Career

 

My experience leading cultural organisations means I bring practical suggestions and deep insight as a consultant.

 

My leadership experience includes as Director of Heritage Properties for National Trust for Scotland, CEO of York Museums Trust and consultant Executive Director of The Exhibitions Group. 

 

My curatorial, programming and interpretation skills were developed in roles including Director of Art Galleries at National Museums Liverpool, Head of Interpretation and Exhibitions at Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery, Development Manager for Coventry Arts & Heritage and as Curator of Prints & Drawings at Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery. 

 

I began my career as a curator of art, producing exhibitions including Ignatius Sancho: an African Man of Letters at the National Portrait Gallery, Anwar Shemza at Birmingham, and Atlantic Fire: Aubrey Williams at the Walker Art Gallery.

 

Writing 

 

I am a re-emerging poet, having written from childhood to my early 30s before focussing on a career in museums. My work is still informed as then by my personal cultural heritage and experiences as a Cape Malay muslim woman living in the UK. Now I find poetry also offers me a way to express a different angle on work in the heritage sector as well as to celebrate the natural world in glorious Scotland. 

 

Personal background

 

I was born in Edinburgh, where I now live but I grew up near London and in Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. Whilst in Dar es Salaam my mother was a radio broadcaster and activist for the African National Congress and our house was usually full of South Africans from SOMAFCO, the Solomon Mahlangu Freedom College. At the same time, I went back and forth to boarding school. This mix of experiences has undoubtedly been formative and I am so proud to have inherited my parents' strongly anti-racist principles.