giving advice about a wide variety of complex property development schemes. He has been involved in many interesting projects such as Stadium MK, Xscape and Theatre MK, as well as advising housing developers and local authorities. David has a keen interest in the visual arts and has served as a trustee of MK Gallery, being a member of the building committee during the construction of the recently completed £12m extension. He is also currently a trustee of The Stables, a music charity set up by John Dankworth and Cleo Laine in Wavendon, Milton Keynes.
Andy Hewitt
Andy Hewitt (Interim Chair) is an artist and academic teaching practice and theory at the University of Northampton. He is founding co-editor of Art and the Public Sphere Journal, a cross-disciplinary journal that combines the study of art, politics and geography. Andy is an artist and from 2004 worked collaboratively with Dave Beech and Mel Jordan as the Freee Art Collective. He currently works with Jordan as the Partizan Social Club. In his participatory artworks, he devises strategies to occupy the public sphere as a site of contestation, social transformation and agency.
Kate Chadwick
Kate Chadwick has been Executive Director at Stanwick Lakes since January 2022. Kate is responsible for managing this unique 750-acre countryside attraction and nature reserve located in the heart of Northamptonshire’s Nene Valley. The site attracts around 300,000 visitors a year and has extensive facilities for people to enjoy. In the 10 months she has been Director Kate has redeveloped the workforce, reopened the site’s visitor centre following two years of closure, created new art and heritage exhibitions and launched a number of new craft courses and family activities. The site is managed as a social enterprise by Rockingham Forest Trust and has an annual turnover of around £1m.
Prior to this Kate was Deputy Director at MK Gallery in Milton Keynes. In March 2019, she and her team reopened the new MK Gallery to extraordinary critical and popular acclaim. Kate was responsible for managing the £12m capital development, including the financial, legal and administrative oversight of this complex non-profit, registered educational charity. She was also responsible for its commercial success, developing new businesses that included an independent café, gift shop, cinema, concert hall and corporate entertainment.
William Chamberlain
William Chamberlain is a solicitor and social entrepreneur who, for the past ten years, has been developing a range of creative place-shaping and inclusive regeneration projects to help establish Hackney Wick and Fish Island in East London as a permanent, sustainable, creative economy alongside the large-scale redevelopment of the area surrounding the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.
He was a member of the London 2012 Olympic bid team and moved to Hackney Wick in 2008. He founded the Hackney Wick and Fish Island Cultural Interest Group in 2010 to engage local stakeholders, creative practitioners, businesses, institutions and residents and encourage networking, resource sharing and collaboration whilst working together towards a permanent, sustainable creative economy. In 2015 he founded Creative Wick as a non- profit creative place-making agency and Hackney Wick and Fish Island was designated as one of London’s first Creative Enterprise Zones in 2019. He is currently researching part- time for a PhD with the Institute of Media and Creative Industries at Loughborough University London.
Morcea Walker
Morcea Walker MBE, VLL (Vice Lord Lieutenant of Northamptonshire) is the current Chair of the Northamptonshire Black History Association and Chair of the Northampton Carnival and Cultural Arts. Morcea is a Governor at a local school and a Trustee at a number of organisations including Northamptonshire Music and Performing Arts Trust, Healthwatch, West and North Northamptonshire, Street Pastors, Community Law. She comes from Jamaica and has worked across several organisations across the county including providing Equity and diversity advisory to Northamptonshire Council.